Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is joining a national antitrust lawsuit against RealPage Inc. that accused the company of enabling collusion between landlords when setting rent levels.
Minnesota has joined California, Colorado, Connecticut, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington in filing a lawsuit against RealPage Inc. on Friday that accuses it of an “unlawful scheme to decrease competition among landlords in apartment pricing and to monopolize the market for commercial revenue-management software that landlords use to price apartments.”
Landlords in Minnesota use RealPage, a Texas-based property-management software company owned by the private equity firm Thoma Bravo.
The states allege that the company contracted with competing landlords who agreed to share private, sensitive information about their rental rates and lease terms to train RealPage’s algorithmic pricing software.
The software then generated recommendations for landlords based on this sensitive information, including suggested apartment rental pricing and other terms.