As the FTC and DOJ have stated, it would be illegal for competitors to agree use a shared third party human to set prices, so it is also illegal if that human is an algorithm.
If all the same owners downloaded an Excel spreadsheet that imported the data and ran an algorithm to arrive at a market acceptable price, that would also be deemed illegal?
If not, why not?
If I, as a property holder, personally decide to use some mechanism to assist me in reaching a price for my product, that is fine -- even if you don't like it.
If I, as a property holder, meet with all of my fellow property owners and collude to set a market price (eliminating competition), that is not fine -- that is collusion.
Are you claiming that all property holders are literally colluding to establish a price that eliminates a market price? That there are literally no people who decide to set other prices for equivalent products in that market? If everyone in a market decides (with the help of a program, or because they can do basic mathematics) to set a higher price, and some people, like, just read the "for rent" adds and set similar prices -- that they are, literally colluding to set prices?
Because that sounds crazy. What this actually seems to be is the market establishing a price based on common knowledge.
If crazy banksters and treasury-looting politicians decide to cause massive inflation, crash the house building industry, and higher rent prices are one (obvious) result, I think we should perhaps look to the root cause -- not accuse some poor slobs reading data from a spreadsheet and setting a rent price that recovers the true rental value of their property, of collusion.
If that mechanism is a non-competitive price fixing algorithm with access to non-public information then no, it is not fine.
Real Page also created work groups to facilitate collusion between apartment managers.
"access to non-public information"? What, like the market price of your own personal property, and that the algorithm proposes that you should rent it for a price that yields at least the payment of a mortgage on the property! Magic!! Sorcery, I say!
This line of reasoning is amazing.