North Carolina’s lawsuit against RealPage is a federal antitrust case that Attorney General Jeff Jackson expanded in January 2025 to accuse the software company and six large landlords of using an algorithm to illegally coordinate and inflate apartment rents across the state. The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina in coordination with the U.S. Department of Justice and attorneys general from nine other states.1NC DOJ. Attorney General Jeff Jackson Sues Six Landlords for Illegally Raising North Carolinians’ Rents Three landlord defendants have since settled; litigation against RealPage and the remaining defendants is ongoing as of mid-2026.
What the Lawsuit Alleges
The complaint centers on RealPage’s revenue management software, including its flagship product YieldStar, which gives landlords daily rent recommendations for vacant units. According to the state, the software draws on a data warehouse that includes not just a property’s own occupancy and demand figures but also private lease transaction data from competing properties nearby. It then calculates price elasticity and suggests rents designed to maximize revenue, at times recommending that landlords accept higher vacancy if higher rents on occupied units produce more income overall.2ProPublica. YieldStar Rent Increase RealPage Rent
Former RealPage employees told ProPublica that property managers accepted roughly 90% of the software’s suggestions, and that the system was explicitly designed to remove what its developers called human “empathy” from pricing. RealPage also organized “User Groups” and private subcommittees where rival landlords communicated directly. Antitrust experts have characterized those meetings as a potential red flag for collusion, drawing parallels to 1980s airline price-fixing cases where shared software facilitated coordination among competitors.2ProPublica. YieldStar Rent Increase RealPage Rent
North Carolina alleges the six landlord defendants shared nonpublic, competitively sensitive information with RealPage and with each other, including actual rent prices, occupancy rates, rent-setting strategies, and discount plans. RealPage then fed that data into its algorithm to generate rent recommendations that, according to the lawsuit, pushed rents higher than independent competition would have set them.1NC DOJ. Attorney General Jeff Jackson Sues Six Landlords for Illegally Raising North Carolinians’ Rents The federal portion of the case separately alleges that RealPage holds an illegal monopoly in commercial revenue management software, with at least 80% of the market, in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Act.3Federal Register. United States of America et al. v. RealPage, Inc. et al. — Proposed Final Judgment and Competitive Impact
RealPage has maintained that it uses aggregated, anonymous market data in a legally compliant manner, and the landlord defendants have generally denied engaging in anticompetitive practices.4Duke Chronicle. North Carolina Attorney General Lawsuit Landlords Alleged Collusion Rent Price Increases RealPage
The Landlords Named and Their North Carolina Footprint
The amended complaint Jackson filed on January 7, 2025 added six large property management companies as defendants:4Duke Chronicle. North Carolina Attorney General Lawsuit Landlords Alleged Collusion Rent Price Increases RealPage
- Camden Property Trust
- Cortland Management
- Cushman & Wakefield, and its subsidiary Pinnacle Property Management Services
- Greystar Real Estate Partners
- LivCor, owned by Blackstone
- Willow Bridge Property Company
Together these six companies own more than 70,000 housing units in North Carolina, which the state says amounts to roughly one-third of all one- and two-bedroom apartments in the Charlotte, Raleigh, and Durham–Chapel Hill metro areas.4Duke Chronicle. North Carolina Attorney General Lawsuit Landlords Alleged Collusion Rent Price Increases RealPage The nine other states that joined the case are California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington.1NC DOJ. Attorney General Jeff Jackson Sues Six Landlords for Illegally Raising North Carolinians’ Rents
Where the Case Stands
Three of the six landlord defendants have reached settlements with the state coalition since the amended complaint was filed.
