RealPage recently settled the main federal antitrust case against it with the Department of Justice. It appears now that the federal case ended up being much ado about nothing. Landlords and operators can shrug this off and move forward mostly with business as usual. The settlement is being framed as a win for large multifamily owners and operators—and a warning shot for algorithmic pricing across industries.
The DOJ alleged that RealPage used nonpublic data from competing landlords to algorithmically “coordinate” rents, effectively aligning pricing in markets where its software was widely adopted. Under the consent decree settlement with the DOJ, RealPage can continue to offer its revenue management tools but must stop using competitors’ nonpublic, competitively sensitive data for both runtime pricing recommendations and model training, and must prevent its tools from aligning pricing among competing properties.
Importantly, there are no fines or admissions of wrongdoing, and RealPage says its solutions remain available and already incorporate many of the required changes. For landlords, that means continued access to powerful pricing software, now operating under clearer compliance guardrails. The multitude of state cases remain unresolved, so time will tell if any stiffer penalties or guardrails ultimately arise from this saga.
The broader signal, however, could potentially be applicable to other industries: regulators are not banning algorithmic pricing, but they are beginning to draw a line around how competitive data can be collected, pooled, and used. Any company leaning on shared, granular rival data to set prices—in housing or beyond—should plan for similar scrutiny.
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