D.C. Attorney General Sues 14 Of The City’s Biggest Landlords For Colluding To Inflate Rental Prices

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

It's also possible that expanding the housing supply will push prices up. Increasing density is the flywheel of gentrification.

Look at Navy Yard. There are thousands more housing units there than there was five years ago and it is far, far more expensive than it was before.

Increasing the housing supply can only push down prices if demand doesn't increase as well. But typically in places like DC, when supply goes up, so does demand so there's no change in price or prices rise.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

It's also possible that expanding the housing supply will push prices up. Increasing density is the flywheel of gentrification.

Look at Navy Yard. There are thousands more housing units there than there was five years ago and it is far, far more expensive than it was before.

Increasing the housing supply can only push down prices if demand doesn't increase as well. But typically in places like DC, when supply goes up, so does demand so there's no change in price or prices rise.

Where are you getting this stuff? It’s basic housing market economics that adding supply lowers prices for existing homes. Of course the new supply will be more expensive, but it absorbs demand that would push out other renters otherwise. Increasing supply doesn’t affect demand unless it makes the surrounding area more desirable, and even there, the data is clear that the aggregate effect on prices is to lower them.

Killing housing production fuels gentrification by forcing high-income households into direct competition with lower-earning ones.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

Row homes are SFH.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

It's also possible that expanding the housing supply will push prices up. Increasing density is the flywheel of gentrification.

Look at Navy Yard. There are thousands more housing units there than there was five years ago and it is far, far more expensive than it was before.

Increasing the housing supply can only push down prices if demand doesn't increase as well. But typically in places like DC, when supply goes up, so does demand so there's no change in price or prices rise.

Where are you getting this stuff? It’s basic housing market economics that adding supply lowers prices for existing homes. Of course the new supply will be more expensive, but it absorbs demand that would push out other renters otherwise. Increasing supply doesn’t affect demand unless it makes the surrounding area more desirable, and even there, the data is clear that the aggregate effect on prices is to lower them.

Killing housing production fuels gentrification by forcing high-income households into direct competition with lower-earning ones.

Additional supply only pushes prices down if landlords aren’t working through third parties to fix prices (aka collusion). If you build just enough housing to absorb new high income households and you collude in pricing, then prices will only go up.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

It's also possible that expanding the housing supply will push prices up. Increasing density is the flywheel of gentrification.

Look at Navy Yard. There are thousands more housing units there than there was five years ago and it is far, far more expensive than it was before.

Increasing the housing supply can only push down prices if demand doesn't increase as well. But typically in places like DC, when supply goes up, so does demand so there's no change in price or prices rise.

Where are you getting this stuff? It’s basic housing market economics that adding supply lowers prices for existing homes. Of course the new supply will be more expensive, but it absorbs demand that would push out other renters otherwise. Increasing supply doesn’t affect demand unless it makes the surrounding area more desirable, and even there, the data is clear that the aggregate effect on prices is to lower them.

Killing housing production fuels gentrification by forcing high-income households into direct competition with lower-earning ones.

Additional supply only pushes prices down if landlords aren’t working through third parties to fix prices (aka collusion). If you build just enough housing to absorb new high income households and you collude in pricing, then prices will only go up.

Now we’re talking in circles. We already covered why other factors besides price fixing are causing rent increases and why undersupply will persist even if any price fixing is stopped.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

I have heard exactly one person talk about ‘oversupply’ like this.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

It's also possible that expanding the housing supply will push prices up. Increasing density is the flywheel of gentrification.

Look at Navy Yard. There are thousands more housing units there than there was five years ago and it is far, far more expensive than it was before.

Increasing the housing supply can only push down prices if demand doesn't increase as well. But typically in places like DC, when supply goes up, so does demand so there's no change in price or prices rise.

Where are you getting this stuff? It’s basic housing market economics that adding supply lowers prices for existing homes. Of course the new supply will be more expensive, but it absorbs demand that would push out other renters otherwise. Increasing supply doesn’t affect demand unless it makes the surrounding area more desirable, and even there, the data is clear that the aggregate effect on prices is to lower them.

Killing housing production fuels gentrification by forcing high-income households into direct competition with lower-earning ones.

I'm sorry but the world is more complicated than the economics you've apparently learned from bumper stickers. Of course, increasing housing supply can drive up housing prices. Happens all the time in Washington DC. Look at the history of basically every single neighborhood.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

I have heard exactly one person talk about ‘oversupply’ like this.

