BOSTON – The Massachusetts Attorney General’s Office announced it joined the U.S. Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against real estate software company RealPage and five of the largest landlords in the United States.
This lawsuit is separate from litigation reported by This Week in Worcester in June that involves RealPage.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) first filed a complaint against RealPage in August 2024 and filed an amended complaint on January 7.
The amended complaint alleges that six landlords took part in an unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing. Those landlords are:
- Greystar Real Estate Partners LLC (Greystar);
- Blackstone’s LivCor LLC (LivCor);
- Camden Property Trust (Camden);
- Cushman & Wakefield Inc and Pinnacle Property Management Services LLC (Cushman);
- Willow Bridge Property Company LLC (Willow Bridge); and
- Cortland Management LLC (Cortland) .
These companies combine to control over 1.3 million residential rental units in 43 states across the United States.
Massachusetts joined the DOJ lawsuit against five of the companies. Cortland entered into a consent decree with the DOJ that, if approved by a judge, would resolve allegations against the company. Cortland also agreed to cooperate with the government in the case.
The complaint also alleges the landlords engaged in a scheme to set rent prices using each other’s competitively sensitive information through common pricing algorithms provided by RealPage. It also alleges these landlords coordinated in several other ways.
- Directly communicating with competitors’ senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics. In one example, Greystar supplied Camden with information not only about very recent renewal rates, but also its approach to pricing for the upcoming quarter, its acceptance of RealPage’s pricing recommendations, use of concessions, and competitively sensitive information about occupancy. Likewise, executives at Camden and LivCor communicated over the course of months about their pricing strategies, including plans for certain price increases.
- Regularly conducting “call arounds.” During these discussions, euphemistically referred to as “market surveys,” property managers called or emailed competitors to share, and sometimes discuss, competitively sensitive information about rents, occupancy, pricing strategies and discounts.
- Participating in “user groups” hosted by RealPage. For instance, landlords discussed via user groups how to modify the software’s pricing methodology, as well as their own pricing strategies. In one example, LivCor and Willow Bridge executives participated in a user group discussion of plans for renewal increases, concessions and acceptance rates of RealPage rent recommendations.
- Sharing information with competitors about parameters in RealPage’s software. As an example, at the request of Willow Bridge’s director of revenue management, Greystar’s director of revenue management supplied its standard auto-accept parameters for RealPage’s software, including the daily and weekly limits and the days of the week for which Greystar used “auto-accept.”
The other states that have joined the lawsuit as co-plaintiffs in the case are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington
