RealPage Fights Back Against DOJ Claims

By KIMBERLEY HAAS
Leaders at RealPage are speaking out after the U.S. Department of Justice expanded its antitrust lawsuit against the company to include six of the nation’s largest landlords.
Officials at the DOJ allege the landlords – Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC, Blackstone’s LivCor LLC, Camden Property Trust, Cushman & Wakefield Inc and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC, Willow Bridge Property Company LLC, and Cortland Management LLC – participated in an unlawful scheme to decrease competition in apartment pricing, harming millions of American renters.
These landlords operate more than 1.3 million rental units in 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to a press release issued on Jan. 7.
“While Americans across the country struggled to afford housing, the landlords named in today’s lawsuit shared sensitive information about rental prices and used algorithms to coordinate to keep the price of rent high,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki said in a statement.
RealPage is a global provider of AI-enabled software platforms for the real estate industry. Officials allege that in addition to using the company’s pricing algorithms, the landlords communicated with competitors about pricing strategies.
Cortland has agreed to cooperate with the DOJ. They manage over 80,000 rental units in 13 states, according to the press release.
The DOJ announced its decision to sue RealPage, claiming its pricing algorithm violates antitrust laws, in August.
Officials said the company contracts with competing landlords who agree to share nonpublic information about their apartment rental rates and other lease terms to train and run RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software.
The software generates recommendations on apartment rental pricing and other terms for participating landlords. Officials claimed that in a free market, these landlords would be competing independently to attract renters.
“RealPage’s egregious, anticompetitive conduct allows landlords to undermine fair pricing and limit housing options while stifling necessary competition,” Acting Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said. “The Department remains committed to rooting out illegal schemes and practices aimed at empowering corporate interests at the expense of consumers.”
Lawyers for RealPage moved to dismiss the lawsuit against the company on Dec. 3. Attorneys for the DOJ opposed that motion on Jan. 7.
Jennifer Bowcock, RealPage’s SVP of Communications, said in a statement that they are still reviewing the new claims brought against them and the landlords, but continue to believe the DOJ’s actions will not make housing more affordable.
“It’s past time to stop scapegoating RealPage – and now our customers – for housing affordability problems when the root cause of high housing costs is the undersupply of housing which we have been saying from the beginning,” Bowcock said.
“Fewer than 10% of all rental housing units in the U.S. use RealPage software to suggest rental prices, and our software recommendations are accepted less than half the time, as the DOJ has acknowledged.”
Bowcock said the company’s software was built to be legally compliant and they have removed nonpublic executed rent pricing data from the highly blended, aggregated, and anonymized market range rent information used by their products.
“We are proud of the solutions RealPage provides, and we remain committed to vigorously defending ourselves and our customers against the DOJ’s accusations,” Bowcock said.
The states of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington are co-plaintiffs in the lawsuit.