Attorney General Raoul Announces Court Win In Continuing Antitrust Lawsuit Against RealPage
A court rejected RealPage’s effort to dismiss the lawsuit alleging its rent-pricing algorithm used landlords’ sensitive data to inflate rents.
CHICAGO – Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), with a bipartisan coalition of eight other attorneys general, secured a win in their antitrust lawsuit over RealPage’s rent-pricing algorithm. This week, a court denied the software company’s attempts to have the case thrown out.
“I am pleased with the court’s decision that will allow our lawsuit to continue,” Raoul said. “At a time when many Illinoisans are finding it harder to access affordable housing, it is vital our antitrust laws are enforced to protect competition in the marketplace.”
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The coalition’s suit against RealPage alleges the software company used landlords’ competitively sensitive data to create a pricing algorithm that violated antitrust laws and raised rent prices. Specifically, the lawsuit alleges RealPage sold revenue management software to property managers across the U.S. in exchange for their nonpublic, sensitive data. That data included information about rental units coming on the market, rent prices property managers were charging and discounts they were offering. RealPage used that information to suggest apartment prices to property managers to help them make more money. The company then used multiple strategies to get property managers to automatically accept its recommendations. That meant apartment prices were artificially inflated, and renters couldn’t shop around for something more affordable.
As part of the case, Attorney General Raoul also filed suit against multiple landlords who allegedly worked together and with RealPage to raise rent prices. A coalition of states and the U.S. Department of Justice sued Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC, Blackstone’s LivCor LLC, Camden Property Trust, Cushman & Wakefield Inc. and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC, Willow Bridge Property Company LLC, and Cortland Management LLC. That lawsuit alleges that the sharing of nonpublic, competitively sensitive data allowed landlords using RealPage’s products to set higher prices than would have been set in a competitive market.
Attorney General Raoul has settled with two of the landlords. Most recently, Attorney General Raoul joined a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general in reaching a $7 million settlement with LivCor. Under the settlement, LivCor will stop using non-public data from other landlords to set rents. Attorney General Raoul also previously reached a settlement with Greystar.
Raoul and the coalition’s lawsuit against RealPage asks the court to stop the company and the property managers it works with from sharing non-public information and working together to inflate rent prices.
Attorney General Raoul is joined in the lawsuit by the attorneys general of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee.
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