Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown has filed a lawsuit against RealPage Inc., a Texas-based real estate technology company, and six of the state’s largest landlords, alleging collusion to artificially inflate rents for more than 100,000 apartments statewide.

The lawsuit, submitted in Prince George’s County Circuit Court, accuses the defendants of violating the Maryland Antitrust Act by engaging in anticompetitive practices. It seeks monetary damages and an injunction to prevent further violations.

“RealPage and the named landlords worked together to raise the cost of their apartments, making it hard for Maryland renters to put a roof over their heads,” said Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown in the Baltimore Sun. “Our Office is committed to holding landlords accountable so Marylanders can afford their rent.”

Alleged Collusion and Antitrust Violations

The complaint alleges that RealPage’s revenue management software, designed to optimize landlord revenue, was central to the scheme. The software uses sensitive data to calculate rental prices based on supply and demand trends, leading to rents higher than those in a competitive market.

“Defendant Landlords have extracted these inflated rents by agreeing to forgo price competition with one another and, instead, delegate their price-setting authority to a centralized entity — RealPage,” the lawsuit states. “The RM Software is programmed to push rents above competitive prices.”

According to the attorney general’s office, the landlords shared private data, such as occupancy rates, prospective tenant visits, and new lease metrics, to feed into RealPage’s system. This exchange of non-public, competitively sensitive information allegedly enabled RealPage to further manipulate rental prices.

The landlords named in the lawsuit include:

• Morgan Properties Company, LLC (Delaware, headquartered in Pennsylvania)
• Bozzuto Management Company (Maryland, headquartered in Greenbelt)
• Greystar Management Services, LLC (Delaware, headquartered in South Carolina)
• AvalonBay Communities, Inc. (Maryland, headquartered in Virginia)
• UDR, Inc. (Maryland, headquartered in Colorado)
• Highmark Residential, LLC (Delaware, headquartered in Texas)

Worsening Maryland’s Housing Crisis

The lawsuit highlights Maryland’s ongoing affordable housing crisis. As of 2023, housing costs in Maryland were 44% above the national average, with an affordable housing deficit of approximately 96,000 units.

“Defendants’ anticompetitive agreement has exacerbated Maryland’s affordable housing crisis, forcing Maryland renters to overpay, month after month, for what is typically the single largest expense in their lives: rent,” the complaint states. “Every dollar of increased rent that the cartel illegally squeezes from Maryland renters is a dollar that those renters cannot save, invest for retirement, or spend on other daily necessities, such as groceries, healthcare, and childcare.”

Broader Implications

This legal action comes amid a growing national spotlight on housing affordability and antitrust concerns within the rental market. Maryland’s lawsuit parallels a similar case in Colorado, where the attorney general filed a lawsuit against Greystar, one of the landlords named in Maryland’s complaint.