The Department of Justice has reached a settlement with RealPage, a rent-setting software company accused of colluding with landlords to inflate rent prices. The settlement imposes restrictions on RealPage’s data collection and usage practices to address concerns about their impact on housing affordability.
According to the DOJ, RealPage’s software aggregated data from rival landlords to suggest daily rental price adjustments. This practice allegedly led to a domino effect where increasing rents by one landlord prompted others to do the same, ultimately burdening renters.
If approved, the settlement mandates that RealPage can only utilize landlord data that is at least a year old for its algorithms. Moreover, features that discourage price reductions or encourage price matching with competitors must be removed or reworked. RealPage is also forbidden from providing hyperlocalized pricing information that could lead to rent hikes on a block-by-block basis.
Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater emphasized the importance of the settlement, stating that RealPage’s actions had eliminated fair competition in the housing market. RealPage, however, denies any misconduct.
Source: The Verge