The Justice Department has filed an antitrust lawsuit against real estate software company RealPage, accusing it of an illegal scheme that allows landlords to coordinate to hike rental prices.
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00:00Everybody knows the rent is too damn high, and we allege this is one of the reasons why.
00:05When companies, and in this case landlords, use a software tool to facilitate cooperation
00:14with respect to rents, they violate the antitrust laws, they make rents higher than they would
00:18otherwise be, and they prevent rents from going down.
00:21So today, after a nearly two-year investigation, the Justice Department, joined by eight states,
00:28has sued RealPage, a commercial real estate software company, for violating the Sherman
00:34Antitrust Act.
00:35So make no mistake, training a machine to break the law is still breaking the law.
00:42Price coordination, using AI, is still price coordination.
00:46And monopolization, advanced by an algorithm, is still monopolization.
00:52As alleged in our complaint, RealPage is using technology to undermine competition
00:59in the rental market and to harm consumers in the process.
01:04By feeding sensitive data into a sophisticated algorithm, RealPage has found a modern way
01:11to violate a century-old law through systematic coordination of rental housing prices.
01:18RealPage sells landlords what it calls, quote, revenue management software.
01:24We allege that this software is developed, marketed, and sold to enable landlords to
01:30sidestep vigorous competition in the rental market.
01:33Competing landlords agree to submit to RealPage on a daily basis their most sensitive non-public
01:40information, including rental rates, lease terms, and projected vacancies.
01:46RealPage then combines this data from competing landlords and feeds it into an algorithm that
01:51provides real-time pricing recommendations back to the competing landlords.
02:16you