RealPage settles DOJ antitrust case over algorithmic rent coordination
RealPage Inc., a Texas-based real estate software company, settled a Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit alleging it enabled landlords to coordinate rental prices through algorithmic pricing tools. Under the settlement, RealPage must stop using real-time nonpublic data from competing landlords to generate rent recommendations and can only use data at least 12 months old.
What happened
RealPage software generated daily rent recommendations drawn from a shared pool of nonpublic, sensitive data submitted by competing landlords. The Justice Department said this setup allowed RealPage to act as an algorithmic middleman—using rivals' confidential information to push properties toward higher prices and discourage price cuts.
RealPage's software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price their available apartments. Although landlords did not have to follow the suggestions, investigators said many effectively outsourced pricing decisions to the platform and its algorithms, aligning rents across competing buildings and replacing competition with coordination.
Reported impact
The DOJ antitrust chief stated that 'RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price.' The settlement is intended to result in more real competition in local housing markets and rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm.
Index analysis
The settlement bars RealPage from using competitors' real-time, nonpublic data to generate rent recommendations and requires the company to limit its algorithms to nonpublic information that is at least 12 months old. The deal also requires RealPage to end highly-localized pricing tools that pushed rents higher block by block.
Governance controls
RealPage will no longer use real-time data to determine price recommendations and must redesign features that regulators say helped align pricing among rival landlords. RealPage's historical practice of using aggregated and anonymized nonpublic data will be restricted by the consent judgment, which must still be approved by a judge.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.