Chuck Darwin<p>The Department of Justice and eight states on Friday <br />💪🏽sued the maker of rent-setting software that ⚠️critics blame for sending rents soaring in apartment buildings across the country.</p><p>The civil lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Greensboro, North Carolina, accuses Texas tech company ❌RealPage of <br />taking part in an <a href="https://c.im/tags/illegal" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>illegal</span></a> <a href="https://c.im/tags/price" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>price</span></a>-<a href="https://c.im/tags/fixing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>fixing</span></a> scheme to reduce competition among landlords so they can 🔹boost prices — and profits. </p><p>It also alleges the company took over the market for such price-setting software, effectively <a href="https://c.im/tags/monopolizing" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>monopolizing</span></a> it.</p><p>“<a href="https://c.im/tags/RealPage" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>RealPage</span></a> has built a business out of frustrating the natural forces of vigorous competition,” said Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter at a news conference Friday with top department officials. </p><p>✅“The time has come to stop this illegal conduct.”<br />The antitrust lawsuit is the latest <br />— and most dramatic <br />— development to follow a 2022 ProPublica investigation that examined RealPage’s role in helping landlords set rent prices across the country, <br />an arrangement that legal experts said could result in <a href="https://c.im/tags/cartel" class="mention hashtag" rel="tag">#<span>cartel</span></a>-like behavior. <br />Since then, senators have introduced legislation seeking to ban such practices, <br />tenants have filed dozens of ongoing federal lawsuits, <br />and San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors moved to bar landlords from using similar algorithms to set rents.</p><p><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/realpage-lawsuit-doj-antitrustdoj-files-antitrust-suit-against-maker-of-rent-setting-algorithm" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" translate="no"><span class="invisible">https://www.</span><span class="ellipsis">propublica.org/article/realpag</span><span class="invisible">e-lawsuit-doj-antitrustdoj-files-antitrust-suit-against-maker-of-rent-setting-algorithm</span></a></p>