AG: Landlord LivCor to pay settlement, cooperate in RealPage antitrust case

DENVER — Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said last week that his office, along with a coalition of eight other attorneys general, had reached a $7 million settlement with landlord and property manager LivCor LLC over its use of RealPage software. 

“The settlement resolves allegations that LivCor used RealPage’s revenue management system to fix rental prices with competing landlords by illegally sharing and gathering confidential pricing information,” Weiser’s office said in a news release. “This conduct interfered with the normal competitive process and enabled landlords to keep prices higher, even in conditions when landlords naturally would lower prices.”

The settlement, according to the release, bans LivCor from using “software offered by any company that uses competitively sensitive information to fix rent prices” and requires that the company cooperate in the ongoing prosecution of RealPage and other defendant landlords.

corporate landlords use algorithms to collude, artificially hike rents, and maximize their profits off the backs of workers, seniors, families who are just looking for a place to live. Ending the use of algorithmic rental price fixing is just one of many tools we need to level the playing field. Today’s settlement will end this anticompetitive conduct and bring fairness back to the market for renters,” Weiser said in the release.

The nine states that sued LivCor will share the $7 million settlement, with Colorado expected to receive $841,500.

The attorney general’s office has gone after corporate landlords several times during Weiser’s tenure in the job, including last year when it sued Greystar for using “deceptive advertising” to lure renters, “then fleecing those tenants out of millions of dollars by charging mandatory, fixed fees not included in the advertised price for an apartment.” That lawsuit was also settled.

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