The Blackstone rent price-fixing lawsuit is an antitrust case accusing Blackstone and several other large landlords of using a shared pricing algorithm, made by a company called RealPage, to inflate apartment rents across the country. The litigation is running on two tracks: a nationwide tenant class action in federal court in Tennessee, and a separate lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice and multiple state attorneys general in North Carolina. Blackstone is not the biggest defendant by legal exposure, but its name has become shorthand for the case because it owns LivCor, one of the landlords named by the DOJ, and because Blackstone itself is a defendant in the private tenant suits.
What the Landlords Are Accused of Doing
The core claim is price-fixing under Section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, which forbids competitors from agreeing to restrain trade.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 1 – Trusts, Etc., in Restraint of Trade Illegal; Penalty Normally, a landlord with empty units has an incentive to cut rent and fill them. The plaintiffs say RealPage’s software removed that incentive by letting competing landlords coordinate through an algorithm instead of through phone calls.
According to the complaints, subscribing landlords fed RealPage confidential business data: what tenants actually paid, executed lease terms, concessions, vacancy rates, and upcoming lease expirations. RealPage’s revenue management system, which includes a product called YieldStar, pooled that information across competing properties in the same market and generated daily pricing recommendations aimed at maximizing collective revenue. Former RealPage employees have said landlords adopted the software’s recommendations roughly 90% of the time. The DOJ’s complaint alleges the software also included features that limited price decreases and aligned pricing across competing users, so a landlord who tried to discount to fill vacancies was pushed back toward the recommended price.2United States Department of Justice. Justice Department Requires RealPage to End the Sharing of Competitively Sensitive Information
RealPage denies that its software is a price-fixing scheme. It says landlords always keep discretion to accept or reject a recommendation, and that the algorithm sometimes recommends decreases or no change depending on the property. The landlord defendants have made similar arguments, saying each company sets its own prices independently and that using common software is not the same as agreeing on prices.
The Tenant Class Action
Tenants across the country sued in multiple federal courts, and the U.S. Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation consolidated the cases into a single proceeding: In re: RealPage, Inc., Rental Software Antitrust Litigation (No. II), Case No. 3:23-md-3071, in the Middle District of Tennessee.3United States Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation. Transfer Order – MDL No. 3071 The defendants include RealPage along with a group of property management companies. Blackstone is named directly, as are Greystar and Camden Property Trust.
The class covers people who lived in multifamily apartment housing beginning in 2016 at properties that used RealPage’s revenue management software.4United States District Court. Middle District of Tennessee – MDL 3071 Case Information In December 2023, the court denied the defendants’ motions to dismiss and let the case move into discovery. That ruling meant the plaintiffs had alleged enough for a full investigation to proceed, and it substantially raised the pressure on defendants to consider settling.
If the plaintiffs win or the case settles, the potential damages are large. Federal antitrust law entitles private plaintiffs to triple their actual damages plus attorneys’ fees.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 US Code 15 – Suits by Persons Injured Applied across millions of apartments over several years, even a small per-unit overcharge tripled could reach the billions.
The DOJ and State Attorneys General Case
The Department of Justice filed its own antitrust lawsuit against RealPage in 2024, joined by attorneys general from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.6United States Department of Justice. US and Plaintiff States v RealPage, Inc It is pending in the Middle District of North Carolina, separate from the tenant MDL.
In January 2025, the government added six landlord defendants alongside RealPage:
- Greystar
- LivCor (a Blackstone portfolio company)
- Camden Property Trust
- Cushman & Wakefield
- Willow Bridge Property Co.
- Cortland Management
Blackstone itself is not named in the DOJ complaint. Its subsidiary LivCor is.7United States Department of Justice. Justice Department Reaches Proposed Consent Decree with LivCor
Settlements Reached So Far
Three defendants have reached proposed consent decrees with the DOJ, and the terms give a clear picture of what the government considers the fix.
RealPage
In November 2025, RealPage reached a proposed consent decree that, if approved, would require it to stop using competitors’ nonpublic data in real-time pricing, limit model training to historical data at least 12 months old, remove features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing between competing users, stop conducting market surveys that collected confidential competitive information, accept a court-appointed monitor, and cooperate with the government’s ongoing case against the landlord defendants.2United States Department of Justice. Justice Department Requires RealPage to End the Sharing of Competitively Sensitive Information The cooperation term is significant for the landlords still in the case, because RealPage would be helping the government build the case against its own former customers.
Cortland Management
Cortland was the first landlord to settle. Its proposed consent decree, filed in January 2025, requires it to stop using third-party revenue management products that rely on competitors’ nonpublic data and to develop its own compliant pricing system.6United States Department of Justice. US and Plaintiff States v RealPage, Inc
LivCor (Blackstone)
In December 2025, LivCor reached its own proposed settlement. It agreed to stop using third-party revenue management products across all its properties by February 2026 and to build a proprietary pricing system that cannot use any nonpublic competitor data and cannot pool pricing across properties with different owners. LivCor must appoint a chief antitrust compliance officer, conduct annual audits, and submit to government inspections of its pricing code.7United States Department of Justice. Justice Department Reaches Proposed Consent Decree with LivCor A court-appointed monitor would be imposed if LivCor violates the agreement.8Federal Register. United States of America et al. v RealPage, Inc. et al. Proposed Final Judgment and Competitive Impact
These DOJ consent decrees resolve the government’s claims against those defendants. They do not resolve the private tenant class action, which is a separate case with separate plaintiffs.
What Affected Tenants Should Do Now
If you rented an apartment managed by a company that used RealPage’s software any time from 2016 onward, you may fall within the class covered by the MDL.4United States District Court. Middle District of Tennessee – MDL 3071 Case Information The practical difficulty is that most renters have no idea what pricing software their landlord used, because RealPage’s tools operate in the background.
As of early 2026, the class action has not settled and there is no claims process yet. You do not need to take any action now to preserve your rights. If the case settles or the plaintiffs win, a formal notice will go out to class members with instructions for filing a claim. The useful thing to do in the meantime is to keep your lease agreements, rent payment records, and the names and addresses of the properties where you lived, since that paperwork is what will establish eligibility later.