Yesterday, Trump Antitrust Division chief, Gail Slater, announced that the Antitrust Division was settling the lawsuit with RealPage, claiming a “big win for renters and families!” Here’s Slater’s video explaining the settlement, signing off with “Happy thanksgiving to all, even the haters.”
BULLSHYTE!
So what does this deal actually mean? Well, some of the most obviously bad RealPage activity is now barred, such as overt sharing of non-public information among landlords (though “non-public” is actually a pretty small set of competitively sensitive information). Pricing advisors and default rent increase features similarly have new restrictions. And there’s an independent monitor.
But there is a reason that RealPage’s counsel is so positive about the settlement. The settlement is a set of “complex behavioral remedies” that have such a poor track record of being enforced. And they feel full of loopholes that will allow the company to approximate much of the earlier behavior. For instance, there are lots of different rules on “synthetic curves,” “unaffiliated property data,” “surrogate data,” exceptions of exceptions, and much of the terminology does not match up with the original complaint. If I were a defense lawyer trying to insert loopholes into a settlement, this kind of document is what I’d propose.
A White House report released late last year estimated that the kind of algorithmic pricing that RealPage enables cost renters across the US a total of nearly $4 billion in 2023 alone. The report characterized that estimate as conservative.
The states that joined the DOJ lawsuit were not listed on the settlement.
Last week, California, North Carolina, and other states announced a separate settlement with the apartment management giant Greystar, one of the companies that used RealPage software to set rents.
Under the state deal, Greystar agreed to pay $7 million in penalties and stop using RealPage’s software or similar products for pricing.
Business as usual continues methinks. Actually worse than that. I cannot find any fine imposed. At Least JP Morgan gets fined when it violates the law, not equal to the profits the malfeasances yielded, but at least something. A cost of business don’t ya know.