Lawmakers Urge DOJ to Review YieldStar; Warn of “De-Facto Price Collusion”

Excerpts from the linked material:

The lawmakers warned that Yieldstar, which landlords use to set prices on millions of rental properties, could be “facilitating de-facto price setting and driving rapid inflation.” On November 22, 2022, the lawmakers sent a letter to RealPage CEO Dana Jones, expressing concern about RealPage’s YieldStar, and its role in driving rising rents and exacerbating inflation. The lawmakers requested information on how this rent-setting software has affected the rental housing market.

While RealPage did not provide all of the requested information that would have provided insight into YieldStar’s direct impact on rent prices, what they did share was alarming, revealing that “the widespread use of … [Yieldstar’s] proprietary rental data by the country’s largest landlords could result in de-facto price-setting by those companies, driving up prices and hurting renters.” Specific findings included:

• Publicly available information from RealPage indicates that the software is used to help set prices for over four million units, which would be approximately 8% of all rental units, and appears to show that the company has access to “transactional apartment data from the rent rolls of 13+ million units.”

• Information provided by RealPage also revealed that the use of YieldStar has been most prevalent in some of the regions most heavily targeted by corporate buyers and with the highest rent increases.

• RealPage provided important information about the extent to which the company facilitates information sharing by and among large institutional landlords – a particular concern given the market share of the product.