Politics

For years since the pandemic started, rental prices outpaced inflation, and the DOJ suspected that RealPage was the dominant force driving a market that never favored renters. Recent Bureau of Labor Statistics data covering a 12-month period ending this September showed rents are still rising by 3.5 percent amid an affordability crisis, leaving some US renters in fear of housing instability.

In its complaint filed last August, the DOJ alleged that RealPage collected sensitive information daily from landlords, making it easier to see how competitors were pricing units. This information allegedly helped landlords “identify situations” where they could “have a $50 increase instead of a $10 increase” or eliminate “renter-friendly concessions (like a free month’s rent or waived fees)” they may have used “to attract or retain renters.”

Under the proposed settlement agreement, RealPage admitted to no wrongdoing and faced no financial penalties. In court filings, the Texas-based company maintained that its “software recommends competitive, or ‘market,’ prices” and that it did nothing to prevent other commercial revenue management software companies from competing.

However, if a court approves the deal, RealPage has agreed to update its software so that rival landlords cannot access “competitively sensitive information to determine rental prices in runtime operation.” Additionally, RealPage will “remove or redesign features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing between competing users of the software.” And the company will “cooperate in the United States’ lawsuit against property management companies that have used its software.”

Moving forward, the company will also stop training its models on “active lease data” and “cease conducting market surveys” that included a broad set of landlords who didn’t even use its software “to collect competitively sensitive information.”