Conversation

The Department of Justice and eight states on Friday
💪🏽sued the maker of rent-setting software that ⚠️critics blame for sending rents soaring in apartment buildings across the country.
The civil lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Greensboro, North Carolina, accuses Texas tech company ❌RealPage of
taking part in an #illegal #price-#fixing scheme to reduce competition among landlords so they can 🔹boost prices — and profits.

It also alleges the company took over the market for such price-setting software, effectively #monopolizing it.

“#RealPage has built a business out of frustrating the natural forces of vigorous competition,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter at a news conference Friday with top department officials.

✅“The time has come to stop this illegal conduct.”
The antitrust lawsuit is the latest
— and most dramatic
— development to follow a 2022 ProPublica investigation that examined RealPage’s role in helping landlords set rent prices across the country,
an arrangement that legal experts said could result in #cartel-like behavior.
Since then, senators have introduced legislation seeking to ban such practices,
tenants have filed dozens of ongoing federal lawsuits,
and San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors moved to bar landlords from using similar algorithms to set rents.

https://www.propublica.org/article/realpage-lawsuit-doj-antitrustdoj-files-antitrust-suit-against-maker-of-rent-setting-algorithm