On August 23, 2024, the Attorneys General of North Carolina, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington, joined the DOJ Antitrust Division in suing RealPage, Inc., alleging an unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing and to monopolize the market for commercial revenue management software that landlords use to price apartments.
The complaint alleges that landlords share with RealPage their nonpublic, competitively sensitive data, which RealPage then uses to generate rental pricing recommendations, suppressing competition among landlords to the detriment of renters throughout the country. The state attorneys general assert their independent authority under Section 16 of the Clayton Act to bring actions to obtain injunctive relief for violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act.
The attorneys general of the District of Columbia and Arizona previously sued RealPage for the same conduct, in November 2023 and February 2024, respectively. Those lawsuits—like a complaint filed by a proposed class of renters in October 2022—allege that RealPage’s conduct constitutes per se price-fixing. The allegations by the DOJ and the eight state attorneys general do not go that far, alleging instead information sharing and vertical agreements with landlords, claims that are typically decided under the rule of reason.