DC’s attorney general has filed a lawsuit against 14 of the city’s largest landlord firms, accusing them of collaborating with a property management software firm to keep rent prices high. The lawsuit focuses on the use of RealPage’s software, which suggests rental prices based on an algorithm. The suit claims that RealPage puts pressure on landlords to stick to the code-derived rental rates. It alleges that the landlords and RealPage colluded to artificially raise rents, creating a housing cartel. Schwalb’s office claims that over 90% of units in large buildings in the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria area are subject to RealPage pricing. RealPage’s software and the property management firms that use it have faced previous legal action and scrutiny.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/11/14-big-landlords-used-software-to-collude-on-rent-prices-dc-lawsuit-says/