RealPage's AI Rent-Pricing Algorithm Faces Antitrust Suits and City Bans
The U.S. Department of Justice and multiple state attorneys general have sued RealPage, a property management software company, alleging its rent-pricing algorithm enables landlords to collude on prices rather than compete, contributing to high rents and reduced housing availability. Multiple cities including Berkeley have passed ordinances banning algorithmic rental pricing, which RealPage has challenged in court.
What happened
The U.S. Department of Justice sued RealPage in August 2024, alleging its algorithm combines confidential information from real estate management companies in ways that enable landlords to align prices and avoid competition, amounts to cartel-like illegal price collusion. One RealPage executive stated, 'There is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another in a way that actually keeps the entire industry down.'
Washington Attorney General Nick Brown sued RealPage and nine landlords in 2025, alleging the company's three pricing products use nonpublic landlord information to push them to raise rents together, eliminate discounts to attract tenants, and keep units vacant to maintain higher rents. The lawsuit alleges RealPage priced approximately 800,000 leases in Washington between 2017 and 2024.
Berkeley, California passed an ordinance banning algorithmic rental software, which RealPage challenged in federal court in April 2025 on free speech grounds. RealPage claimed the ordinance was based on 'an intentional campaign of misinformation and often-repeated false claims' about its products, while Berkeley's ordinance cited the software's contribution to 'double-digit rent increases, higher vacancy rates and higher rates of eviction.'
Reported impact
In Washington, more than half of renters paid more than 30% of their income toward rent in 2023, and renters in RealPage-managed properties experienced higher pricing and lower occupancy than those in non-RealPage managed properties. A Seattle renter reported his landlord raised his rent over 50% in 2022 based on RealPage's algorithm.
Berkeley officials stated algorithmic rental software has contributed to housing affordability crises, and the state described RealPage's practices as 'drowning renters and pricing more and more families out of stable housing in Washington.'
Index analysis
The algorithm reportedly uses confidential data shared by landlords to generate pricing recommendations that, according to prosecutors and state attorneys general, reduce price competition and encourage coordinated rent increases across properties.
Governance controls
San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Berkeley have passed ordinances restricting landlords from using rental algorithms. RealPage disputes these restrictions, denying it provides price-fixing software and attributing high rents to housing supply shortages.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.