That report cited comments made by a RealPage vice president, Jay Parsons, at a meeting with a group of real estate tech executives. Boasting that “one of their company’s signature product’s software [uses] a mysterious algorithm to help landlords push the highest possible rents on tenants,” Parsons wooed landlords. In a since-deleted video, he noted that apartment rents had recently increased by 14.5 percent, bragging that “never before have we seen these numbers” and prodding another executive to agree that RealPage was “driving it, quite honestly.” Business Insider dubbed it landlords’ “secret weapon.”
Back then, critics told ProPublica that “at a minimum,” RealPage’s “algorithm may be artificially inflating rents and stifling competition,” noting that “machines quickly learn” to increase prices “above competitive levels” to “win.”
Today, RealPage’s site notes that “its suite of services is used to manage more than 24 million units worldwide.” The DOJ reported that on top of collecting its customers’ sensitive information—which included rental prices, demand, discounts, vacancy, and lease terms—RealPage also collected data by making “over 50,000 monthly phone calls,” conducting “market surveys” of landlords covering “over 11 million units and approximately 52,000 properties.”
Landlords “knowingly share this nonpublic information with RealPage,” the DOJ said, while “rising rents have disproportionately affected low-income residents.” DOJ Antitrust Division Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater confirmed the settlement would ensure that RealPage can no longer rely on such nonpublic data to help landlords collude to set rental prices, while advancing the DOJ’s mission of preventing price-fixing algorithms from harming Americans.
“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,” Slater said.