The Kentucky Attorney General’s Office has announced a lawsuit has been filed aimed at protecting Kentucky renters against corporate price fixing.
Attorney General Russell Coleman filed a lawsuit against RealPage, Inc., a multibillion-dollar real estate software and service company based in Texas. The suit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky, also names several landlord organizations as defendants for unlawfully increasing prices of Kentucky renters.
Approximately 560,000 Kentucky households are occupied by renters, and the number continues to grow. As of 2023, 47.5 percent of Kentucky renters were “cost-burdened,” meaning they spend at least 30 percent of their income on rent, according to the attorney general’s office. At the same time, the growing cost of rent in Louisville was second highest among all U.S. markets.
“RealPage operates a commercial revenue management software, controlling more than 80 percent of the rental market,” according to the attorney general’s office. “Since at least 2016, the company has collected sensitive and nonpublic data from competing landlords to generate price recommendations for its clients. That data, which includes rental applications, executed new leases, renewal offers and acceptances and forward-looking occupancy, is fed into an algorithm to recommend the highest possible price a landlord could offer a renter.”
“RealPage replaces competition with coordination. It does so openly and directly, and renters in Kentucky are left paying the price,” the complaint reads.
Coleman alleges RealPage and the landlord organizations engaged in unlawful price fixing while violating federal antitrust laws and Kentucky’s Consumer Protection Act. The attorney general asked the federal court to prevent the defendants from continuing their illegal actions and pay civil penalties up to $10,000 for each violation.
“Out-of-state corporations are taking advantage of Kentuckians, and they’re circumventing the free market to do it,” Coleman said. “These predatory businesses will face serious consequences in Kentucky.”
Read Coleman’s complaint here.
(Photo: Attorney General Russell Coleman)
By Ken Howlett, News Director
Contact Ken at ken@k105.com
