This is mixing up apples and oranges. The fact that market prices may be set by observing the other pricing in the market is pretty much how all markets work, including and maybe especially real estate and financial markets. In fact this is so much so that companies may well undercut their own margins based on the need to compete in a perceived fierce market. The issue of whether a business looks at other prices in their area with their own eyes, or with an app, seems to me immaterial. If you want to consider flat pricing (meaning everyone is priced the same) as being a price-fixing cartel, the main issue will be whether the prices are good. That's really all it boils down to. For instance, let's say OPEC sat down and decided that for humanitarian reasons they wanted to offer affordable energy to everyone. Well they could collude to offer a discount price, and no one would complain. It's when a cartel or quasi-cartel (which some markets do become) sets an unreasonable price that no one can undercut because the cartel protects it is when you have the population fleeced and literally can't do anything about it because there is no competitor willing to offer a lower price. So the question to ask regarding the app is whether everyone is de facto acting as a greedy cartel, with large margins and no alternative, or as a bunch of sheep following each other closely but with varying or even low margins. As the rental market is soaring now I do think it has developed quasi-cartel characteristics, because any landlord can raise rent knowing that prospective tenants have no choice but to pay, since the demand elasticity is zero. One can observe a similar situation with insulin and other medical care situations. But the fact the rental rate inflation may have gotten out of control in the last couple of years is surely not because of an app, but rather the app is probably reporting (equally to all its users) what anyone could see with their own eyes. The only difference is that personal interpretation of market prices, which will have some irregularities, would be smoothed out by the app to have very little variation. Although the landlords (or Airbnb's, or whatever) can still choose what to do with that information.
Also I should mention there's a big difference between a cartel in the utilities sector versus a sector like real estate/rent pricing. Let's say you have a Comcast situation where a near or total monopoly allows poor service, high prices, and no competition, to create an abusive environment for people (especially if the fiber/cable had government funding and is used for private greed). And this monopoly is more or less scalable to a high degree. But let's say you have ten doors of rental units and have to decide a rent level. You can go with the standard market rate and expect to fill the units. You can offer it for lower, and readily expect a ton of applicants, which will be a lot of work. Or you can even offer above market levels, especially if you have a special perk or two, and now suddenly you'll have fewer applicants, but all you need to do is fill ten spaces. It's not scalable in the sense that your higher price can't suddenly generate 100x or 200x that rent increase; you are getting 10x no matter what if you fill the units. So the math ends up being very clear about what your cash flows would be if you fill all ten, depending on your price point. And if your costs are going up quite a lot, let's say due to the Fed rate hikes that will continue into 2023, your margins will be greatly affected by your choice of rent price levels. So whereas a utilities cartel appears to be little more than abusive greed, a quasi-cartel in rental units does have other characteristics such as landlords protecting themselves from more rate hikes, from lumber and other price hikes, from unexpected renovations, and so forth. It is entirely possible to be charging fairly high rent and yet not be clearing that much profit after depreciation.
Based on this brief analysis, it's also worth noting whether a cartel or quasi-cartel is operating as it does out of greed or out of at least some part of necessity. It's entirely possible the problem like in the system rather than in individual players. An upward price spiral is not necessarily the fault of most of the people involved in it, even though they're raising their prices, often in lockstep. Inflation, itself, is the ultimate cartel, if you want to think of it that way. It may well begin with some greedy, shady players, who force everyone else to change prices to comply. But my inclination, at least at first glance, is to suppose that using an app to normalize rental pricing as a way of protecting the landlord from making errors or lacking information. Correct me if I'm wrong, LR, but the software doesn't force anyone to charge certain prices, it just uses more data than you could gather manually and suggests a strategy, right? If so, how could these guys be attributing their ability to charge huge price increases to the software? They are the ones choosing to do that! Maybe what they really mean is their consciences are made to feel better because it was someone else's suggestion, so that can absolve themselves of charging unwarranted rate hikes?
Speaking of which, if you wanted to shift blame in the real estate sector you might want to look at realtors rather than software. The software has no skin in the game, but realtors make % commission and are always trying to drive prices as high as they can go, creating bidding wars if they can (sometimes by lying to people). It should go without saying that if real estate prices skyrocket so will rent levels. You don't need software to tell you that.
