Justice Department Accuses RealPage of Violating Antitrust Laws Through Scheme to Hike Rents

TIME

The Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against real estate software company RealPage, accusing it of an illegal scheme that allows landlords to coordinate to hike rental prices.

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00:00Everybody knows the rent is too damn high, and we allege this is one of the reasons why.

00:05When companies, and in this case landlords, use a software tool to facilitate cooperation

00:14with respect to rents, they violate the antitrust laws, they make rents higher than they would

00:18otherwise be, and they prevent rents from going down.

00:21So today, after a nearly two-year investigation, the Justice Department, joined by eight states,

00:28has sued RealPage, a commercial real estate software company, for violating the Sherman

00:34Antitrust Act.

00:35So make no mistake, training a machine to break the law is still breaking the law.

00:42Price coordination, using AI, is still price coordination.

00:46And monopolization, advanced by an algorithm, is still monopolization.

00:52As alleged in our complaint, RealPage is using technology to undermine competition

00:59in the rental market and to harm consumers in the process.

01:04By feeding sensitive data into a sophisticated algorithm, RealPage has found a modern way

01:11to violate a century-old law through systematic coordination of rental housing prices.

01:18RealPage sells landlords what it calls, quote, revenue management software.

01:24We allege that this software is developed, marketed, and sold to enable landlords to

01:30sidestep vigorous competition in the rental market.

01:33Competing landlords agree to submit to RealPage on a daily basis their most sensitive non-public

01:40information, including rental rates, lease terms, and projected vacancies.

01:46RealPage then combines this data from competing landlords and feeds it into an algorithm that

01:51provides real-time pricing recommendations back to the competing landlords.

02:16you

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