Private antitrust litigation: MDL No. 3071 and the Ontario action

analysisPrivate antitrust suits by renters against RealPage were centralised by the Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee as In re RealPage, Inc., Rental Software Antitrust Litigation (No. II), No. 3:23-md-03071 (MDL No. 3071), before Chief Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw, Jr. The court describes the plaintiffs as people who lived in multifamily rental housing from 2016 and who allege a horizontal price-fixing conspiracy between RealPage and multifamily property owners and managers in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act; a separate group of plaintiffs sued over student housing. One of the private suits, No. 3:22-cv-01082, names RealPage, Inc. and its parent entities RealPage Holdings, LLC, RealPage Intermediate Holdings, Inc. and RealPage Parent, LP, together with landlords and managers including BH Management Services, Cortland, Cushman & Wakefield, ECI, Greystar, Highmark Residential, Lincoln Property Co., Mid-America Apartment Communities and Pinnacle, with the United States and the District of Columbia as interested parties; the docket lists the parties without deciding the claims, and the plaintiff, a private individual, is not named here. On December 28, 2023 the court issued a series of opinions on the defendants' motions to dismiss, including motions on the LRO claims and by the Thoma Bravo defendants. The court's information page was last updated in early 2024, the retained records do not include the opinion on RealPage's own motion, and RealPage is not among the defendants that have settled. ^{1 2 3 4}

analysisAs recounted by the court, the plaintiffs allege that RealPage's clients each contract separately with RealPage, pay it fees and provide their commercially sensitive pricing and supply data, renewing the commitment annually, and that RealPage applies its revenue management algorithm to this pool of competitor data to set optimal rents for each client, so that RealPage and its clients have formed an illegal price-fixing cartel. They trace the software from the 2002 YieldStar acquisition from Camden Property Trust, through YieldStar's change in early 2016 from a rent advisory service to "rent-setting software", to the 2017 LRO purchase and the 2020 launch of AIRM, and allege that at the end of 2022 four million of the roughly 19.7 million units served by RealPage software used its revenue management products. These allegations were accepted as true only for the motions to dismiss. After one of the first suits was filed in 2022, a RealPage representative said the company "strongly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend against the lawsuit"; RealPage later said that since October 2022 "false and misleading" statements had been made about the company and its software, and it maintains that its revenue management software is purposely built to be legally compliant, that customers always have total discretion to accept or reject pricing recommendations, and that the lawsuits are without merit. ^{2 5 6 7}

analysisOn December 28, 2023 Chief Judge Crenshaw denied the motions of Thoma Bravo Fund XIII, L.P., Thoma Bravo Fund XIV, L.P. and Thoma Bravo, L.P. to dismiss the multifamily and student-housing complaints. The plaintiffs allege that Thoma Bravo acquired RealPage in April 2021 for $10.2 billion after due diligence that gave it access to RealPage's data, chose a new chief executive and chief operating officer from its portfolio company Sparta Systems, installed its operating partner Charles Goodman as chairman, helped RealPage complete four acquisitions and, on information and belief, was aware of RealPage's alleged anticompetitive activities and acquired it intending to maintain and enhance its cartel profits. The court held that the plaintiffs need not allege communications between Thoma Bravo and RealPage's clients, because the alleged contribution is Thoma Bravo's influence and control over RealPage's operations, including its revenue management software. It is a pleading-stage decision: the court noted that the key alleged events (the 2016 shift to price-setting, the 2017 LRO purchase and the 2020 AIRM launch) predate Thoma Bravo's purchase and that the Thoma Bravo defendants may renew their motion at summary judgment if discovery does not bear out the allegations, and Thoma Bravo argued that no acquisition with a nexus to the alleged conspiracy had been alleged. The claims against the Thoma Bravo defendants proceed. ¹

