I first heard about the RealPage price fixing conspiracy on TikTok. It wasn't this video, but very similar (he swears at the 1:35 mark so use headphones if needed):

https://www.tiktok.com/@newsforthought/video/715903134243979...

What's going on is that Vanguard, BlackRock and (other?) private equity firms have bought up huge swaths of real estate in the US as secure investments. This started around 20 years ago when financial advisers like Suze Orman recommended Vanguard as a vehicle for retirement savings alongside a 401k, Roth IRA, etc:

https://www.suzeorman.com/resources/mutual-funds

https://www.oprah.com/money/financial-freedom-by-suze-orman (2008)

Now during a slow housing market, private equity firms are holding land and housing, rather than selling for a loss like banks did when the 2008 housing bubble popped. Due to a weak economy post-pandemic, inflation driven by corporate greed to prevent losses by the wealthy during those ~2 years that labor stayed home from the workplace, and high interest rates which resulted from the Federal Reserve trying to slow that inflation. Their infinite holds have resulted in record high rents and mortgages due to low volatility from lack of competition.

Depending on how the presidential election goes, and if there's a recession or stagflation in the following year(s), private equity firms will likely find themselves under increasingly high pressure to sell and free up capital to pay their investors dividends. Then private equity firms may go to the federal government for a bailout just like Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac did.

Basically Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z on Main Street will be asked to bail out private equity firms on Wall Street to save the retirements of Boomers. The key difference between the Housing Bubble popping and today being that people under 50 have been under the yoke this whole millennium: underemployed, working excessive hours and multiple jobs while being denied raises/savings/retirements and even having their social safety net slowly dismantled (for example the unemployment work search requirement used to deny benefits after the mid-2000s) since the economy became financialized after the 2000 Dot Bomb.

At every turn, rather than investing in stuff like automation and renewable energy, prioritizing work/life balance like in Scandinavian countries, or even promoting unions/guilds/cooperatives, the US outsourced 100,000 factories under the GW Bush Administration and stonewalled nearly all pro-labor programs under the Obama Administration. Leaving us with a monopolized and duopolized economy that nickel and dimes working people and blocks them from participating in capital investment by labeling low-dollar trades as "pattern day trading" in 2001, for example:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern_day_trader

After a lifetime of exploitation, it's a bit like the Lannisters having to go to the Iron Bank when their gold mines stopped producing. Or billionaires who can't find where all of the money went, begging young people for their last penny so their grandparents can retire in dignity. It.. raises some eyebrows to say the least.

RealPage may be the first in a long chain of dominoes that leads to young people having real leverage over moneyed interests. It will be curious to see how they respond - whether they bow to the status quo or organize to demand structural changes in the economy like during the Progressive Era, New Deal and post-WWII economic expansion before trickle-down Reaganomics flatlined wages as productivity increased after 1980.