I’m I reading this right that the settlement is just “don’t do that again”? Is it typical in antitrust settlements to not have sort of monetary punishment? Like if this were a class action settlement, they would have to pay back some amount of money to renters.
Lawyer here -
It varies whether there is monetary punishment, but sure, i'd say 75% of cases at leaset there is.
However, the damages are likely hard to calculate here - since it involves calculating and arguing about prevailing rental rates in a competitive market vs the actual market due to realpage, in a huge number of places. Greystar would have argued about every single finding you made, too.
Because of the novelty and complexity involved, Greystar could have tied this up for a decade arguing about that and appealing any results, i'm sure. On top of that, Greystar would argue all they did is share data with realpage and use realpage's results, so any loss is really attributable to realpage, not to them.
Greystar may also not have tons of money. Most of their deals are debt deals. The company is private, and while revenue is roughly known, profit isn't publicly known (AFAIK). So it's hard to say what fine they could afford. The DOJ knows, of course, just we don't know.
Finally, being a private firm that does what they do, my guess is they would play games and other things with any real fine to avoid having to pay it (bankruptcy, et al).
Overall - getting their cooperation is probably more valuable than arguing about damages for a decade and then watching greystar play games while losing the ability to go meaningfully after RealPage.
Obviously, i'm not trying to state any of this is ethically okay or that folks who were overcharged don't deserve their money back. I'm just trying to give you a dispassionate view of some of the decision making involved and why they may have chosen what they did.
Or at least, what would normally be involved. With the trump administration, who knows.
>I’m I reading this right that the settlement is just “don’t do that again”? Is it typical in antitrust settlements to not have sort of monetary punishment?
The better question is how strong of a case the government had. Your question implies Greystar was indisputably guilty and the government's case would be a slam dunk, but that's not readily apparent, given the novel concept of "algorithmic price fixing".
>Like if this were a class action settlement, they would have to pay back some amount of money to renters.
This settlement doesn't preclude class action lawsuits on the part of tenants.
My understanding is landlords were retaliated against for frequently deviating from the prices set by such software. Is that wrong for this particular company? Because if it's not, then I don't see how that's not price fixing.
Obviously there are limits. Still, the principle stands. The notion that there's some clever loophole which allows you to exploit people only holds if people want to be exploited and cleverness in doing so should be rewarded.
There’s also “required to cooperate against Realpage”, which is the true target of all this. Presumably this administration isn’t interested in clawing back illicitly earned gains from corporations.
