U.S. News

Nine States Just Won $7 Million From the Company That Used an Algorithm to Raise Your Rent

By Mike Harper · June 19, 2026

For years, renters across the country noticed that their apartments seemed to raise rent in lockstep with competing buildings — often at the same time, by similar amounts, in ways that felt coordinated even when no two landlords were in the same room. They were right to be suspicious. Nine attorneys general just settled one of the cases that explains why.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced Thursday that a bipartisan coalition of nine state attorneys general has reached a $7 million settlement with Blackstone’s LivCor, a property management company that manages more than 100,000 apartments across the United States. The case centers on LivCor’s use of RealPage’s algorithmic rent-setting software — a tool that uses data from competing landlords to recommend rental prices across the market.

The DOJ and housing advocates have argued that this practice is the functional equivalent of price-fixing. When multiple competing landlords feed their confidential pricing data into the same algorithm and receive coordinated pricing recommendations in return, the result is that rents rise across an entire market without any individual landlord having to pick up the phone and call a competitor. The software does it automatically.

“Landlords who use these algorithms are sharing competitively sensitive information and receiving coordinated pricing recommendations — that’s not competition, that’s collusion by software.”

That is Attorney General Ellison’s framing. The settlement does not require LivCor to admit wrongdoing. It does require the company to pay $7 million into a fund for affected tenants and to modify its use of algorithmic pricing tools going forward.

The LivCor settlement is part of broader RealPage antitrust litigation that has involved the DOJ, the FTC, and attorneys general in more than a dozen states. RealPage’s YieldStar software — the tool at the center of the cases — is used by property managers responsible for millions of rental units across the country. A DOJ antitrust lawsuit against RealPage itself remains active and is expected to go to trial next year.

The nine AGs who joined the LivCor settlement span both parties — a signal that algorithmic rent collusion has become one of the rare housing policy issues that generates bipartisan concern. Renters in states with the most expensive housing markets have experienced some of the sharpest rent increases since 2020 — increases that housing economists have partially attributed to algorithmic pricing coordination.

Tenants affected by LivCor’s practices may be eligible for a portion of the $7 million settlement fund. Details on how to claim a share will be published through each participating state’s attorney general office.