Washington, D.C. — In response to news that the Department of Justice Antitrust Division and a bipartisan group of eight State Attorneys General have filed a civil antitrust lawsuit against RealPage for undermining price competition in the housing market and monopolizing commercial revenue management software in housing, the American Economic Liberties Project released the following statement.

“Working people have enough problems affording daily necessities without RealPage bragging that it seizes ‘every possible opportunity’ to increase rents,” said Lee Hepner, Senior Legal Counsel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Half of all renters pay more than 30 percent of their income on housing, and the Justice Department’s complaint is stacked with new allegations that RealPage is making this generational crisis worse by pushing landlords to collude to set prices.”

“This is also the first allegation we’ve seen that RealPage has illegally monopolized the market for commercial revenue management software by acquiring and blunting its rivals,” added Hepner. “We’re thrilled the Antitrust Division has recognized the severity of this scheme and is taking a strong stand for the millions of renters forced to pay artificially high rents. Robust antitrust enforcement is essential to protecting working families from the inflated cost of housing, food, and other essential goods from corporate collusion.”

The Antitrust Division’s civil suit, amid other criminal probes and suits from states, argues that RealPage has violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act by orchestrating an unlawful information-sharing scheme that has allowed landlords to coordinate pricing and stifle competition. According to the complaint, RealPage’s software collects nonpublic, competitively sensitive information from landlords and uses this data to generate price recommendations for its clients. These recommendations often push rental prices higher by aligning the pricing strategies of competing landlords, effectively replacing competition with coordinated price setting on a national scale. The complaint cites RealPage’s own internal documents, where executives bragged that it’s ‘almost like we made it hard [for landlords] to do anything but’ accept RealPage’s ‘recommendations’ to set high rents.” The DOJ asserts that this conduct not only harms renters by inflating rents but also entrenches RealPage’s dominance in the revenue management software market, excluding potential competitors and undermining the free market principles essential to a healthy economy.

Read Economic Liberties’ memo with Local Progress on RealPage here.

Learn more about Economic Liberties here.

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The American Economic Liberties Project works to ensure America’s system of commerce is structured to advance, rather than undermine, economic liberty, fair commerce, and a secure, inclusive democracy. Economic Liberties believes true economic liberty means entrepreneurs and businesses large and small succeed on the merits of their ideas and hard work; commerce empowers consumers, workers, farmers, and engineers instead of subjecting them to discrimination and abuse from financiers and monopolists; foreign trade arrangements support domestic security and democracy; and wealth is broadly distributed to support equitable political power.