WILMINGTON, N.C. (WECT) – Attorney General Josh Stein and several other Attorneys General filed a lawsuit on Friday, Aug. 23, alleging that RealPage violated antitrust law and pushed artificially high rent prices.

The company sells “revenue management software” to property managers and operates throughout the country and state, including a heavy presence in the Triangle and Charlotte-Mecklenburg areas. Wilmington is also among the areas that the company operates in.

“In exchange for buying and using that software, property managers share detailed, nonpublic, competitively sensitive data with RealPage that includes information about units coming on the market, the rent they are charging, and discounts.

“RealPage uses this nonpublic information to suggest a price that property managers should charge for their apartments to make more money. Then, RealPage uses a range of strategies to induce its clients to automatically accept those recommendations. When they do, prices for comparable apartments become artificially inflated, and renters aren’t able to find a better deal by shopping around,” the AG’s office states.

The median rent in Wake County jumped up 40 percent between 2010 and 2020, according to Wake County Board of Commissioners Chair Shinica Thomas.

“Access to affordable housing options is becoming increasingly difficult,” said Monica Burks, Policy Counsel at the Center for Responsible Lending. “Anti-competitive practices that inflate already high housing costs disadvantage individuals and families working hard to secure this basic need.”

You can find the full complaint online as filed in the Middle District of NC by Stein, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Attorneys General of California, Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.

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