MINNEAPOLIS, MN – Today, U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN), top Democrat on the Senate Housing Subcommittee, released the following statement after Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced a $7 million settlement with the nation’s largest landlord, Greystar, as part of his ongoing litigation against property management software company RealPage.
“When everything is already so unaffordable, cheating by artificially inflating rent adds insult to injury. These corporate landlords will do anything to pad their pockets and that’s why I’m so appreciative of Attorney General Ellison’s work to bring accountability for Minnesota renters,” said Senator Smith. “I’m pushing legislation to ban these practices nationwide and empower renters. Landlords should be competing on price, lease terms and amenities, not illegally colluding to keep prices high.”
RealPage is accused of using confidential information from landlords such as Greystar in order to inflate rental prices and decrease competition in the free market. Minnesota is expected to receive approximately $500,000 in the settlement.
Smith is a co-sponsor of the End Rent Fixing Act, legislation that would crack down on landlords that collude to set prices with software and price-setting algorithms.
In addition to the monetary payment to the states as a result of Attorney General Ellison’s lawsuit, the proposed consent decree, if approved by the court, would require Greystar to:
- Refrain from using any anticompetitive algorithm that generates pricing recommendations using its competitors’ competitively sensitive data or that incorporates certain anticompetitive features;
- Refrain from sharing competitively sensitive information with competitors;
- Accept a court-appointed monitor if it uses a third-party pricing algorithm that is not certified pursuant to the terms of the consent decree;
- Refrain from attending or participating in RealPage-hosted meetings of competing landlords; and
- Cooperate with Minnesota and other plaintiffs in the ongoing litigation against RealPage and other landlords
Earlier this year, Smith joined an effort to press RealPage to answer for its multi-million dollar lobbying campaign for a provision that would have shielded them from state or local laws regulating improper use of artificial intelligence. She has also pressed RealPage about its algorithmic pricing software and its role in driving up rents across the country.
###
English