Report from the Wall Street Journal
In Brief – The Justice Department (DOJ) announced that it will settle its antitrust lawsuit against RealPage, an apartment-pricing software provider accused of enabling landlords to coordinate rent increases. The case, filed in August 2024 at the height of the presidential campaign focused on cost-of-living issues, was one of the most prominent legal challenges to technology intermediaries that allegedly facilitated price hikes harming consumers. Prosecutors argued that RealPage created a digital platform that enabled competing landlords to illegally share sensitive information in real time, allowing them to collectively raise prices or remove discounts without fear of being undercut. The proposed settlement, which still requires court approval, and does not include the ten states that joined the federal complaint, includes limiting RealPage’s use of nonpublic data to train its AI models to data that is more than 12 months old, and requiring the company to remove or redesign features that limited landlord price decreases. Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater, who leads the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, said the settlement provides renters with relief comparable to what a court might order after a lengthy trial, but more quickly.
Context – The use of technology to help businesses target consumers and set prices is a long-time concern, and the prospect that AI is involved is only the latest iteration. In August, the DOJ reached a settlement agreement with Greystar Management Services, one of the six residential apartment landlords added to the RealPage complaint in January 2025. Greystar agreed to stipulations including agreement with the federal government’s interpretation of antitrust law related to the use of collusive pricing software services and that it would not use pricing services that involve competitors’ sensitive data. Of note, the DoJ’s RealPage complaint did not allege that the service was leading to higher rents, as the landlords were not bound to take the recommendations and often did not, but instead alleged that the sharing or compiling non-public business data in a service used by competitors is itself anti-competitive conduct.