How do you calculate the best price for something? For a growing number of industries, the answer doesn’t involve a carefully maintained list of prices per product as much as it involves letting the algorithm loose. Airlines have begun experimenting with AI-generated airfares, and the retail equivalent of surge pricing has shown up at grocery stores. Can the real estate market be far behind?
That depends on where you’re looking to rent a place. Two of the most prominent cities in New Jersey, Hoboken and Jersey City, have taken steps to prohibit the use of algorithmically generated rates on rental properties. As NJ.com’s Stephanie Loder reports, this puts them in line with a number of other state and local governments around the country. Earlier this year, the New York State Legislature began debating a similar measure.
Loder reports that Jersey City was the first city or town in the state to implement such a measure, which puts it in the company of San Francisco, Minneapolis and Philadelphia. One of the reasons these algorithmically generated rents are so contentious is because they use, as Loder puts it, “software and non-public data” in their calculations.
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Private listings are at the heart of the disputeJersey City and Hoboken are joining part of a growing movement. As Robbie Sequeira reported earlier this year for Stateline, municipal governments have been quicker to respond to this technology than their counterparts on the state level. “[L]ocal governments are stepping up where federal enforcement takes time,” Ivan Luevanos-Elms of the nonprofit group Local Progress told Stateline.
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