The deal curbs RealPage’s use of landlords’ secret data to shape rents in housing markets, in what the Justice Department labeled ‘algorithmic coordination.’
RealPage has agreed to settle a Department of Justice (DOJ) antitrust case accusing the real estate software company of enabling landlords across the United States to coordinate rental prices through its algorithmic pricing tools, in what Trump administration officials said was a major step in lowering rent costs.
The proposed consent judgment, filed on Nov. 24 in federal court, would bar RealPage from using competitors’ real-time, nonpublic data to generate rent recommendations and would force the company to redesign features that regulators say helped align pricing among rival landlords.
Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater, head of the DOJ’s Antitrust Division, said the settlement is a “big step in keeping our rental housing markets fair and competitive,” calling RealPage’s system an engine of coordination that replaced independent pricing decisions.
Promises Made, Promises Kept 🇺🇸
— Abigail Slater (@AAGSlater) November 24, 2025
Big win for renters and families! Today, we required Realpage to stop its illegal tactics that allowed landlords to increase rental pricing. pic.twitter.com/lvSAjdyGWD
RealPage’s software generates daily rent recommendations drawn from a shared pool of nonpublic, sensitive data submitted by competing landlords. The Justice Department said this setup allowed RealPage to act as an algorithmic middleman—using rivals’ confidential information to push properties toward higher prices and discourage price cuts.
Even though landlords were not required to follow RealPage recommendations, investigators said many effectively outsourced pricing decisions to the platform and its algorithms, aligning rents across competing buildings and “replacing competition with coordination.”
“Landlords fed their confidential data into a shared algorithm that generated daily rent recommendations,“ Slater said. ”RealPage was replacing competition with coordination, and renters paid the price.”
Curbs on Algorithmic Pricing
Under the settlement, which a judge must still approve, RealPage must stop using rival landlords’ confidential lease and occupancy data to set rents in real time, limit its algorithms to nonpublic information that is at least 12 months old, and end highly-localized pricing tools that pushed rents higher block by block.
The company must also remove features that discouraged landlords from cutting prices, halt its collection of sensitive market-survey data, and operate under a court-appointed monitor for at least three years.
Slater described the relief as effectively equivalent to what it would have sought after trial, but delivered years sooner.
“It means more real competition in local housing markets. It means rents set by the market, not by a secret algorithm,“ she said. ”It is a win for renters, and it means more affordable options for Americans trying to make ends meet.”
The case is part of the division’s broader crackdown on what it calls “algorithmic coordination,” information sharing, and other anticompetitive practices in housing markets across the United States.
By Tom Ozimek
