Per the settlement, the platform can no longer mix nonpublic data from competitors when setting prices.
The Department of Justice and the real estate platform RealPage just made a deal, and since it doesn’t completely dismantle RealPage, it’s not going to be seen as a total victory for tenants who hate RealPage. But it’s something, and it will most likely weaken the platform’s power to raise rents, as it will now be prevented from shuffling together nonpublic information from competing landlords when setting prices.
According to the New York Times RealPage still denies having done anything wrong, per statements from Stephen Weissman, an attorney representing RealPage. The company is glad the government was willing to “bless the legality of RealPage’s prior and planned product changes,” Weissman said, “There has been a great deal of misinformation about how RealPage’s software works and the value it provides for both housing providers and renters.”
RealPage, founded in 1998, is a multifaceted tool for landlords, not just a pricing aid. Its suite of features has been, according to press coverage and the federal charges that led to this settlement, an unseen poltergeist in renters’ lives for years, making life generally more miserable, even while most tenants had no idea it exists. For instance, according to a 2020 investigation by the New York Times and The Markup, RealPage was using flawed algorithms to perform background checks, and landlords were denying people homes based on nonexistent criminal charges.
When it came to rents, RealPage itself at one point claimed that the landlords who used it faithfully were “driving every possible opportunity to increase price even in the most downward trending or unexpected conditions.
