Six property managers have been sued, including some from Philadelphia.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Justice Department sued six of the country’s largest landlords for an alleged “algorithmic pricing scheme that harms millions of American renters”.
The case focuses on an antitrust lawsuit against a company named RealPage, which claims to “provide property management software, data analytics, and services to efficiently manage rental properties and real estate.”
According to the Department, “the amended complaint alleges that the property management companies 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 participated in an unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing, harming millions of American renters.”
The six companies own 1.3 million properties across the entire United States.
Greystar Real Estate Partners owns properties in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It also owns properties in West Chester, Delaware County, and other suburbs.
Cushman & Wakefield also owns several apartment complexes in the Philadelphia area.
Acting Assistant Attorney General Doha Mekki of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division said, “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.”
The landlords named in the lawsuit are being accused of using RealPage’s anti-competitive pricing algorithms, directly communicating with competitors’ senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics, and sharing information with competitors about parameters in RealPage’s software.
The lawsuit said that RealPage claimed “our tool ensures that (landlords) are driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward trending or unexpected conditions.” Even citing that their Vice President of Revenue Management Advisory Services said, “there is greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another.”
The Department of Justice and ten other states, not including Pennsylvania, filed the lawsuit against RealPage and the six property management groups. Thousands of people in Pennsylvania were likely affected by the algorithmic price fixing scheme.
