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 large RealPage broke its silence on Tuesday morning concerning the category motion lawsuit in opposition to it and a federal legal antitrust investigation into its Yardi software program.
Within the assertion, RealPage CEO Dana Jones asserted that “false and misleading claims” have been reported concerning the corporate’s income administration software program and denied that the corporate is liable for widespread hire will increase.
“The time is now to address a number of false claims about RealPage’s revenue management software, and how rental housing providers operate when setting rent prices,” Jones stated. “Housing affordability should be the real focus. RealPage is proud of the role our customers play in providing safe and affordable housing to millions of people. Despite the noise, we will continue to innovate with confidence and make sure our solutions continue to benefit residents and housing providers, 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 value information with different suppliers. The lawsuits allege that the price- and occupancy-sharing agreements amounted to a “cartel.”
The lawsuits additionally identify a number of rental housing operators, a few of whom have already settled, akin to Pinnacle Property Administration Providers — one of many largest property managers in the US — and Condominium Revenue REIT.
The identical claims laid out by the lawsuits have reportedly impressed the Division of Justice to launch a legal investigation into RealPage, with studies indicating that the DOJ is wanting into the likelihood RealPage helped facilitate value fixing at a number of the giant rental properties whose house owners use the software program. The legal investigation got here after the DOJ filed a short in help of the collective class motion lawsuits in opposition to RealPage transferring ahead.
“Put simply, RealPage allegedly replaces independent competitive decision-making on prices, which often leads to lower prices for tenants, with a price-fixing combination that violates” antitrust legislation, the DOJ stated in help of the renters’ case.
In its assertion, RealPage pointed to housing affordability as the actual downside 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 clients set their very own costs, have the discretion to simply accept or reject software program value suggestions, will not be punished for denying software program really helpful rents, and settle for suggestions at broadly various charges that they declare are decrease than has been reported.
Within the assertion, RealPage identified that its value suggestion 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 clients utilizing their software program maintained a rental emptiness charge effectively beneath the nationwide common, however didn’t present a selected statistic.
“RealPage revenue management software offers prospective residents and housing providers more options and flexibility in lease terms, aids compliance with Fair Housing laws, does not use any personal or demographic data to generate rent price recommendations, and helps ensure that prospective residents have access to the best pricing available to everyone,” 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.
“Never before have we seen these numbers,” Jay Parsons, then a vice chairman at RealPage, talking a few latest 14.5 p.c soar in condo hire costs. Parsons then requested a colleague if their software program had performed a job, in accordance with ProPublica.
“I think it’s driving it, quite honestly,” Andrew Bowen, one other RealPage govt answered. “As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually.”
