Last week, the Department of Justice added six large landlords to an ongoing antitrust lawsuit, alleging that they used software to illegally fix rents by sharing pricing information among competitors. The property management companies collectively control 1.3 million units across the United States, and two of them—Greystar and Cushman & Wakefield—have sizable holdings here in Seattle. by Justin Ward Last week, the Department of Justice added six large landlords to an ongoing antitrust lawsuit, alleging that they used software to illegally fix rents by sharing pricing information among competitors. The property management companies collectively control 1.3 million units across the United States, and two of them—Greystar and Cushman & Wakefield—have sizable holdings here in Seattle. Landlords that use software like RealPage’s YieldStar to set rents control at least a third of all apartment buildings in Seattle with more than 10 units. Their campaign donations helped install a landlord-friendly mayor and build the city council majority that delayed the vote on funding social housing and hopes to roll back renter protections.   Greystar is the largest apartment owner in the United States, and according to an analysis of rental registration data, it owns or manages at least 15,000 units in Seattle. Cushman & Wakefield controls nearly 1,500 units across the city, plus a number of office buildings. It possibly manages more units through its subsidiary Pinnacle Property Management, the third-largest property management company in the country, which was also added to the suit. Seattle-born real estate baron and prolific campaign donor John Goodman founded Pinnacle, but Cushman & Wakefield acquired it in 2020. During recent elections, Greystar and Cushman & Wakefield only gave a modest amount to the usual suspects—Mayor Bruce Harrell and Council President Sara Nelson—but other RealPage users were more generous. Recently photographed with Harrell breaking ground on a new development at the former site of the Pink Elephant Car Wash, executives at Holland Partner Group—a RealPage user that controls 2,400 units—dumped nearly $12,000 into the mayor’s campaign, maxed out donations to Chamber-picked council candidates, and spread out $20,000 among various neighborhood committees.   While its focus is national, the Justice Department lawsuit is rooted in a series of class action lawsuits filed in Seattle in 2022. Greystar and Cushman & Wakefield were both defendants in one of the earliest suits by a University of Washington student named Gabriel Navarro, who accused landlords of ruining the highly competitive student housing market by outsourcing pricing and supply decisions to RealPage.   A week later, the same law firm filed another suit, containing more damning evidence from confidential witnesses. One former Greystar employee said he would get a list of prices from RealPage and call the company’s competitors directly for updated information: “It was price-fixing. What else can you call it when you’re literally calling your competition and changing your rate based on what they say?” RealPage also collects pricing data through surveys and incentivizes competitors to share nonpublic, competitively sensitive information through private forums and user groups. In these forums, landlords discourage concessions to renters, like a free month’s rent or other discounts. At the same time, this information sharing eliminates uncertainty, enabling them to raise prices to the highest level the market will bear.  The six companies named in the federal antitrust suit are only the tip of a much larger iceberg. By researching national price-fixing lawsuits against RealPage, the Washington Post identified at least 52 companies that use the software. Firms that use RealPage or a competing product by Yardi Systems control nearly 52,000 units in Seattle that we can identify. One lawsuit claims that RealPage users control 60 percent of apartment housing in Downtown Seattle, Capitol Hill, Central District, South Lake Union, and Queen Anne. By using the algorithm, landlords can drive up rents across all apartment sizes. For example, the average RealPage-managed two-bedroom apartment in Central Seattle rents for nearly $600 more. For three bedrooms, the difference is $2,500. Currently, 34 lawsuits have been filed against RealPage—half of them in Seattle—though most of the personal class action suits were consolidated into one case in the Middle District of Tennessee. However, the future of the Justice Department’s case looks uncertain, with a real estate developer set to take over the White House.  Meanwhile, some large cities like San Francisco and Philadelphia have restricted or banned rent-setting algorithms, and more are considering it.  However, Seattle is unlikely to follow suit anytime soon, given the stranglehold real estate money has on local politics. Much of RealPage’s customer base gives to The Washington Multi-Family Housing Association PAC, which has amassed almost half a million dollars for lobbying. Neighborhood committees, fattened up by landlord dollars, played a pivotal role in the last city council elections, running attack ads against progressives that helped build the current business-friendly majority. Without intervention from the courts or local political action,, it’s doubtful that we’ll ever build our way out of this housing crisis with private development alone. According to the Washington Post, 70 percent of housing built since 2020 is developed by RealPage users. What’s more, one of the selling points of the software is that landlords don’t need to maintain high occupancy to make money. It’s helped property managers realize they can generate higher profits with a large vacancy rate just by raising rents in unison with competitors.  Excluding 2020, vacancy rates are now at their highest in a decade, yet rents continue to rise.