Dive Brief:
- Last week, New York Attorney General Letitia James asked a federal court to toss a lawsuit filed by real estate software provider RealPage that seeks to halt statewide measures restricting algorithmic rent pricing.
- Landlords in New York and across the country have relied upon pricing algorithms that can enable them to charge much higher rents than a competitive market would yield, James said in the motion to dismiss filed Jan. 9 in the U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York.
- In November 2025, RealPage asked for a preliminary injunction on New York’s prohibition on the use of pricing algorithms to set residential rents, which took effect in December 2025. It’s the first state to impose such a ban.
Dive Insight:
On Oct. 16, 2025, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law S.7882, which amends the state’s existing antitrust law, the Donnelly Act, to prohibit the use of pricing algorithms by residential landlords to set rent prices. It comes in the wake of similar citywide prohibitions in Jersey City, New Jersey; Providence, Rhode Island; Philadelphia; Minneapolis; San Francisco; and Seattle.
In response, Richardson, Texas-based RealPage argued in its complaint filed Nov. 26 that the law represents a “sweeping and unconstitutional ban on lawful speech specifically intended to outlaw software developed and sold by companies like Plaintiff RealPage, Inc. that provide information and advice to owners and managers of rental properties.”
In her motion to dismiss the suit, James responded, “Although [RealPage] is by no means the only technology company that landlords have turned to, Plaintiff’s unabashed zeal in promoting its software to stifle competition in the rental housing market is particularly egregious.”
RealPage declined to comment on James’ request to dismiss the suit. The attorney general’s office did not respond to Multifamily Dive as of publication time.
Specifically, the statute prohibits the operation or licensure of any data analytics service or software that involves the pooling of data provided by two or more different property owners or managers, according to a blog post from Palo Alto-headquartered law firm Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, which specializes in technology.
Courts have generally considered the collection of historical competitively sensitive information less likely to impact competition than current data, but New York’s law makes no such distinction, per Wilson Sonsini.
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