RealPage, maker of YieldStar, is almost singlehandedly the ones causing rent to skyrocket across much of the United States.
One of the algorithm’s developers told ProPublica that leasing agents had “too much empathy” compared to computer generated pricing.
You can learn more about them here and why this antitrust case is so important:
https://www.propublica.org/article/yieldstar-rent-increase-realpage-rent
If that’s the goal, landlords would save so much money by calculating fair rent in some spreadsheet or such. Calculate how much their monthly costs are per building, divided by how many units, plus some percentages to set aside for emergencies and renovations… but we all know that’s not the case.
But someone in their org has to set up the spreadsheet, and more importantly, take the blame if the numbers don’t match Management expectations, even if they are correct.
By outsourcing this to the software vendor, they also can outsource responsibility. Instead of Management leaning on the team to conjure “better” numbers, the team can say “We get these numbers from this independant vendor outside the company, who has all the info and is totally impartial, nudge nudge, wink wink”. Questioning the numbers then becomes questioning the financial decision to employ the vendor in the first place. Just so much easier to do what the nice computer tells you to do.