RealPage antitrust lawsuit: Software allows landlords to collude on high rents, DOJ says.

In Moving Day, an anonymous 19th-century painter illustrates the bedlam of the bygone New York City tradition in which all leases began on May 1. A Department of Justice antitrust lawsuit, filed at the end of August, claims that RealPage, a company that supplies management software to operators of apartment buildings, is helping some of the country’s largest landlords collude to raise rents. The complaint features one of the company’s executives saying the kind of thing that can bring a general counsel to tears: “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.” If enough landlords used RealPage’s software, they would “likely move in unison versus against each other.” And that, the government says, is an “unlawful information-sharing scheme” and an “illegal monopoly.” The lawsuit builds on years of reporting by ProPublica’s Heather Vogell, who observed that in one Seattle neighborhood, 70 percent of all the apartments were operated by just 10 property managers, and each of them was using RealPage. Last month, Kamala Harris mentioned the practice in an economic policy speech, saying: “Some corporate landlords collude with each other to set artificially high rental prices, often using algorithms and price-fixing software to do it. “I think these things have teeth.” RealPage owns a few different products, but the gist is the same: Property managers give the company proprietary data on lease terms, rents, concessions, floor plans, and amenities.