Report from the USA Today
In Brief – In Brief – The Department of Justice (DoJ) has filed a proposed settlement to resolve its antitrust case against Greystar Management Services, the largest residential apartment landlord in the country. Greystar was accused of illegally colluding with other major property management companies to raise rental rates. The lawsuit focused on how competing management companies like Greystar share sensitive business data with software company RealPage, which then analyzes the data and makes rental pricing recommendations to all the apartment companies. The DoJ sued RealPage for antitrust violations in August 2024 and added six major apartment management companies who used RealPage’s services to the lawsuit in early January 2025. In the settlement, Greystar does not admit to violating federal law, but the company said that it was agreeing with the government’s interpretation of antitrust law related to the use of collusive pricing software services, would not use pricing services that involve competitors’ sensitive data, would accept a court-appointed monitor to approve any third-party pricing algorithm, and would cooperate with the DoJ’s ongoing antitrust case against RealPage itself.
Context – The use of digital technology to help businesses set prices is a long-time concern. Recently, it’s gone by the moniker “surveillance pricing”, which may or not be different than “algorithmic” pricing. AI will increasingly be linked to the issue. Pricing assistance services to help landlords and hoteliers have been operating for more than a decade and are the target of numerous price-fixing lawsuits. RealPage is the lead defendant in several. The DoJ joined RealPage litigation started by several State AGs at the height of the 2024 presidential campaign when rising rents and price inflation was a big issue. Of note, the DoJ’s complaint does not focus on whether RealPage’s service was actually leading to higher rents, as the landlords were not bound to take recommendations and apparently often did not, but instead argues that sharing or compiling non-public business data in a service used by competitors is itself illegal anti-competitive conduct.