The Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against real estate company RealPage for using its technology to enable landlords to collude to raise rent prices.
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced the suit in a press conference Wednesday, saying RealPage’s illegal price-fixing practices push rents higher than they would be if landlords were pricing them competitively.
The suit, alleging violation of the Sherman Act, was filed on behalf of the Justice Department in addition to the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.
At issue is RealPage’s commercial revenue-management software that landlords use to price apartments.
The complaint states RealPage contracts with participating landlords who share otherwise confidential information on things like rent prices and lease terms. The system then uses that information to train and run RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software, which generates price recommendations to participating landlords based on their and their …