N.C. Attorney General Jeff Jackson sued six landlords last Tuesday for allegedly raising rents by illegally colluding with property management software company RealPage. The lawsuit expands on an existing case against the company from his predecessor, now-N.C. Gov. Josh Stein.
The 161-page complaint alleges that the landlords used nonpublic information and RealPage’s products to charge higher rents than what market forces would have determined. The filing states that RealPage used “competitively sensitive data” from landlords to recommend rent prices, and that landlords were aware of how the data would be used.
“North Carolinians are struggling to afford their rent as it is,” Jackson said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “We won’t stand for landlords and real estate companies making the problem worse to line their own pockets.”
The previous lawsuit, which Stein filed in August alongside the U.S. Department of Justice and six other states, targeted only RealPage for allegedly violating antitrust laws.
The updated version announced by Jackson last week was expanded to include six real estate companies that used RealPage — Camden Property Trust; Cortland Management, LLC; Cushman & Wakefield, Inc.; Greystar Real Estate Partners, LLC; Livcor, LLC; Pinnacle Property Management Services, LLC (a subsidiary of Cushman & Wakefield); and Willow Bridge Company, LLC — as defendants, as well as two additional states as plaintiffs.
Per the statement from the attorney general’s office, the six property management companies own over 70,000 housing units across North Carolina, including a third of one- and two-bedroom apartments in the Charlotte, Raleigh and Durham-Chapel Hill metro areas.
An independent analysis from The Washington Post released Wednesday found that 34% of multifamily housing units in the Durham-Chapel Hill area and 43% in the Raleigh-Cary area were owned by companies that used RealPage’s services. Out of 236 metropolitan areas measured in the analysis, Durham-Chapel Hill and Raleigh-Cary ranked fourth and second, respectively, in terms of share of multifamily units owned by the lawsuit’s defendants.
RealPage has faced similar lawsuits in recent months — Arizona and the District of Columbia filed suit against RealPage and several landlords in February and November, respectively. The company has denied wrongdoing in both cases.
“We are disappointed that the DOJ added us and other operators to their lawsuit against RealPage,” Greystar, one of the accused landlords, wrote in a Tuesday statement. “Greystar has and will conduct its business with the utmost integrity. At no time did Greystar engage in any anti-competitive practices.”
The case comes amid rising housing costs in the Triangle area. Raleigh and Durham rental costs remain higher than pre-pandemic levels, though some prices have dipped in recent months following a “post-pandemic construction boom.”
Rent for a two-bedroom apartment in the city of Durham has risen from $1,160 per month in March of 2020 to $1,640 in October 2024, while for a one-bedroom apartment, renters have gone from paying $950 to $1,380 per month. According to Zumper, a website that tracks apartment listings, the median rent for “all bedroom counts and property types” in Durham is $1,661 per month as of January 2025 — 12% lower than the national average.
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Samanyu Gangappa is a Trinity sophomore and local/national news editor for the news department.