DOJ Files Landmark Civil Antitrust Lawsuit Challenging Algorithmic Rental Price-Fixing

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter announced on Monday the filing of a landmark civil antitrust lawsuit in federal district court against major commercial property management software developers, alleging that algorithmic revenue management platforms facilitate unlawful price coordination and stifle competition across millions of rental apartments nationwide.

The complaint, joined by eight state attorneys general, alleges that corporate landlords share proprietary, non-public transactional pricing and occupancy data with algorithmic software vendors, which then feed the pooled data into centralized pricing algorithms to set supracompetitive rents and intentionally restrict unit availability.

Protecting Millions of American Renters from Algorithmic Collusion Federal antitrust prosecutors argued that modern software algorithms have replaced traditional backroom cartels, enabling competing property managers to coordinate rent increases across major metropolitan markets without direct verbal communication.

"Americans are spending an increasingly unsustainable portion of their paychecks on rent, and algorithmic price-fixing is driving up housing costs for working families across the country," Attorney General Merrick Garland said in Washington. "Training an automated algorithm to share non-public data and fix apartment prices is just as illegal under the Sherman Act as meeting in a smoke-filled room to rig bids. The Department of Justice will vigorously enforce our antitrust laws to protect renters from unlawful algorithmic collusion."

Evidentiary Allegations and Multi-State Enforcement The complaint alleges that:

• Non-Public Data Pooling: Competing property managers were required to feed confidential, lease-by-lease transaction data into centralized pricing engines.
• Algorithmic Auto-Acceptance: Landlords accepted algorithmic pricing recommendations over 90 percent of the time, eliminating localized landlord competition.
• Intentional Supply Restraints: Recommending that landlords maintain higher vacancy rates to sustain inflated price floors across neighborhood submarkets.

Commercial real estate software providers stated that revenue management tools optimize market efficiencies. However, tenant rights organizations and economic researchers hailed the federal lawsuit as a historic victory for rental affordability.