cat

it mentions multi-family apartment buildings, which are usually purpose-built instead of rowhouses or housing conversions

i think on the tin it's supposed to collect a bunch of data & give some algorithm to determine the rent you should charge to make the maximum amount of money. like, it's supposed to do the calculation of how much money you gain from higher rent and how much money you loose from vacant apartments, and give you a rent number to optimize total profit.

and i mean half of it's job is to do that as a machine, so no building manager has to feel guilty for choosing to raise rents - they can just do the thing the machine says is optimal.

now, how it actually works internally, i don't think we know? but in practice, when enough landlords use the company, what has ended up happening is that they tell all landlords to raise their rents about the same amount, and they do, which is the textbook definition of collusion.

how it's supposed to work is it's supposed to provide an action line for landlords to follow in order to price fix rent nationwide. in practice landlords follow those recommendations. there really isn't anything else to it, there is actually no even halfway reasonable argument that it should be legal