By the Office of Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes
Attorney General Kris Mayes’ Office has filed a lawsuit against RealPage, Inc. and nine major residential apartment landlords operating in Arizona for conspiring to illegally raise rents for hundreds of thousands of Arizona renters in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas.
RealPage is a software company that offers what it calls “revenue management” to its clients, including those named as its co-defendants in this lawsuit.
“The conspiracy allegedly engaged in by RealPage and these landlords has harmed Arizonans and directly contributed to Arizona’s affordable housing crisis,” said Attorney General Mayes. “In the last two years, residential rents in Phoenix and Tucson have risen by at least 30% in large part because of this conspiracy that stifled fair competition and essentially established a rental monopoly in our state’s two largest metro areas. RealPage and its co-defendants must be held accountable for their role in the astronomical rent increases forced on Arizonans.”
The State’s lawsuit alleges RealPage’s revenue management software works by compiling competitively sensitive data on pricing and occupancy from competitors in the market for multifamily apartment leases and then directing the competitors who have entered the conspiracy on which units to rent and at what price.
The Attorney General’s lawsuit specifically alleges that:
- The defendant landlords illegally colluded with RealPage to artificially raise rents and concealed their conspiracy from the public.By providing highly detailed, sensitive, non-public leasing data with RealPage, the defendant landlords departed from normal competitive behavior and engaged in a price-fixing conspiracy. RealPage then used its revenue management algorithm to illegally set prices for all participants.
- RealPage’s conspiracy with the landlord co-defendants violates both the Arizona Uniform State Antitrust Act and the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act. Arizona’s antitrust law prohibits conspiracies in restraint of trade and attempts to establish monopolies to control or fix prices. The State’s consumer fraud statute makes it unlawful for companies to engage in deceptive or unfair acts or practices or to conceal or suppress material facts in connection with a sale, in this case, apartment leases.
- The illegal practices of the defendants led to artificially inflated rental prices and caused Phoenix and Tucson-area residents to pay millions of dollars more in rent. Defendants conspired to enrich themselves during a period when inflation was at historic highs and Arizona renters struggled to keep up with massive rent increases.
The landlords named in the lawsuit are:
- Apartment Management Consultants, L.L.C.,
- Avenue5 Residential, L.L.C.,
- BH Management Services, L.L.C.,
- Camden Property Trust,
- Crow Holdings, L.P./Trammell Crow Residential,
- Greystar Management Services, L.P.,
- HSL Properties, Inc.,
- RPM Living, L.L.C., and
- Weidner Property Management, L.L.C. (Source)