This is the core YIMBY argument, repeated over and over again. You must not have recognized it because it used different words than you mindlessly chant at your GGW meet-ups and you haven’t taken enough economics courses to understand the concepts.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

This. My SFH is just getting mroe and more valuable due to all the folks that want to take it away and turn it into multiplex

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

This. My SFH is just getting mroe and more valuable due to all the folks that want to take it away and turn it into multiplex

This is why I'm pro multiplex. It makes my own house so much more valuable.

[Anonymous]

These landlords don't seem like much of a "cartel" when they control less than 20 percent of rental units (and far less when you count rentals over the border in MD and VA).

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Thanks for positing. This story will be invisible on housing twitter just like the original story about RealPage was. Anyone who claims to be an affordable housing advocate and doesn’t applaud the AG’s effort isn’t interested in affordable housing so much as they are in making sure landlords make giant profits.

Name one housing advocate who's denounced this lawsuit. If they're not commenting on it, it's because breaking up a price fixing scheme doesn't solve the underlying problems that they're focused on. Even if the DCAG proves that there was a conspiracy among landlords - it's plausible - there will still be a housing crisis, just as there will still be NIMBYs trying to prevent anyone from doing anything about it.

Have you even read the complaint? The companies were able to increase rents even as vacancies increased. That really calls into question your just build more housing slogan. Turns out building more housing won’t actually drive down pricing if landlords are colluding.

Then the solution is to stop the cartel, not to throw up our hands and say “it’s hopeless because landlords will always break the law.” We know from comparing housing production rates among different cities that whatever cartel activity is going on, it’s not enough to prevent rent prices from plateauing in places that are building enough. Besides, building more housing isn’t just about lowering prices. It’s also about making homes for people who need them, closer to urban cores and job centers. Housing advocates see NIMBY reliance on this lawsuit for what it is: an excuse to justify the status quo.

And yet YINBYs mobilize more effectively against next door messages than the cartel price fixing. How much have next door messages made rents go up?

YIMBYs mobilize for changing policy. Price fixing is already illegal, so it’s a law enforcement matter. There’s nothing to “mobilize” for, except for the same policy problems that will be there even if cartel behavior is found and stopped. Problems like underfunded affordable housing programs, restrictive zoning laws, excessive car dependence… none of which NIMBYs want to do anything about.

More Smart Growth developer talking points. How much "affordable" housing is there in the uber-dense developments of City Ridge and adjacent properties? A pitiful eight percent, and it's not really affordable. Stop snookering people into believing that building more and more luxury flats will make any meaningful dent in affordable housing. DC is letting the voucher program cannibalize rent controlled units that in fact provide affordable workforce housing. The mayor's affordable housing policy is one baby step forward and two steps backward, while lining the pockets of well-connected developers and real estate speculators.

Now you’re changing the subject. We need more of all types of housing. I take it you oppose rent stabilization and more funding for affordable housing?

The YIMBYs would love to change the subject but we should all stay focused on the fact that tens of thousands of households overpaid for housing only because landlords illegally colluded. The landlords created the housing crisis. Not zoning or taxes or NIMBYs or any of your other favorite bogeypeople.

No, the behavior that's alleged by large landlords just made the housing crisis worse. It's not the reason why rents for other properties that weren't part of the conspiracy are too high. It's certainly not the reason why ownership properties like houses and rowhomes are prohibitively expensive, or why urban sprawl has continued unabated.

Can you answer the question? Is there anything that you would actually do to fix the housing crisis, besides sit on your hands and hope this lawsuit pans out? The rest of us have work to do.

Rents at other properties were too high because they indirectly benefited from the conspiracy. Sprawl continues unabated because land is cheaper further away from the city and cheaper land means a lower cost basis and higher profit margin. YIMBYs have aided sprawl by calling all growth smart growth, even big apartment complexes in Fredricksburg that are rented to people who work in DC.

A land value tax and incentives to build more condos would do more to fix the housing crisis (which landlords and like JBG and Bozutto created by fixing prices and staging projects to keep supplies low and rents high) than anything YIMBYs have done.

Now get back to work cheering on the price fixers.

Hey wouldja look at that - a NIMBY who actually knows a thing or two about housing policy!