Cortland Management settled in April 2025. It agreed to stop sharing pricing information with competitors and to stop using third-party algorithms to price apartments without court-appointed monitoring. No financial penalty was announced.5NC DOJ. Attorney General Jeff Jackson Reaches Settlement With Landlord to Stop Using RealPage’s Unlawful Software
Greystar, the largest landlord in North Carolina, settled in November 2025 for $7 million with the nine-state coalition. The agreement bars Greystar from using nonpublic competitor data to set rents, from using third-party pricing algorithms without a court-appointed monitor, and from attending RealPage-hosted meetings of competing landlords.6NC DOJ. Attorney General Jeff Jackson Reaches $7 Million Settlement With Largest North Carolina Landlord Over AI Rent Setting
LivCor is covered by a proposed Final Judgment filed on December 23, 2025. The order bars LivCor from licensing or using revenue management software that relies on competitively sensitive data, requires an antitrust compliance policy, and requires cooperation with the government’s ongoing litigation.3Federal Register. United States of America et al. v. RealPage, Inc. et al. — Proposed Final Judgment and Competitive Impact
Litigation continues against Camden Property Trust, Cushman & Wakefield, Pinnacle Property Management Services, and Willow Bridge Property Company.3Federal Register. United States of America et al. v. RealPage, Inc. et al. — Proposed Final Judgment and Competitive Impact
Why North Carolina Did Not Sign the Federal RealPage Deal
On November 24, 2025, the DOJ reached its own proposed consent decree with RealPage. Under the terms, RealPage must stop using competitors’ real-time nonpublic data for pricing recommendations, restrict model training to historic data at least 12 months old, remove features that limited price decreases or aligned pricing among users, cease market surveys that collected competitively sensitive information, and accept a court-appointed monitor.7U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Requires RealPage to End Sharing Competitively Sensitive Information8NPR. RealPage Rent Algorithm Limits Settlement9Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati. DOJ Settles Its Algorithmic Price-Fixing Case Against RealPage
North Carolina and the nine other plaintiff states did not sign that settlement.8NPR. RealPage Rent Algorithm Limits Settlement As of June 2026, North Carolina remains in active litigation against RealPage itself. Jackson has said he intends to push for a stronger outcome, stating: “If I can’t get a fair deal from them, I’ll just take them to trial, and we’ll let a jury decide.”10Pest Stakeholder. North Carolina Reaffirms Commitment to RealPage Lawsuit
What It Means for North Carolina Renters
The lawsuit lands in a state where rent pressure is already acute. Inflation-adjusted gross rent in North Carolina rose 10% between the 2015–19 and 2020–24 periods, reaching a typical $1,228 per month, according to state budget data. Nearly 40% of renter households now spend at least 35% of their income on housing.11NC Office of State Budget and Management. A Tale of Two Housing Economies Forty-eight percent of renters are cost-burdened, compared with 19% of homeowners.12NC Newsline. Housing Affordability, Availability Top the News
The most expensive rental markets overlap with the metros the state says were most affected by RealPage-driven pricing. Durham–Chapel Hill requires an hourly “housing wage” of $36.00 to afford a two-bedroom apartment at fair market rent, followed by Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia at $35.08 and the Raleigh metro at $33.90. A minimum wage worker in North Carolina would need 150 hours per week to afford a two-bedroom unit at fair market rent.13National Low Income Housing Coalition. North Carolina Housing Profile Overview
The settlements secured so far do not include direct consumer refunds for North Carolina tenants. They are structured as injunctive relief and, in Greystar’s case, a payment to the state coalition. Any individual recovery for renters would come from a separate track.
The Private Class Action Is a Separate Case
Renters who have heard about hundreds of millions in RealPage-related settlements are usually hearing about a different proceeding. Private plaintiffs have pursued class-action claims against RealPage and dozens of landlords, consolidated as MDL-3071 in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.14U.S. District Court, Middle District of Tennessee. MDL 3071 Case Information By mid-2026, nearly $360 million in settlements had been reached in that litigation. A first batch of 26 settlements totaling more than $141.8 million received preliminary court approval in November 2025, including a $50 million payout from Greystar. A second batch of 14 settlements totaling $218 million was filed in May 2026, with individual payouts from Equity Residential ($56 million), Camden ($53 million), and Mid-America Apartment Communities ($53 million), among others.15Multifamily Dive. RealPage Settlement Algorithmic Pricing None of the settling defendants admitted fault or liability. That multidistrict case is separate from the one North Carolina is prosecuting, though some of the same companies appear in both.