Court Denies RealPage and Landlords' Bid to Escape Rent-Pricing Lawsuit Backed by California
OAKLAND — A federal judge in North Carolina has denied RealPage's and major landlords' attempt to escape a rent-pricing lawsuit brought by California Attorney General Rob Bonta, the U.S. Department of Justice and a coalition of states, Bonta's office announced on October 2. The U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina ruled in favor of the coalition, refused to let the landlords out of the case, and denied the software company's motion to have the case thrown out.
In 2024, Bonta, the Justice Department and the states sued RealPage, alleging the company used landlords' competitively sensitive data to create a pricing algorithm that violated antitrust laws. In 2025, an amended complaint added some of the largest property management companies in the country — Camden, Pinnacle, LivCor, Willow Bridge and Greystar — alleging they maintained an unlawful pricing alignment scheme that artificially inflated rents and maintained a minimum pricing floor against market trends.
According to the Attorney General, RealPage amasses competitively sensitive data from competing landlords and uses it to recommend prices not just for a landlord's own units but across rival subscribers, so that rents stayed the same — or rose — even when rental supply was high. California has 17 million renters, and an estimated 700,000 Californians are at risk of eviction.
"Both RealPage and the large landlords that use it attempted to evade responsibility for conduct that has artificially inflated rent prices nationwide. This week, a court agreed with California and a bipartisan coalition of attorneys general and ordered RealPage and its landlords to answer to the states' complaint," Bonta said. "Our lawsuit against RealPage alleges it misused private and sensitive consumer data to take the competition out of the rental industry, leaving renters no other choice but to pay the inflated prices recommended to landlords."
Bonta has already settled with two landlords, most recently joining a bipartisan coalition in a $7 million settlement with LivCor; he has also reached a settlement with Greystar. The lawsuits against Camden, Pinnacle, Willow Bridge and RealPage remain ongoing, joined by the attorneys general of Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon and Tennessee. The suit asks the court to stop the company and the property managers it works with from sharing non-public information and working together to inflate rents.
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：洛杉矶一处公寓小区（资料图，Wikimedia Commons，CC BY-SA 3.0）。An apartment complex in Los Angeles (file photo, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).
