By Dean Seal

The Justice Department has added some of the biggest landlords in the U.S. to its antitrust lawsuit accusing the real-estate software company RealPage of using an algorithm that allowed landlords to illegally coordinate rent increases.

Camden Property Trust and Cushman & Wakefield were among the new co-defendants named Tuesday in a suit, first filed in August, that claims RealPage stifles competition with its rent-setting algorithm and maintains an illegal monopoly over rent-setting software.

The landlord defendants allegedly shared sensitive information about rental prices and used the algorithm to keep rent prices high, hurting millions of American renters, the DOJ said.

The other landlord defendants added to the suit on Tuesday were Greystar Real Estate Partners, Blackstone's LivCor, Cushman's Pinnacle Property Management Services, Willow Bridge Property Company and Cortland Management.

Cortland has reached a settlement with the Justice Department and agreed to cooperate with the government, stop using competitors' data to set rents and stop using the same algorithm as its competitors without a corporate monitor.

A representative for Cortland said the company was pleased to resolve the DOJ's civil investigation and added that the antitrust division has closed a criminal investigation into pricing practices within the multifamily rental industry, which in May prompted investigators to search Cortland's headquarters in Atlanta.

"We look forward to putting the federal government's investigations behind us in 2025," the representative said.

Representatives for the other defendants didn't respond to requests for comment.

According to the complaint, the landlords directly communicated with each other about rents, occupancy and other competitively sensitive topics. They also shared information with one another about the parameters of RealPage's software, the suit said.

The suit against RealPage is one of the most sweeping legal actions ever taken against a private company in the rental housing industry. Consumers are still feeling squeezed by steep rent increases that occurred during the pandemic and in the years since amid rising inflation.

RealPage is said to command 80% of the market for commercial revenue management software and allegedly deploys a price-setting algorithm that gathers confidential data on rents from competing landlords, helping them raise rents and collude on prices. RealPage has denied the allegations.

Write to Dean Seal at dean.seal@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 07, 2025 15:15 ET (20:15 GMT)

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