Editorial: The New York Times

• RealPage, a Texas company, has been accused by the Justice Department of orchestrating a nationwide rent cartel using its software which increases rents from 3% to 7%.
• This is part of a broader crackdown by antitrust enforcers on modern corporate methods of squeezing customers.
• The role technology plays in cartel formation has changed, making the process of coordinated pricing easier.
• The lawsuit against RealPage is primarily based on the company's algorithms being analyzed by a team of computer analysts from the justice department.
• Major national landlords increasingly dominate the ownership of large apartment buildings, making price coordination easier.

Conclusion: The RealPage case highlights the need to end algorithmic price manipulation and the overaccumulation of power by large landlords. However, if these continue to expand, the outcome of the RealPage case becomes irrelevant.

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