The DCAG alleges that the conspiracy inflated rents by 2-7%. That's only a fraction of the total increase in rents from the past several years, so only some of that increase can be attributed to alleged price fixing. Same for rentals by non-conspirators. You never explained how the conspiracy could possibly be responsible for the extreme unaffordability of ownership properties outside the rental market.

YIMBYs are big proponents of land value taxes. Where did you hear they weren't? Good that we're on the same page there anyway. There should be more incentives for building both condos and 100% affordable projects.

DC workers wouldn't have to live in Fredericksburg if there was enough housing closer in to meet the demand. Fredericksburg is still a job center, so there needs to be housing built there too even if it's not for DC commuters. Land closer to DC is more expensive, but that cost can be offset by building taller and spreading the costs across more units.

No one is 'cheering' the big landlords. If they actually broke the law, I hope they pay through the nose and the renters they hurt get compensated.

You’ll be back to lobbying for the big landlords to get more subsidies and tax breaks soon enough because they’ve convinced you that everything will be fine as long as their profits are bigger. YIMBYs are useless in solving the housing crisis because they take their talking points from the same people causing it.

Personal attacks don’t answer anything that PP said.

In free markets, more supply -> lower prices -> lower profits. Yimbys want renters and buyers to have more leverage against landlords and sellers to negotiate lower prices. Fewer landlords getting fat profits, fewer sellers reaping windfalls, more renters and buyers enjoying lower costs.

YIMBYs are so clueless they don't realize that price fixing nullifies all of this.

That’s not what the complaint says. Only some of the increase in rents can be blamed on price fixing. The rest is market forces. PP said that already and you completely ignored their arguments about owner occupied properties being completely unaffected.

If the AG wins, the landlords pay big damages, and the court prohibits fixing prices through RealPage or otherwise, we’ll still be stuck with the same undersupply that’s the biggest contributor to high rents now.

Rents increased 50 to 100 percent faster than they would have without price fixing. If you back out the inflation, rents went up a little faster than inflation. If you read the complaint, you'll see that RealPage clients are able to raise rents even when vacancies go up. Collusion rendered oversupply useless as a rent moderator. Thanks for playing.

That last statement doesn’t follow from your premises. In fact, saying that price fixing made rents “increase faster than they would have without price fixing” acknowledges that rents still increased. Whether they increased with inflation is beside the point because prices for existing apartments are based on supply and demand, not inflationary pressures. Which is why a bunch of cities have seem almost no rent growth despite inflation - they built enough to match demand.

Why won’t you talk about the ownership market?

You want to talk about the ownership market? Fine. HUD assesses it’s tight but ownership is so diffuse that collusion is harder. We do still see developers limiting supply in that market though by staging subdivision work even when not legally required to do so, so there is still some degree of artificial supply limitation in that market.

In contrast, HUD assessed that the rental market was slightly soft but prices went up rapidly even as vacancies also increased during the study period. One behavior that could have caused that odd outcome was price fixing.

(And broad inflation isn’t a driver of rents but it’s useful for context and because some of landlords’ costs are affected by inflation and because tenants’ ability to pay increases as wages rise.)

All of that is true, as far as it goes. It just undermines the NIMBY poster’s maximalist claim that no amount of rent increase is attributable to undersupply. The huge increase in prices for owner-occupied homes shows that supply still matters and that while price fixing could account for a big share of rent increases, it’s not 100%. The basic point still stands — this lawsuit isn’t an excuse to halt housing production.

No one is making anymore SFH in the city at scale, so stop conflating that market with the rental apartment market.

SFH are a sliver of the ownership market, which also includes condos, rowhomes, etc. But thank you for making the point that constraining supply pushes prices up.

It's also possible that expanding the housing supply will push prices up. Increasing density is the flywheel of gentrification.

Look at Navy Yard. There are thousands more housing units there than there was five years ago and it is far, far more expensive than it was before.

Increasing the housing supply can only push down prices if demand doesn't increase as well. But typically in places like DC, when supply goes up, so does demand so there's no change in price or prices rise.

With some notable exceptions, Navy Yard is also tall, dense, in shadow most of the time, and uninspired. Yet this is exactly the DC Office of Planning's "vision" for Connecticut Ave. and Wisconsin Ave., including some historic neighborhoods like Cleveland Park, Woodley Pk and Chevy Chase,