A Plain Memo
What I found when I checked who's really raising your rent
Everyone tells you an AI algorithm is quietly fixing your rent. But when I checked—looking at the lawsuit, the settlements, the actual numbers—I found something messier: an old piece of software with a new label, landlords who use it half the time, and a bill that swings by 7x depending on who's doing the math.
This is the story of RealPage's YieldStar—a 2003-era pricing tool rebranded as "AI" in 2020—and how it pooled landlords' private rent data into one system that prosecutors say is coordinated price-fixing. But economists say it costs renters somewhere between $25 and $181 a month depending on what you measure. You'll hear from the federal judge who found the smoking gun, the company's own executive who admitted what the algorithm was doing, and the honest answer to whether your rent really is being set by a machine.
ℹ️ AI voice disclosure: This episode uses an AI-generated voice (ElevenLabs). The host is a pseudonymous byline persona (Reid Conlin).