NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WKRN) — The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has amended its complaint in a lawsuit against a software company it says artificially inflates rental prices.
Previously, the DOJ — and several co-plaintiffs, including Tennessee — sued the software company RealPage for decreasing competition among landlords, inflating rental prices and creating a monopoly that benefits RealPage in violation of federal antitrust laws.
The DOJ has amended its complaint to include several leasing companies that operate apartment buildings as co-defendants.
The amended complaint alleges the six landlords participated in an “unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing, harming millions of American renters.”
The landlords named in the amended complaint are:
- Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC (Greystar)
- Blackstone’s LivCor LLC (LivCor)
- Camden Property Trust (Camden)
- Cushman & Wakefield Inc and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC (Cushman)
- Willow Bridge Property Company LLC (Willow Bridge)
- Cortland Management LLC (Cortland)
These six landlords operate more than 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia, according to the DOJ.
“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,” said Acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division. “Today’s action against RealPage and six major landlords seeks to end their practice of putting profits over people and make housing more affordable for millions of people across the country.”
The amended complaint alleges the six landlords “actively participated in a scheme to set their rents using each other’s competitively sensitive information through common pricing algorithms.”
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In addition to using RealPage’s “anticompetitive pricing algorithms,” the DOJ said the landlords also coordinated through other means:
- Directly communicating with competitors’ senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics. In one example, Greystar supplied Camden with information not only about very recent renewal rates, but also its approach to pricing for the upcoming quarter, its acceptance of RealPage’s pricing recommendations, use of concessions and competitively sensitive information about occupancy. Likewise, executives at Camden and LivCor communicated over the course of months about their pricing strategies, including plans for certain price increases.
- Regularly conducting “call arounds.” During these discussions, euphemistically referred to as “market surveys,” property managers called or emailed competitors to share, and sometimes discuss, competitively sensitive information about rents, occupancy, pricing strategies and discounts.
- Participating in “user groups” hosted by RealPage. For instance, landlords discussed via user groups how to modify the software’s pricing methodology, as well as their own pricing strategies. In one example, LivCor and Willow Bridge executives participated in a user group discussion of plans for renewal increases, concessions and acceptance rates of RealPage rent recommendations.
- Sharing information with competitors about parameters in RealPage’s software. As an example, at the request of Willow Bridge’s director of revenue management, Greystar’s director of revenue management supplied its standard auto-accept parameters for RealPage’s software, including the daily and weekly limits and the days of the week for which Greystar used “auto-accept.”
As of publication, Cortland has agreed to cooperate with the DOJ and stop using its competitors’ sensitive data to set rents and stop using the same algorithm as its competitors without a corporate monitor through a proposed consent decree, the DOJ said in a release.
Should the court approve of the proposed consent decree with Cortland, the claims against the company would be resolved, the DOJ added. Cortland currently manages over 80,000 rental units in 13 states, per the justice department.
Tennessee joined as a co-plaintiff in the case in August. Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told News 2 in a statement his office has been looking into RealPage since 2023 following “concerns about the company’s efforts to keep rents artificially high in cities across Tennessee.”
“We’re glad to be part of this bipartisan effort to protect consumers and hold RealPage accountable,” he added in the statement.
