I seem to be the only person here that's actually used YieldStar. RealPage basically is a big data play where they can project forward demand because most larger landlords are using their software. Landlords are NOT communicating with each other "colluding" on property management & leasing decisions. That's ridiculous. Landlords hire a property management company. The property management team works with ownership to determine the budget and financial goals and the property manager works does leasing/works with YieldStar to hit those goals. The property management company may have other clients as well (like Greystar, which manages most large properties)
As a YieldStar user, you basically set the desired occupancy you want, like 93% or 95% (and before you have a misinformed take about 95% occupancy = landlords keeping units vacant... this is an industry standard... there is always some slack in the market). So YieldStar basically tries to pull/push forward demand to get to the desired occupancy by changing the rent. You could make your occupancy 100%. But it's actually less revenue to do that.
Is this all legal? No idea. I'm eager to wait to see how this plays out. But an interesting thought is: Are property management companies "colluding"? They work on behalf of other landlords in the same area. They "aggregate" leasing data and act as a central operator to conduct leasing.
There are probably A LOT of other industries where some central party is aggregating data, which makes the market more "efficient" from a capital perspective.
What's funny though, is i can't think of any other industry begging to let us build housing, which reduces rents and income for landlords. We are seeing rents come down fast in these oversupplied apartment markets. Maybe there's a lesson. Want to reduce rents? You have to add supply (i.e. TX), or reduce demand (San Francisco's years of mistakes making it lease desirable).
As a YieldStar user, you basically set the desired occupancy you want, like 93% or 95% (and before you have a misinformed take about 95% occupancy = landlords keeping units vacant... this is an industry standard... there is always some slack in the market). So YieldStar basically tries to pull/push forward demand to get to the desired occupancy by changing the rent. You could make your occupancy 100%. But it's actually less revenue to do that.
Is this all legal? No idea. I'm eager to wait to see how this plays out. But an interesting thought is: Are property management companies "colluding"? They work on behalf of other landlords in the same area. They "aggregate" leasing data and act as a central operator to conduct leasing.
There are probably A LOT of other industries where some central party is aggregating data, which makes the market more "efficient" from a capital perspective.
What's funny though, is i can't think of any other industry begging to let us build housing, which reduces rents and income for landlords. We are seeing rents come down fast in these oversupplied apartment markets. Maybe there's a lesson. Want to reduce rents? You have to add supply (i.e. TX), or reduce demand (San Francisco's years of mistakes making it lease desirable).