AI incident ·
RealPage Algorithm Allegedly Inflates Rents and Reduces Competition in Housing Market
On this page 8 sections
In brief
An AI system built by Thoma Bravo, Realpage and 1 other and deployed by Realpage allegedly harmed Renters.
- Risk domain
- Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms
- Occurred
- Coverage
- 14 reports
What happened
RealPage’s YieldStar pricing algorithm is at the center of allegations that it enabled landlords to coordinate rent increases by sharing nonpublic pricing and occupancy data, raising rents artificially and reducing competition. On January 7, 2025, the U.S. Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against six major landlords, alleging that they used the algorithm and other direct communication methods to stifle competition, harming renters nationwide.
Laws on record for this risk area
Policy angle: Classified under Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms (Increased inequality and decline in employment quality) in the MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy; 4 instruments on record cover this risk area.
- Framework Convention on AI (CETS 225)
- India DPDP Act
- Law on Artificial Intelligence (2025)
- Law No. 132/2025 on artificial intelligence
Matched from the record's risk category and country to the instruments in effect recorded here: a law listed covers the area, which is not a finding that it applies to this incident. A reviewer can correct the match in the repository (data/external/incident_overrides.yaml).
News reports (14)
Titles link to the original publisher; report text is not reproduced here.
Who was involved
- Alleged deployer
- Realpage
- Alleged developer
- Thoma Bravo, Realpage, Jeffrey Roper
- Alleged harmed party
- Renters
Classification (MIT AI Risk Repository taxonomy)
- Risk domain
- Socioeconomic & Environmental Harms
- Causal entity
- AI
- Intent
- Intentional
- Timing
- Post-deployment
- Harm level
- —
- Sectors
- —
- Countries
- —
Risk entries describing this failure mode
Entries from the MIT AI Risk Repository coded to subdomain 6.2.
- Societal inequality
"Societal inequality - Increased difference in social status or wealth between individuals or groups caused or amplified by a technology system, leading to the loss of social and community wellbeing/cohesion and destabil...
- Societal destabilisation
"Societal destabilisation - Societal instability in the form of strikes, demonstrations and other types of civil unrest caused by loss of jobs to technology, unfair algorithmic outcomes, disinformation, etc."
- Labour exploitation
"Labour exploitation - Use of under-paid and/or offshore labour to develop, manage or optimise a technology system."
- Job loss/losses
"Job loss/losses - Replacement/displacement of human jobs by a technology system, leading to increased unemployment, inequality, reduced consumer spending, and social friction."
- Political instability
"Political instability - Political polarisation or unrest caused by increased inequality, job losses, over- dependence on technology making societies vulnerable to systemic failures, etc, arising from or amplified by the...
- Increased income disparity
"While AI is predicted to bring increased GDP per capita by performing existing jobs more efficiently and compensating for a decline in the workforce, especially due to population aging, the potential substitution of man...
- Economic
"AI is predicted to bring increased GDP per capita by performing existing jobs more efficiently and compensating for a decline in the workforce, especially due to population aging, the potential substitution of many low-...
- Effects on Inequality
"LLMs could potentially worsen socioeconomic inequalities (Capraro et al., 2023). Effects on inequal- ity are closely linked to the effects of LLMs on workers but ultimately depend on how the fruits of technological prog...
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Source record: incident #376 on the AI Incident Database · all 14 reports