On August 23, 2024, responding to the Justice Department’s lawsuit, RealPage defended its revenue management software as lawful assistance for landlords who retained control over their rents. Its position was that recommendations were not commands. Property owners could accept or reject them, and the company disputed the government’s account of its business.
The complaint makes a more specific accusation than bad forecasting or excessive automation. It alleges that RealPage pooled landlords’ confidential information, used it to recommend rents, and encouraged landlords to follow those recommendations rather than price independently. The distinction is between helping a landlord understand demand and helping competing landlords act through a common pricing system.
What was RealPage selling?
RealPage markets revenue management as a combination of forecasting, analysis and pricing recommendations. Those functions have an ordinary business purpose. A landlord deciding what to charge must estimate demand, account for vacancies and decide whether a lower rent today beats an empty apartment tomorrow.
The government did not sue because those calculations involved software. Its August 23, 2024 complaint alleged that RealPage’s products changed both the information available to competing landlords and the process through which they selected rents.
A confidential rent roll is not a public apartment advertisement. The complaint describes access to nonpublic information about rents, lease terms, concessions and occupancy. Those records can show what tenants actually agreed to pay, rather than what a property advertised before negotiation.
That difference sits at the center of the case. The government alleges that landlords supplied information to RealPage while receiving recommendations informed by competitors’ information. A better demand forecast and a reciprocal exchange of sensitive pricing information are not the same product, even when delivered together.
Whose information informed the price?
The complaint alleges that participating landlords agreed to provide RealPage with nonpublic rental information. RealPage then used that information in its revenue management system to generate recommendations for participating properties.
The alleged advantage was not simply a larger database. It was access to information that competitors would not ordinarily possess about one another’s transactions and available apartments.
The complaint also cites RealPage’s own statements about reducing the need for landlords to compete on price. Those statements matter because they connect the data collection to a commercial objective. The government’s theory is not that an accurate forecast becomes unlawful when several businesses purchase it. It is that competitors used a common intermediary to substitute coordinated pricing for independent decisions.
The Federal Trade Commission’s price-fixing guidance distinguishes independent responses to market conditions from agreements among competitors. Similar prices alone do not establish an agreement. Here, the alleged agreements to contribute sensitive information supply a different evidentiary starting point from merely observing similar rents.
Could landlords say no?
Yes, according to RealPage’s defense. That is relevant. A recommendation that a landlord independently evaluates is different from a price the landlord has promised to charge.
But the complaint alleges that RealPage did more than deliver a number and leave. It describes automatic acceptance features, limits or approval procedures around deviations, and pricing advisers who encouraged adherence to the system’s recommendations.
Each mechanism addresses a weakness in coordinated pricing. A landlord facing vacant apartments has a reason to cut its own rent, even if competing properties would prefer everyone to hold firm. A system that makes acceptance routine and deviations exceptional can reduce that independent response without eliminating every override.
This is why a reject button does not dispose of the allegation. The relevant record includes how defaults operated, what happened when property staff wanted a different price, and what RealPage’s advisers encouraged them to do. The complaint alleges that the surrounding process was built to increase acceptance, not merely improve a forecast’s accuracy.
Does using an algorithm change the rule?
Section 1 of the Sherman Act addresses agreements that restrain trade. The agreement is the legal issue, not whether the participants communicated through a telephone, a consultant or a pricing system.
In a March 1, 2024 explanation, FTC staff addressed that distinction directly. Competitors cannot escape price-fixing rules by delegating pricing to an algorithm. The agency also rejected the proposition that some departures from recommended prices necessarily defeat an allegation of unlawful coordination.
That principle does not establish what RealPage or its customers actually agreed to do. It identifies why the company’s discretion defense needs more evidence behind it. Occasional rejection and meaningful independence are different propositions.
The complaint also brought a separate monopolization claim under Section 2 of the Sherman Act. The Justice Department alleged that RealPage held approximately 80% of the market for commercial revenue management software for conventional multifamily rental housing. That is a claimed software-market share, not a claim that RealPage controlled 80% of American apartments.
What did naming landlords add?
On January 7, 2025, the Justice Department expanded the case to name 6 landlord defendants. Its announcement said those landlords collectively operated more than 1.3 million apartments across 43 states and the District of Columbia.
The amended allegations moved beyond the relationship between each landlord and its software supplier. The department described contacts among competing landlords about rents and pricing practices, including communications through user groups and other exchanges.
Those allegations matter to the distinction RealPage asks readers to draw. A neutral adviser can sell the same analytical service to competing customers. Direct exchanges among those customers about pricing present an additional question about whether their decisions remained independent.
The department also announced a proposed settlement with Cortland. Its proposed restrictions addressed competitively sensitive information and the use of competitors’ nonpublic data in pricing software. The remedy’s focus was the information and conduct surrounding the recommendations, not a general prohibition on rental forecasting.
What does this record establish?
This assessment concerns the August 2024 complaint and its January 2025 expansion. They contain allegations, not adjudicated findings that RealPage fixed rents or caused a particular tenant’s increase. The company’s response is a defense, not independent verification of its system’s operation.
The documents nevertheless identify a concrete dispute. The government alleges reciprocal contributions of confidential data, recommendations informed by that pool, and practices encouraging adherence. RealPage’s assertion that landlords retained final authority addresses only part of that account.
The requested remedy also needs to be separated from tenant compensation. Section 4 of the Sherman Act authorizes federal proceedings to prevent and restrain violations. Separately, Section 4 of the Clayton Act provides a damages action for qualifying injuries from antitrust violations, including treble damages. Filing this government enforcement case did not automatically establish any renter’s entitlement to repayment.
Which description holds up?
On the conduct alleged, RealPage was selling more than better forecasts. It was selling a shared pricing system whose value depended partly on confidential competitor information and whose operation encouraged landlords to accept common recommendations. That supports the government’s coordination theory more directly than the description of neutral advice. Landlords’ ability to reject a price matters, but it does not answer whether they had joined a system designed to reduce independent price competition.
