RealPage

“The conduct in these markets raises significant anticompetitive concerns.” Senator Klobuchar wrote in a letter to the Department of Justice.Image: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar along with other Senate Democrats are calling for an investigation into the real estate monopoly guided by RealPage, a software used by some landlords to set monthly rent prices for apartments.Klobuchar, chair of the Senate Subcommittee on Competition Policy, Antitrust and Consumer Rights, authored a letter…

Photo: Brandon Bell (Getty Images)Is a tech company partially responsible for skyrocketing rent prices? That’s the story, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in California this week.Critics allege that Texas-based RealPage, which sells real estate and property management software, has helped landlords prey on unsuspecting tenants via its price-setting algorithm YieldStar. The program does a landlord’s financial calculations for them, assessing particular properties and then spitting out what it thinks is a fair…

The third quarter of every year is historically the busiest for apartment rentals, but demand fell this year, according to RealPage.It's the first time the rental technology platform has recorded a third-quarter drop in the 30 years it's been tracking the metric. Demand fell by more than 82,000 units nationally, according to the report.This came after a record number of new renters filled apartments during the first two years of the Covid pandemic. Now, household formation appears to have stalled, with more renters now…