
In a complaint filed today, DC’s attorney general Brian Schwalb alleged that fourteen of DC’s largest landlords used a high-tech tool called RealPage to hide the fact that they were conspiring to keep rental prices high. In the DMV metropolitan area, more than 90% of units in large buildings are priced using RealPage, and the attorney general estimates that this has costed renters millions of dollars in artificially inflated rent prices.
“RealPage and the defendant landlords illegally colluded to artificially raise rents by participating in a centralized, anticompetitive scheme, causing District residents to pay millions of dollars above fair market prices,” said AG Schwalb. “Defendants’ coordinated and anticompetitive conduct amounts to a District-wide housing cartel.”
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The complaint (47 page PDF):