DOJ Targets RealPage Over AI-Driven Rent Pricing Practices

Key Takeaways

• DOJ Action Targets Algorithmic Coordination: The Justice Department is moving to stop RealPage from using confidential rental data in ways that align competitor pricing across housing markets.
• Restrictions on AI-Driven Pricing Tools: RealPage must remove or redesign features that limit rent decreases and may not use nonpublic competitor data for real-time pricing decisions.
• Data Use Limits Introduced: Model training must rely on rental data that is at least 12 months old, and geographic pricing effects cannot be drawn more narrowly than the state level.
• Compliance Oversight Required: A court-appointed monitor will oversee RealPage’s adherence to the proposed consent judgment, and the company must assist the DOJ’s ongoing lawsuit against property managers.

Deep Dive

The Justice Department is pushing RealPage to unwind the software practices that federal antitrust officials say helped landlords move in lockstep on rent prices, a big shift authorities argue has undermined competition and contributed to surging housing costs for renters nationwide.

A proposed consent judgment filed Monday would force the Texas-based analytics company to overhaul key functions in its revenue management platform, which is widely used across the multifamily housing industry to recommend rental prices. Regulators say that for too long those recommendations have been driven not by genuine market competition, but by shared confidential data and pricing strategies that kept rents from falling even when supply softened.

Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater, who leads the Antitrust Division, framed the enforcement action as the latest example of how federal regulators are confronting new forms of coordination made possible by artificial intelligence.

“With the rise of algorithmic and artificial intelligence tools, we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement,” Slater said, emphasizing that companies must still make independent pricing decisions even as they adopt automation.

According to the Justice Department’s complaint, RealPage’s software aggregated nonpublic data from property managers, including active lease information, and used it to steer pricing across competing rental companies. Some software features allegedly made it harder for rents to drop, even when market conditions deteriorated, and RealPage also hosted industry gatherings where competitors exchanged sensitive market insights.

Under the proposed terms, RealPage would be required to stop using competitors’ nonpublic data when setting rental prices in real time, and limit its model training to “aged” data at least a year old. Other restrictions would force the company to remove or redesign functions that suppress price decreases or harmonize pricing behavior across clients. It would also be barred from performing market surveys to collect sensitive competitive information or discussing pricing strategy or nonpublic market trends in meetings connected to its revenue management tools.

The settlement would further prohibit RealPage from designing models that generate price effects below the state level, a broader geographic scope than the markets alleged in the complaint, and the company would have to accept a court-appointed monitor to check compliance. RealPage is also required to cooperate in the ongoing government case against property management firms that used its software.

While the proposed settlement doesn’t include monetary penalties, it reflects a widening federal focus on algorithmic systems and AI that allows companies to move in parallel without signing explicit price-fixing pacts. In the view of antitrust enforcers, the tool has changed, but the competitive harm looks familiar, and renters, they argue, have been paying the price.

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