Is an Algorithm Driving Up New York City Rents?

Writing in Curbed, Lane Brown debunks the myth being perpetuated by real estate agents and landlords that New Yorkers are “flooding back” into the city, creating a deluge of demand for housing that, inevitably, has to get more expensive.

“I had lived happily in New York for more than two decades, through many disasters and rebounds, and I wanted to believe the story of its glorious post-COVID recovery,” Brown writes. But the claims just weren’t adding up. Brown went on to calculate how many New Yorkers had left the city: 317,107 between March 2020 and December 2021. “Outbound migration has slowed since then, but it hasn’t changed direction. By my count, the city lost another 97,794 in 2022, ranging between about 6,000 and 11,000 per month.”

Brown examined potential sources of the “phantom rebound,” but ran into a series of dead ends. Then Brown uncovered the role of RealPage Revenue Management Software, which uses an algorithm to recommend how landlords should price their rental units. “Some argue — including the plaintiffs of over a dozen class-action lawsuits filed in the wake of ProPublica’s story — that RealPage’s software allows individual landlords to keep their hands clean while indirectly colluding to inflate prices.”

Brown explains the history of the company and how it could be impacting New York City housing prices. See the source article for the full analysis.