Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman is suing real estate software company RealPage over allegations of corporate price fixing.
The federal lawsuit, filed in the Eastern District of Kentucky, accuses RealPage of distorting competition in the rental market by collecting private information — rental costs, lease terms and future apartment availability — and providing pricing recommendations to competing landlords. The lawsuit also names ten out-of-state landlords who control rental properties in Kentucky, particularly in Louisville and Lexington.
In the lawsuit, Coleman said 80% of the rental market in the U.S. is controlled by RealPage through the use of its commercial revenue management software. He argued that RealPage, and the landlords that use its software, are directly responsible for increasing rent.
“RealPage replaces competition with coordination,” the lawsuit reads. “It does so openly and directly, and renters in Kentucky are left paying the price.”
Coleman also highlighted the increasing financial burden renters face in Kentucky.
Louisville had the highest apartment rent increases in the country, according to the real estate data firm CoStar, with rents increasing by 5% year-over-year. In Lexington, the city’s most recent affordable housing needs assessment showed the median rent increased nearly 50% between 2019 and 2024.
The rising cost of rent has left 47.5% of Kentuckians cost-burdened, meaning they are spending more than a third of their income just on housing.
The lawsuit attributes inflated rent prices, at least in part, to coordination by landlords who would otherwise be competing to win over tenants. Coleman said RealPage markets its software as explicitly anticompetitive, highlighting statements from the company's VP of Revenue Management Advisory Services describing the “greater good in everybody succeeding versus essentially trying to compete against one another” and saying that if more landlords used RealPage’s software then they could “move in unison versus against each other.”
“To RealPage, the ‘greater good’ is served by ensuring that otherwise competing
landlords rob Americans of the fruits of competition—lower rental prices, better leasing terms,
more concessions,” Coleman argues.
RealPage did not respond to LPM News’ request for comment on the complaint, which represents only Coleman’s side of the issue.
In a statement to WAVE3, RealPage senior vice president Jennifer Bowcock said the attorney general “irresponsibly recycled the inaccuracies of predecessor cases” and that the lawsuit is based on “a fundamental misunderstanding” of how the company’s software works.
“RealPage software uses data responsibly, aids compliance with Fair Housing laws, rent control laws and state of emergency price gouging laws and does not use any personal or demographic data to generate rent price recommendations,” Bowcock said. “We believe the claims brought by Kentucky AG Russell Coleman are devoid of merit and will do nothing to make housing more affordable.”
RealPage is facing similar lawsuits from attorneys general in California, North Carolina, Colorado, and Tennessee.
In April, North Carolina and Colorado reached a settlement with one landlord, Cortland Management LLC, which agreed to stop using sensitive data from its competitors to inform its pricing model. The states’ lawsuit against RealPage and other landlords is still ongoing.
The U.S. Department of Justice, along with a bipartisan group of attorneys generals, also filed an antitrust lawsuit against RealPage last August. Like Kentucky’s complaint, that lawsuit alleges the company’s software allows landlords to avoid competing on the merits of their offerings to the detriment of renters.
The Louisville Tenants Union, which has been organizing renters across the city, applauded Coleman’s lawsuit Thursday.
Josh Poe, field organizing director with the Tenants Union, said RealPage’s algorithmic pricing model is just one issue created by a national policy that treats housing as a commodity.
“A tenant needs a home to live in, just a basic necessity,” he said. “It should be a guaranteed human right, but our housing system sees that as a vehicle to create profit.”
Poe said what RealPage and the antitrust lawsuits have exposed is “that we basically live in a scam economy.”
“A tenant living in a building, eight years ago they were paying $800, now they’re paying $1,200 to $1,500 and their conditions have gotten worse,” he said. “That’s not how a free market is supposed to function.”
The Louisville Tenants Union has been working to expand the number of properties where renters are organized and are fighting for collectively bargained leases. This week, the union won a statewide injunction against OSPM LLC, a property management company out of New Jersey that manages multiple apartment complexes across Kentucky. The injunction prevents OSPM, LLC from retaliating against tenants who are organizing.
Kentucky’s lawsuit against RealPage includes five separate allegations, including violations of the Kentucky Consumer Protection Act and price fixing and information sharing in violation of federal antitrust laws.
The commonwealth is asking the court to stop the alleged illegal actions and fine RealPage and the landlords named in the lawsuit for each violation.
