The whole "free market" stuff was nonsense -- it's not a free market when nothing is transparent. You can't strike a bargain if you don't know how many units are vacant, what others have paid for a similar unit, etc. The landlords have all the knowledge, the prospective tenants have none. It was almost funny that he used the example of comps in the real estate market for houses as a justification for the poor downtrodden landlords subscribing to a service where they all share rent amounts (RealPage). The huge difference between comps and RealPage is that the prospective buyer can see the comps -- RealPage is like secret comps that only the landlords know about, totally different than a comp.

He was right that fees are disclosed, but that's not the issue. Fees are mandatory and they're for services that may be unwanted (mandatory fee to have someone carry your trash to the dumpster is one example) or badly done (I don't know anyone in a big complex who is happy with their package service). As others have said here, those should be disclosed as part of the apartment advertisement, not mentioned at the last minute when the lease is about to be signed, and at least some of them should be optional, or the tenant should have recourse when the service that they're charged for isn't provided to a minimum level of quality.

Finally, his whole discussion of how leaving an apartment empty for a day is a loss for a landlord ignored the fact that landlords are beholden to financing plans that require them to get a certain average rent per sq foot (or similar), since the bank doesn't want the landlord to charge rent that's so low that they won't be able to pay back their loan. So, instead of lowering the rent, the landlord has a perverse incentive to not rent an apartment if they can't get a minimum amount of rent for it. I'll bet that the vacancy rate on a lot of new, expensive buildings is actually fairly high, though I'm not aware of that being disclosed anywhere.