Dive Brief:
- The Department of Justice filed a proposed settlement Monday to resolve its claims against Willow Bridge Property Co., one of the country’s largest apartment managers. The United States et al. v. RealPage et al. federal antitrust case alleges that Willow Bridge violated the Sherman Act, which prohibits unfair monopolies, with its use of RealPage’s rent price-setting software.
- The agreement, filed July 6 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina, is part of the DOJ’s ongoing enforcement against algorithmic coordination, use of competitively sensitive data and other anticompetitive practices in rental markets, per a Monday press release from the agency. The deal does not include financial penalties and must still get a judge’s approval.
- The lawsuit alleges that six landlords used RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software to fix rents by illegally collecting and sharing confidential pricing information, enabling them to unfairly set prices in tandem rather than independently as competition laws require. Multifamily Dive reached out to Willow Bridge for comment but did not hear back by publication time.
Dive Insight:
The Justice Department and eight states filed the initial civil antitrust lawsuit against RealPage on Aug. 23, 2024, and amended their complaint on Jan. 7, 2025, to add Willow Bridge and five other apartment management companies as defendants: Greystar, LivCor, Camden Property Trust, Cushman & Wakefield and its subsidiary Pinnacle Property Management Services as well as Cortland Management.
RealPage settled in November 2025, followed by Cortland Management, Greystar and LivCor. Dallas-headquartered Willow Bridge, which was once known as Lincoln Residential, manages over 240,000 units.
According to the July 6 competitive impact statement, the proposed agreement would require Willow Bridge to:
- Refrain from using any algorithm that generates price recommendations using competitively sensitive data or that incorporates certain anticompetitive features.
- Refrain from sharing competitively sensitive information with competitors.
- Accept a court-appointed monitor if it uses an uncertified third-party pricing algorithm.
- Refrain from participating in RealPage-hosted meetings of competing landlords.
- Cooperate with the United States’ claims against other defendants.
Affordability for consumers is only achieved with competition, and that requires companies to make independent pricing decisions, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward said in the release.
“Companies cannot share sensitive data and manipulate AI tools or algorithms to produce market aligned pricing. That is not only illegal, but exploitative of Americans’ everyday housing needs,” Woodward said. “This Department will not stand for it.”
This is not the only ongoing lawsuit related to RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software.
In late 2022 and early 2023, a slew of class-action lawsuits were filed against RealPage and approximately 50 of the largest apartment owners and operators, alleging that its software enabled landlords to collude to raise rent prices in violation of antitrust law. Those cases were centralized into In Re: RealPage, Inc., Rental Software Antitrust Litigation in April 2023, and so far, nearly 40 landlords have settled for a total of $360 million.
In addition, several states have filed their own separate lawsuits — New Jersey, Arizona, Washington, Kentucky, Maryland and Nevada — as well as Washington, D.C.
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