By Jody Godoy
(Reuters) -Cushman & Wakefield was among six large landlords sued by the U.S. Department of Justice over alleged anticompetitive practices in housing rental markets on Tuesday, expanding the DOJ's first case alleging algorithmic collusion.
The DOJ and a coalition of states sued in North Carolina in August, accusing property management software company RealPage of letting landlords collude by sharing their pricing information with the company's software, which then recommends rent prices.
RealPage has denied the allegations, and is seeking to have the lawsuit dismissed.
The amended lawsuit also accuses Cushman, Greystar Real Estate Partners, Blackstone (NYSE:BX)'s LivCor, Camden Property (NYSE:CPT) Trust, Cushman's Pinnacle Property Management Services and Willow Bridge Property Co. of using RealPage to unlawfully share non-public information about rental pricing.
The landlords also shared pricing strategies with competitors via calls and user groups hosted by RealPage, the DOJ said.
A spokesperson for Cushman said that Pinnacle is solely a property manager and does not own properties or set pricing.
Greystar denied engaging in anti-competitive practices and said it would defend against the claims.
Cortland Management has agreed to settle the claims, the DOJ said.
"We believe we were only able to achieve this result because Cortland has invested years and significant internal resources into developing a proprietary revenue management software tool that does not rely on data from external, non-public sources," Cortland said in a statement.
The other companies did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Illinois and Massachusetts joined the lawsuit on Tuesday. The alleged coordination likely harmed renters in local housing markets in those states and California, Colorado, Connecticut, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee, and Washington, according to the lawsuit.