RealPage Breaks Silence On Federal Worth-Fixing Probe Into Yardi System
CEO Dana Jones pushed again in a press release on Tuesday, saying RealPage isn’t liable for an undersupply of leases, elevated demand for properties or inflationary pressures shaping the market.
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Property administration software program big RealPage broke its silence on Tuesday morning concerning the category motion lawsuit towards it and a federal criminal antitrust investigation into its Yardi software program.
Within the assertion, RealPage CEO Dana Jones asserted that “false and deceptive claims” have been reported concerning the corporate’s income administration software program and denied that the corporate is liable for widespread lease will increase.
“The time is now to handle numerous false claims about RealPage’s income administration software program, and the way rental housing suppliers function when setting lease costs,” Jones mentioned. “Housing affordability ought to be the actual focus. RealPage is happy with the position our prospects play in offering secure and inexpensive housing to thousands and thousands of individuals. Regardless of the noise, we’ll proceed to innovate with confidence and ensure our options proceed to learn residents and housing suppliers, alike.”
Quite a few class-action lawsuits allege that landlords used RealPage’s Yardi software program to coordinate a marketing campaign to lift rents to unprecedented highs through the use of RealPage’s algorithms to share rental worth information with different suppliers. The lawsuits allege that the price- and occupancy-sharing agreements amounted to a “cartel.”
The lawsuits additionally title a number of rental housing operators, some of whom have already settled, reminiscent of Pinnacle Property Administration Providers — one of many largest property managers in the US — and Condo Earnings REIT.
The identical claims laid out by the lawsuits have reportedly impressed the Division of Justice to launch a prison investigation into RealPage, with reports indicating that the DOJ is trying into the chance RealPage helped facilitate worth fixing at a number of the giant rental properties whose homeowners use the software program. The prison investigation got here after the DOJ filed a quick in assist of the collective class motion lawsuits towards RealPage transferring ahead.
“Put merely, RealPage allegedly replaces impartial aggressive decision-making on costs, which frequently results in decrease costs for tenants, with a price-fixing mixture that violates” antitrust regulation, the DOJ mentioned in assist of the renters’ case.
In its assertion, RealPage pointed to housing affordability as the actual drawback and argued it shouldn’t be held liable for the persistent undersupply of rental items, elevated demand for rental housing, and inflationary pressures presently shaping the housing market.
It additionally asserted that RealPage prospects set their very own costs, have the discretion to just accept or reject software program worth suggestions, are usually not punished for denying software program really useful rents, and settle for suggestions at extensively various charges that they declare are decrease than has been reported.
Within the assertion, RealPage identified that its worth advice software program makes suggestions in each instructions, up and down, and that it by no means recommends a buyer withhold vacant items from the market. It claimed that prospects utilizing their software program maintained a rental emptiness fee nicely beneath the nationwide common, however didn’t present a particular statistic.
“RealPage income administration software program affords potential residents and housing suppliers extra choices and suppleness in lease phrases, aids compliance with Truthful Housing legal guidelines, doesn’t use any private or demographic information to generate lease worth suggestions, and helps make sure that potential residents have entry to the perfect pricing accessible to everybody,” the assertion reads.
A few of these claims ran opposite, nonetheless, to remarks made by RealPage executives at a 2021 convention, which have been first reported by ProPublica in 2022.
“By no means earlier than have we seen these numbers,” Jay Parsons, then a vice chairman at RealPage, talking a few latest 14.5 % bounce in house lease costs. Parsons then requested a colleague if their software program had performed a task, in line with ProPublica.
“I believe it’s driving it, fairly truthfully,” Andrew Bowen, one other RealPage government answered. “As a property supervisor, only a few of us could be prepared to truly elevate rents double digits inside a single month by doing it manually.”
