The RealPage Lawsuit
A first step toward accountability for predatory landlords

By Caroline Nagy

On Friday, the U. S. Department of Justice took on Wall Street landlords and increasingly unaffordable rents by filing an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, accusing the private-equity-owned firm of facilitating price fixing among the country’s largest corporate landlords. Joined by eight state attorneys general, the lawsuit details how RealPage’s rent-setting software uses private information to raise rents – and, by extension, landlord profits – well beyond what is fair to the general public.

The lawsuit comes after the Biden administration called for the elimination of favorable tax write-offs for large landlords who raise rents by more than 5 percent per year, a welcome preventative measure that Congress would have to approve. But the antitrust case challenges data sharing platforms that promote collusive price fixing. RealPage corporate subscribers (landlords) share their vacancy and rent data and in return can see what rents their rivals charge, creating a virtual smoke-filled room where corporate landlords can indirectly, via a software platform, collude to raise rents.

Much of the DOJ’s case came from RealPage’s own public statements. RealPage advertises its services to landlords as a tool that can help them outperform the market – that is, raise rents and fees more steeply – by 3 to 7 percent. RealPage’s business model focuses on helping landlords maximize rents and heap on renter junk fees to increase profits. Its business model assumes that tenants have a limitless ability to pay higher rents, which, of course, can only last as long as tenants are both able and willing to pay them.

Owned by private-equity firm Thoma Bravo, RealPage’s rent-setting software has helped raise rents and corporate profits to record levels: in the first quarter of 2024, the six largest publicly-traded landlords generated nearly $300 million in profits, allowing them to spend more of their tenants’ hard-earned rent money lobbying against the politically popular common-sense tenant protections like curbing rent increases and eviction protections.

The Biden administration’s focus on price-fixing comes at a critical moment in the burgeoning U.S. tenant movement.

Today, renters are experiencing unprecedented housing costs that are rising faster than their ability to pay them: half of all tenants spend over 30 percent of their income on rent, with 27 percent spending over 70 percent of their income on housing costs alone. With growing unaffordability, renters are less able to save money for a downpayment, reducing opportunities for housing stability and wealth-building. At worst, they may cut back on food and medical care, move back in with an abusive family member, double up in unsafe, substandard housing, or join the record numbers of people experiencing homelessness in this country.

Much of the grassroots tenant organizing is happening at the state and local level, where much of housing is regulated. Today, the nation’s growing tenant movement is building power to take on the entrenched and politically powerful corporate landlords. Tenants’ unions and other community groups are fighting to overturn pro-landlord laws in state and local legislatures and through ballot initiatives. At the very local level, renters are working to hold bad landlords accountable by organizing into tenant unions and participating in rent strikes.

But there is work to be done at the federal level as well. The RealPage lawsuit sends a powerful message to U.S. corporate landlords who profit heavily from tenant misery, as does Biden’s proposed legislation to require rent caps for tax write-offs.

Federal regulators must do more to take on price-gouging landlords, and that includes ensuring our federal housing finance policy doesn’t encourage the exploitative practices enabled by RealPage. The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, currently guarantees over $150 billion in annual financing to landlords, which amounts to a quarter of the entire U.S. multifamily housing stock — apartment buildings and townhome developments. And plenty of those landlords use RealPage.

Our government should hold landlords supported by public dollars to a higher standard. Otherwise, we are all involved in the business of rent gouging, whether we like it or not. The FHFA has already announced that it will require 30-day written notices of rent increases or lease expiration, along with a 5-day grace period for rent payments, as a condition for receiving its multifamily financing, which is a start. But the FHFA should also listen to tenant organizers and refuse to finance building acquisitions by landlords who raise rents to unconscionable and unsustainable levels.

The next administration needs to focus the full resources and regulatory attention of the federal government to confront the unaffordability crisis in rental housing, one that has made it almost impossible for families to get ahead – or even stay afloat.

Caroline Nagy is AFR’s Senior Policy Counsel for Housing, Corporate Power, and Climate Justice