New limits for hire algorithm that prosecutors say lets landlords drive up costs : NPR

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Mark Schiefelbein/AP Landlords might not depend on rent-pricing software program to quietly observe one another's strikes and push rents increased utilizing confidential knowledge, beneath a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to finish what critics stated was unlawful "algorithmic collusion."

The deal introduced Monday by the Division of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched through the Biden administration, towards the Texas-based software program firm. RealPage wouldn't must pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement should nonetheless be permitted by a choose.

RealPage software program offers day by day suggestions to assist landlords and their staff nationwide worth their accessible flats. The landlords would not have to comply with the strategies, however critics argue that as a result of the software program has entry to an enormous trove of confidential knowledge, it helps RealPage's shoppers cost the best potential hire.

"RealPage was changing competitors with coordination, and renters paid the worth," stated DOJ antitrust chief Gail Slater, who emphasised that the settlement averted a expensive, time-consuming trial.

Beneath the phrases of the proposed settlement, RealPage can not use that real-time knowledge to find out worth suggestions. As an alternative, the one nonpublic knowledge that can be utilized to coach the software program's algorithm have to be not less than one 12 months outdated.

"What does this imply for you and your loved ones?" Slater stated in a video assertion. "It means extra actual competitors in native housing markets. It means rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm."

RealPage lawyer Stephen Weissman stated the corporate is happy the DOJ labored with them to settle the matter.

"There was quite a lot of misinformation about how RealPage's software program works and the worth it offers for each housing suppliers and renters," Weissman stated in a press release. "We imagine that RealPage's historic use of aggregated and anonymized nonpublic knowledge, which embrace rents which might be sometimes decrease than marketed rents, has led to decrease rents, much less vacancies, and extra procompetitive results."

Over the previous few months, greater than two dozen property administration firms have reached numerous settlements over their use of RealPage, together with Greystar, the nation's largest landlord, which agreed to pay $50 million to settle a category motion lawsuit, and $7 million to settle a separate lawsuit filed by 9 states.

The governors of California and New York signed legal guidelines final month to crack down on rent-setting software program, and a rising checklist of cities, together with Philadelphia and Seattle, have handed ordinances towards the apply.

Ten states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington — had joined the DOJ's antitrust lawsuit. These states weren't a part of Monday's settlement.