The rent is too damn high, just how the algorithm wants it. From American Public Media,

this is Marketplace Tech. I'm Megan McCarty Carrino.

The use of algorithmic software to set rent prices has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.

Last year, the Biden administration sued the real estate company Real Page, alleging its rent algorithm,

which aggregates and analyzes private data from different properties, allows landlords to

collude on prices and stifle competition. There's no word yet on what the second Trump

administration's Department of Justice will do with this case just yet. But in the meantime,

some cities are taking action, with several banning the use of these algorithms completely.

Robbie Sequoara has been reporting on these efforts for state line.

So there are four cities currently that have banned the type of software.

You have San Francisco, Philadelphia, Berkeley, California, and then Minneapolis was the most recent.

And these four cities

aren't super surprising because we have seen renter legislation kind of passed through it, whether

it's been eviction, protection, maybe stuff that's just short of wrench control in some places.

But I think what the surprise has been is how quickly it's been enacted upon, given how slow causing legislation can be.

Are there any cities that are sort of regulating these systems, but maybe not outright banning them?

So that is one of the big things that we're trying to figure out is how are these being regulated?

It does seem like the enforcement side of this

is lacking a little bit outside of fines. Something about policy is that a lot of cities and states

kind of operate in a copycat way. If they see what's working in one state, they're going to, you know,

take the things that work well. I think, you know, over this next year, we will see some of these cities as kind of a model.

How are they being able to rein in some of these places?

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