If you rent an apartment in the Triangle, there’s a solid chance that Jeff Jackson and the federal government are accusing your landlord of inflating rental prices.
In a lawsuit filed Tuesday, North Carolina’s new attorney general, the U.S. Department of Justice, and nine other states accuse six major landlords of working with software company RealPage “and each other to share non-public information about rent prices, occupancy, strategies for setting rents, and discounts.” In a press release, the North Carolina Attorney General’s Office said “the sharing of this non-public competitively sensitive information allegedly allowed landlords using RealPage’s products to set higher prices for rent than competitive market forces would have set.”
And the Triangle is potentially one of the most impacted areas in the nation.
On Wednesday, The Washington Post published an interactive map and chart showing the properties managed by companies named in the lawsuit. The Raleigh-Cary area was second on the list, with about 43 percent of multifamily housing units managed by the named companies. Durham-Chapel Hill was fourth, with about 34 percent.
The six companies named in this week’s lawsuit (Greystar, LivCor, Camden, Cushman & Wakefield/Pinnacle, Willow Bridge, and Cortland Management) own or manage more than 70,000 units throughout the state, per the attorney general. Those properties include many of the new, swanky apartment buildings that have recently popped up in downtown areas across the Triangle.
According to The Washington Post, in Durham, the list includes One City Center, Liberty Warehouse, Camden, The Ramsey, Lantower Bullhouse and others. In Raleigh, the list includes The Hue, the Dillon, The Devon, The Gramercy, 400H, and the Metropolitan in downtown Raleigh, 401 Oberlin, 616 at the Village, and Oberlin Court Apartments in the Village District area, as well as Park and Market, Midtown Green, and Lassiter at North Hills in the North Hills area.
Overall “landlords are allegedly using RealPage’s algorithm to set rents for approximately a third of one-bedroom and two-bedroom apartments in the Raleigh, Durham/Chapel Hill, and Charlotte metro areas,” the attorney general’s press release said.
The lawsuit comes after an antitrust investigation into RealPage. Federal prosecutors, then-Attorney General Josh Stein, and attorneys general in seven other states originally sued RealPage in August. That complaint was amended this week with the addition of the six major landlords.
Over the summer, the company denied any wrongdoing.
“The time is now to address a number of false claims about RealPage’s revenue management software, and how rental housing providers operate when setting rent prices,” said Dana Jones, CEO and president, in a statement. “Housing affordability should be the real focus. RealPage is proud of the role our customers play in providing safe and affordable housing to millions of people. Despite the noise, we will continue to innovate with confidence and make sure our solutions continue to benefit residents and housing providers, alike.”
In 2022, a ProPublica investigation found that RealPage’s algorithm uses pricing data from its 31,000-plus clients nationwide to make recommendations to landlords about what rents to charge. Those rents are often higher than what property managers would have otherwise charged, the investigation found.
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Reach Reporter Chase Pellegrini de Paur at chase@indyweek.com. Comment on this story at backtalk@indyweek.com.