Angel Santana Garcia
The U.S. Department of Justice is poised to file an antitrust suit against RealPage (RP), alleging that the closely held real estate software company engages in illegal price-fixing facilitated by algorithms, according to a media report.
The DOJ plans to file the complaint as soon as Friday, alleging that its software allows landlords to collude to raise rents, the New York Times reported, citing two people with knowledge of the matter.
California, Colorado, Minnesota, North Carolina, Washington, and other states will join the suit, which accuses the company of facilitating price-fixing that increased rents above market forces, the people said.
Note that the DOJ has scheduled to make an antitrust announcement at 11:00 AM ET.
In July, Politico reported that the Justice Department was working on a lawsuit against the company. At that time, a RealPage spokesperson said that the DOJ reviewed its LRO and YieldStar products in 2017 and didn’t object to any feature of the products.
Its revenue management products are “fundamentally the same today” as they were in 2017, the spokesperson added.
Apartment REIT stocks don’t appear to be fazed by the report in Friday morning trading. AvalonBay (NYSE:AVB) +0.6%, Equity Residential (NYSE:EQR) +1.0%, Independence Realty Trust (NYSE:IRT) +1.3%, Camden Property Trust (NYSE:CPT) +1.2%, and Mid-America Apartment Communities (NYSE:MAA) +0.8%.