The Department of Justice announced a proposed settlement with RealPage Inc. that would restrict how the company’s rent-pricing software can use landlord data, aiming to halt what prosecutors called illegal “algorithmic collusion.” The agreement resolves a yearlong federal antitrust suit brought against the Texas-based firm during the Biden administration. RealPage will not pay damages or admit wrongdoing under the deal, which still needs a judge’s approval.
RealPage provides daily rent recommendations to landlords. While property managers are not forced to follow the suggestions, prosecutors argued that the software’s access to extensive confidential information allowed clients to effectively push rents up across markets. Under the settlement, RealPage may no longer feed real-time nonpublic data into price recommendations, and any nonpublic data used to train its algorithms must be at least one year old.
DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater said the restrictions are intended to restore “more real competition in local housing markets” and ensure rents are determined by the market rather than a secret algorithm. RealPage attorney Stephen Weissman said the company welcomed the settlement and disputed portrayals of how its system operated, arguing its historical use of aggregated, anonymized nonpublic data produced competitive benefits like lower rents and fewer vacancies.
Consumer and competition advocates criticized the deal as a missed opportunity to more broadly curb algorithmic price-fixing. Lee Hepner of the American Economic Liberties Project called the case “the tip of the spear” and warned that the settlement contains loopholes that could let RealPage continue influencing markets even if limited to public data. He also objected to the absence of damages, noting other firms have paid multimillion-dollar penalties for related practices.
Several large property managers have separately settled claims tied to RealPage’s software. Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, agreed to pay $50 million in a class action settlement and an additional $7 million to resolve a suit by nine states. At the state and local level, lawmakers have moved quickly: California and New York governors recently signed laws targeting rent-setting software, and cities including Philadelphia and Seattle have banned or restricted these tools. Ten states joined the DOJ’s lawsuit but were not parties to the RealPage settlement.