Renting residents are claiming in a lawsuit that there is price-fixing in the local housing market. The suit states that the affected areas include the central neighborhoods of Seattle, including Capitol Hill, the Central District, South Lake Union and Queen Anne. These are the most populated neighborhoods.
An investigation by the non-profit newsroom ProPublica found that software is “overwhelmingly” controlled by the company RealPage. It’s clients in Seattle’s Belltown neighborhood uses the online company in high numbers. It found that “70% of apartments in Belltown were overseen by just 10 property managers, every single one of which used pricing software sold by RealPage.”
The lawsuit filed alleges collusion between leasing companies that worked together to increase rent prices for Seattle residents using a third-party data collection service. The lawsuit states that, “leasing giants began to work together to increase lease prices for Seattle renters. Instead of using an independent pricing metric and supply decisions, they agreed to use a third-party pricing and data collection service, RealPage, to make unit-specific lease adjustments.”
The renters in downtown got fed up and filed a class-action lawsuit accusing 10 major leasing companies of an agreement to artificially inflate the price of residential real estate in the area. The lawsuit alleges that those who currently rent or have rented an apartment maintained by one of the 10 companies since 2010 may have paid artificially inflated rent prices.
And the renters named names. Defendants included Greystar, Trammell Crow Company, Lincoln Property Co., FPI Management, Avenue5, Equity, Essex Property Trust, Thrive, Avalonbay Communities and Security Properties Inc..
More to come on how victims will be compensated. The alleged colluders are expected to deny wrongdoing. RealPage responded to ProPublica’s investigation and lawsuit saying the company “strongly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend against the lawsuit.”