analysisOn November 15, 2023 the United States, through the Justice Department's Antitrust Division and the U.S. Attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee, filed a Statement of Interest arguing that, although not every use of an algorithm to set prices is a per se violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act, it is per se unlawful when, as alleged there, competitors knowingly combine their sensitive, nonpublic pricing and supply information in an algorithm they rely on in making pricing decisions, expecting that other competitors will do the same. It summarised the complaints as alleging that landlords shared real-time nonpublic data with RealPage and priced in line with its recommendations 80–90% of the time, and took no position on the plaintiffs' allegations of parallel conduct among the landlords. The statement sets out the government's legal view of the allegations; it is not a finding of fact. ²

analysisThe court has preliminarily approved settlements between the class plaintiffs and landlord and property-management defendants that would create a $359,925,000 settlement fund and include changes to the settling defendants' business practices. The settling defendants include Camden Property Trust, Cortland Management, Greystar Management Services, Pinnacle Property Management Services, Mid-America Apartment Communities, Equity Residential, Bozzuto Management, Highmark Residential, Sares Regis Management, Crow Holdings, Trammell Crow Residential, RPM Living, Avenue5 Residential, Bell Partners and BH Management Services among some forty companies; RealPage is not a settling defendant. The class covers renters at properties licensed for RealPage's LRO, YieldStar or AIRM between October 18, 2018 and November 21, 2025, and the court-authorised settlement website set a fairness hearing for October 15, 2026 and a claims deadline of January 29, 2027. The settlement notice states that the settling defendants deny all allegations of wrongdoing and that the court has not decided who is right or wrong; the retained records do not show whether final approval followed the hearing. Camden disclosed in a Form 8-K that on April 7, 2026 it entered into a binding term sheet to settle for $53 million, payable in two equal instalments and inclusive of class recovery, plaintiffs' fees and administration costs, with prospective commitments on the disclosure and use of nonpublic data and its use of revenue management software that it said would not require material changes to its operations; the settlement remained subject to court approval, and Camden stated that it does not admit fault or liability. ^{1 2}

analysisAccording to a legal practitioners' newsletter of January 5, 2026, the preliminary approval order of November 21, 2025 covered settlements then totalling over $141 million and implicitly rejected a challenge by the attorneys general of the District of Columbia, Maryland, Kentucky, New Jersey and Washington, who have their own suits against RealPage and six of the same landlords (Avenue5, Bell Partners, BH Management Services, Bozzuto, First Communities Management and Greystar Management Services) and argued that the broad releases could foreclose their parens patriae claims; RealPage, which had not settled, joined the overlapping landlords' response. The court enjoined class members from pursuing released claims against the settling defendants pending final approval and excluded governmental entities from the class; the settlement total later grew as further landlords settled. The settling defendants answered, as reported by the trade press, that the attorneys general were trying to "threaten resolution of this case so they can seek duplicative damages and attorneys' fees for the private law firms that represent them on contingency." A commercial real estate news report of November 2025 stated that the attorneys general's filing said their investigation, including more than 100 depositions and the review of millions of documents, had "produced compelling evidence of a coordinated, nationwide scheme to inflate rental prices", and noted that Greystar and Cortland had settled with the federal government with cooperation in the antitrust case; this is the attorneys general's characterisation in a court filing, not a finding. ^{3 4 5}

analysisA proposed class action against RealPage and 14 Canadian landlords and property managers, including QuadReal Property Group, Westcorp, FirstService Residential, GWL Realty Advisors, CAPREIT, Dream Unlimited, RioCan, Choice Properties, Tricon Residential and Hollyburn Properties, was issued in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice on November 26, 2024 (No. CV-24-00732002-00CP; the court record titles it against RealPage Canada Inc. and others) on behalf of tenants since November 26, 2009, alleging that they overpaid rent through a scheme using RealPage's YieldStar software. A Canadian news report on the suit in December 2024 said its reporters had found evidence of YieldStar's use in Canada since at least 2017; RealPage told the outlet that its revenue management software has never served more than 1% of the rental market in Canada and that it would vigorously defend itself. The claim was never certified or tested in court: by an order dated April 1, 2026 the court approved the plaintiff's discontinuance before certification, without a ruling on the merits and without affecting proposed class members' right to pursue the same claims individually. The plaintiff is a private individual and is not named here. ^{1 2}