The Southern China Morning Post may or may not be a completely unbiased source in the matter.

Asking the real questions.

No, that’s normal and how it should operate. The problem arises when everyone is using the same software suite so everyone has immediate access to current prices, and the software essentially tells you what you should price your units at to maximize your income.

Maybe cartel was the wrong word as it wasn’t an intentional agreement between companies, just an outcome of the system and accelerated by instant access to information. A runaway feedback loop may be more appropriate.

While true, there are some markets where these properties are fighting for a very finite supply of tenants. If they see they are lagging behind in their leasing, they really don’t have any other choice than to lower their prices to make sure they don’t have any vacant units. The industry term is called “vacancy loss” and it’s the one thing the upper management money men actually fear. A unit without someone inside it is literally bleeding money from them so they’ll do nearly anything to fill it.

Hopefully soon they won’t be able to share their prices as easily and they’ll have to fight for their lives by lowering prices to fill vacancies before another property snaps them up.

I work in this industry. The biggest problem with the software is it gave the management companies instant access to everyone else’s current prices. The industry has used “market surveys” for years but you had to actually call around and gather those prices yourself. It’s a very time consuming process so many only did their surveys sporadically.

With the software you had instant access to current price data and everyone pretty much raised their prices to match the market average. Then the newer/fancier properties saw the new higher average and thought “We’re a better property so we can raise our prices above the competition.” Which then led to a higher average that the rest then met again. Rinse and repeat and you have a de facto price fixing cartel.

If I understand it correctly, annihilation is a 100% efficient process that converts all the matter into energy. After the process is complete there is no matter left over and only energy in the form of light, heat, and other energy forms that go way over my head remains.