North Carolina has joined the US Department of Justice and seven other states in bringing a bipartisan lawsuit against a software business suspected of breaking antitrust laws and unfairly inflating apartment rates.
The lawsuit against RealPage was filed on Friday by North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein, the Department of Justice, and the attorneys general of California, Connecticut, Colorado, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.
The North Carolina Attorney General’s Office alleges that RealPage provides “revenue management software” to property managers around the country, with a strong presence in the Triangle and Charlotte-Mecklenburg regions.
In return for purchasing and utilizing the program, property managers disclose extensive, non-public, competitively sensitive data with RealPage, which includes information on new units on the market, rents charged, and discounts.
According to the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, RealPage uses non-public information to advise a price that property managers should charge for their units to increase profits and then employs a variety of techniques to persuade clients to automatically adopt those suggestions.
As a result, prices for comparable flats are artificially inflated, leaving renters unable to locate a better offer.