RealPage, accused of rental price fixing, settles suit with feds | Blaze Media
A real estate website once accused of facilitating a "housing cartel" has reached a settlement with the Department of Justice.
After a more than year-and-a-half battle, RealPage and the DOJ have come to an agreement that will limit certain features on the app that renters claimed were unfair.
'Replacing competition with coordination ... renters paid the price.'
In 2024, tenants from a popular building in Jersey City, New Jersey, took RealPage to court over allegations of landlords sharing nonpublic information on the website, including vacancy data.
The tenants said the information inflated rental prices, effectively resulting in price-fixing rent across cities due to landlords using the same algorithm to dictate their prices.
In November 2023, the attorney general of Washington, D.C., submitted a different complaint against 14 other landlords operating more than 50,000 rental units in territory.
"Effectively, RealPage is facilitating a housing cartel," said D.C.'s AG Brian Schwalb.
A DOJ suit in August 2024 seemingly tipped the scales, and now RealPage has agreed to settle on terms.
According to the DOJ's Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater, RealPage was "replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price."
The settlement stops RealPage from coordinating pricing, Slater said in a video posted to X, and forces the app to cease using competitor data to set rents in real time. As well, RealPage can no longer generate "hyper-localized pricing that pushes rent up" and must eliminate features that discourage landlords from lowering prices.
"It means rents set by the market, not a secret algorithm," Slater remarked.
In a press release, RealPage boasted that the settlement led to no findings or admissions of liability, including no financial penalties or damages being awarded.
However, the company did reveal that it agreed to be independently monitored to confirm ongoing compliance with the new terms. Reuters reported that the monitorship will last three years and limit how RealPage collects and uses nonpublic data.
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Stephen Weissman, Gibson Dunn partner and former deputy director for the Federal Trade Commission, reiterated the company's denial of any wrongdoing and blamed the spread of misinformation for alleged misconceptions on how the app operates.
"There has been a great deal of misinformation about how RealPage's software works and the value it provides for both housing providers and renters."
Weissman claimed that the company's use of "aggregated and anonymized nonpublic data" has led to lower rents and more "pro-competitive" effects.
Aiden Buzzetti, president of the Bull Moose Project, told Return that he feels the settlement ensures that "Americans who rent are not subject to illegal price-fixing practices."
Buzzetti added, “We support the Trump administration's transformative direction to hold corporations like RealPage accountable when they violate the law."
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