What Happened: The Department of Justice and Texas software-maker RealPage announced Monday that they have reached a settlement in a case involving price-fixing allegations in some of the nation’s largest rental markets.
At issue was algorithmic rent-setting software the tech company sold that prosecutors said enabled landlords to compete less and boost prices in apartment buildings in ways that could violate antitrust laws. The proposed settlement, which must now be approved by a judge, said RealPage will stop offering software that uses nonpublic, “competitively sensitive” data shared among landlords to recommend how much to charge tenants, officials said.
Under the agreement, RealPage will stop conducting market surveys to gather such information, and it agreed not to discuss pricing strategies or trends based on nonpublic data at meetings it holds for property managers, officials said. The company also must remove or redesign software features that restrict rent decreases or align pricing among competitors, they said.
A court-appointed monitor will ensure compliance with the settlement, if it is accepted. The company also agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in their lawsuit against property managers that have used its software.
A 2022 ProPublica investigation showed RealPage was helping landlords decide rents in a way that legal experts said could result in cartel-like behavior. The DOJ also sued six big landlords, accusing them of using algorithmic software to work together and raise rents. Some have reached settlements with prosecutors.
What They Said: The Justice Department said in a statement that “the proposed settlement would help restore free market competition in rental markets for millions of American renters.”
“Competing companies must make independent pricing decisions, and with the rise of algorithmic and artificial intelligence tools, we will remain at the forefront of vigorous antitrust enforcement,” Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater said.
RealPage said in a statement on its website that the settlement “provides greater certainty for housing providers and technology innovators that revenue management software can be operated confidently and in compliance with the views of federal antitrust enforcers.”
“Through it all, our teams remained focused on serving customers and advancing the technology the industry relies on every day,” said Dirk Wakeham, RealPage’s president and CEO. “We are pleased to have reached this agreement with the DOJ, which brings the clarity and stability we have long sought and allows us to move forward with a continued focus on innovation and the shared goal of better outcomes for both housing providers and renters.”
The settlement did not include admissions of wrongdoing, RealPage said, and does not involve financial penalties.
The company said there would be no disruption to its clients’ operations, saying that the settlement would formalize software modifications that were “already made or planned” and that “all RealPage solutions remain fully available, compliant, and configurable to meet evolving legal requirements.”
Stephen Weissman, an attorney for the company, said RealPage believes its use of data has led to “lower rents, less vacancies, and more procompetitive effects.”
RealPage declined to comment further on the settlement.
Background: The proposed settlement is the latest development following ProPublica’s 2022 investigation. Dozens of tenants sued RealPage after the initial story. The Biden Justice Department filed an antitrust complaint against the company in 2024, and in January, it sued six of the nation’s biggest landlords, including Greystar, accusing them of improperly working together to raise rents. Prosecutors said that one landlord told RealPage that it started increasing rents within a week of adopting the software and, within 11 months, had raised them more than 25%.
The litigation, which continued under the Trump administration, was joined by at least 10 attorneys general, including the one for California, the country’s most populous state — home to roughly 17 million renters.
Senators have also held hearings and introduced legislation seeking to ban the use of rent algorithms like RealPage’s. And at the local level, cities around the country, including San Francisco, Philadelphia and Minneapolis, moved to bar landlords from using similar algorithms to set rents.
Why It Matters: The Biden DOJ’s moves against RealPage — and its landlord customers — for using shared data and technology were seen as an indication that authorities were willing to wade into a fraught corner of federal antitrust law.
In the past, collusion happened with “a formal handshake in a clandestine meeting,” federal prosecutors wrote in one filing. “Algorithms are the new frontier.”
Trump’s DOJ continued to prosecute the case this year even as the administration retooled the department and scaled back on traditional enforcement priorities like police misconduct.
The proposed agreement follows the DOJ’s August announcement that it had made a deal with Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, to settle the government’s claims related to its use of RealPage’s algorithmic rent-setting software. Greystar does not admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement and said it accepted the deal “to make clear the government’s interpretation of the law and to ensure we continue to do things the right way.”
