Dive Brief:
- A federal judge in New Jersey has narrowed the scope of an April 2025 antitrust lawsuit against rental software company RealPage and 10 of the biggest landlords operating in the state, partially dismissing claims brought by New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin and the state’s Division of Consumer Affairs, court documents show.
- U.S. District Judge Madeline Cox Arleo issued a ruling in the United States District Court, District of New Jersey on March 31 that partially granted joint motions to dismiss filed by a group of defendants as well as four individual motions from specific landlords: Aion Management, Cammeby’s Management Co. of New Jersey and The Kamson Corp., Russo and AvalonBay.
- Arleo’s opinion is sealed to allow plaintiffs two weeks to file any proposed redactions. The complaint also names Bozzuto; Greystar; LeFrak Estates and its subsidiary, Realty Operations Group; Morgan Properties; and Veris Residential.
Dive Insight:
The lawsuit accused the defendants of colluding to raise rent prices in violation of state and federal antitrust and consumer protection laws, and claims the alleged scheme forced renters to overpay and contributed to New Jersey’s shortage of affordable housing. Specifically, the suit alleges multiple violations of the federal Sherman Act, the New Jersey Antitrust Act and the New Jersey Consumer Fraud Act.
However, Richardson, Texas-based RealPage and the landlords said in a July 29, 2025, joint motion to dismiss that Platkin did not plausibly allege any conspiracy among them.
“This case is the latest in a series of baseless lawsuits contending that by merely licensing RealPage’s revenue management software, owners and managers of multifamily residential apartments conspired to fix rents in violation of the antitrust laws,” defendants said.
The suit alleges a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, where a common vertical supplier called the “hub,” in this case RealPage, enters a series of individual agreements with competing customers called the “spokes,” in this case landlords, and the spokes enter an agreement among one another, called the “rim,” per the motion to dismiss.
Defendants say that plaintiffs have not plausibly alleged the rim of the conspiracy — that is, an agreement among landlords to use RealPage revenue management software to set prices or exchange non-public information. They also say that the plaintiffs’ arguments rely upon circumstantial evidence.
The lawsuit seeks several remedies, including:
- An injunction to stop the defendants from engaging in what the attorney general’s office calls anticompetitive and consumer fraud practices.
- The appointment of a corporate monitor — at the defendants’ expense — to ensure implementation of all structural or practice remedies ordered by the court and not to engage in further unlawful conduct.
- Equitable relief, civil penalties, damages and to return any profits generated in New Jersey through unlawful behavior.
When RealPage settled a similar lawsuit with the Justice Department in November last year, it agreed to limit data collection but paid no financial penalties or damages or findings or admissions of wrongdoing. At the time, RealPage said the settlement boosts confidence for the housing industry and demonstrates that its software can be used in compliance with the views of federal antitrust enforcers.
The previous month, dozens of property management firms agreed to resolve a 2023 class-action lawsuit alleging that they conspired to inflate rental prices using RealPage software. However, attorneys general from New Jersey, Maryland, Kentucky and Washington, D.C., asked a federal judge to reject the nearly $142 million in settlements, arguing that the deals could undermine their ongoing legal actions.
Santa Barbara, California-based Yardi Systems, a fellow property management software company, also faces a class-action rent price-fixing lawsuit in Washington state.
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