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 There has always been a strange characteristic about revenue in multifamily housing.

I like a good user conference. When done well, the format allows a level of thought and discussion that industry events cannot match. The need to cover a broad enough range of topics to attract an audience and to get sponsors, members, etc. on the stage limits how deep a content program can go.

A flurry of legal activity last week has pushed multifamily revenue management back into the news cycle. It's worth taking a moment (and a slightly longer-than-usual article) to understand what happened and what it might mean for our industry.

"There's no smoke without fire" has always been a dubious expression—and one most commonly heard in the context of gossip. It came to mind as the rumor mill started up again following the most recent local government action against revenue management (RM), this time in Seattle.

A new year is upon us - I hope my readers had the chance to relax a bit over the holiday period. As usual, the holidays provided some breathing space for reading, and one of my favorite holiday reads this year has been "How to Win the Premier League."It's a fascinating book about statistical analysis (stay with me) by Ian Graham that holds a couple of important lessons for multifamily.

Readers of this blog will not be surprised to have learned that, just before the weekend, the DOJ dropped its criminal investigation into RealPage revenue management (RM). The 5 p.m. Friday media slot traditionally reserved for announcements of government policy failure saw one of the more bizarre twists in this tale go out with a richly deserved whimper.

There seems to be a great deal of new content hitting the wires in multifamily right now. Conference season is in full swing, bringing a surge of new ideas and perspectives. There are several topics that are top if mind that will be appearing in these pages this fall. But I'm particularly excited about a series of new podcast interviews will be released over the next few weeks.

There has been a great deal of talk about multifamily revenue management over the last few days. Last Friday, the Department of Justice's (DoJ) long-anticipated "algorithmic pricing" lawsuit affecting multifamily revenue management dropped.

Since then, I have been involved in many discussions about this news, particularly the central problem I see with these lawsuits: the allegations are simply false. What has surprised me somewhat through conversations over the last few days is that good-faith actors in the industry do not understand the gap between the allegations and the reality of how the technology works.

It's been some time since I wrote about the ongoing drama facing multifamily revenue management. The last few months have seen a few developments, attracting what might generouslybe described as a mixed bag of industry commentary. It's getting harder to cut through the (ahem) noise. 

Spring conference season this year is a bit more interesting than usual. It's mostly thanks to a couple of new conferences on the circuit that I think will further important industry conversations. A few weeks ago, the inaugural "Forum," Hosted by Funnel Leasing, established a new place to discuss the increasingly popular topic of centralization. Last week saw the inaugural REBA Insights conference in Vail, CO. There were parallels between the two events that I will discuss in this post.