Six of the United State’s biggest landlords have been sued as part of a case against harmful algorithmic pricing schemes.
According to the Justice Department, Attorneys General of Illinois and Massachusetts have joined the ongoing legal battle against RealPage and a swathe of other landlords.
They allege that the entities have knowingly collaborated to set rental prices using each other’s competitively sensitive information through standard pricing algorithms.
This brings the total number of complainers of states and Commonwealth Co-Plaintiffs to 10 in this national case. The landlords operate over 1.3 million units in 43 states and the District of Columbia combined.
The Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington are all involved in the case.
Landlords sued for algorithmic pricing
Acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said the “action against RealPage and six major landlords seeks to end their practice of putting profits over people and make housing more affordable for millions of people across the country.”
The legal case alleges that Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC (Greystar); Blackstone’s LivCor LLC (LivCor); Camden Property Trust (Camden); Cushman & Wakefield Inc. and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC (Cushman); Willow Bridge Property Company LLC (Willow Bridge) and Cortland Management LLC (Cortland) all participated in an “unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing, harming millions of American renters.”
The Justice Department has filed a proposed consent decree with landlord Cortland that requires it to “cooperate with the government, stop using its competitors’ sensitive data to set rents, and stop using the same algorithm as its competitors without a corporate monitor.”
Greystar and the other accused landlords allegedly used several means to populate their data, including shared user groups to set and discuss pricing and in-person and online events hosted to discuss rental averages.
“While Americans across the country struggled to afford housing, the landlords named in today’s lawsuit shared sensitive information about rental prices and used algorithms to coordinate to keep the price of rent high,” concluded Mekki.
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