The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed a proposed consent decree to settle claims against LivCor LLC, a Blackstone (NYSE: BX) portfolio company, as part of its ongoing enforcement action against alleged algorithmic coordination and other anticompetitive practices in rental housing markets.
Last January, the DOJ and state co-plaintiffs filed a complaint alleging that LivCor, along with five other landlords, actively participated in a scheme to set their rents using each other’s competitively sensitive information through common pricing algorithms with software from RealPage Inc. LivCor and the other landlords were also accused of strategizing over topics including pricing and selected parameters for RealPage’s software.
If approved by the court, the settlement would require LivCor to refrain from using any anticompetitive algorithm that generates pricing recommendations using its competitors’ competitively sensitive data or that incorporates certain anticompetitive features. The company would also be forced to refrain from sharing competitively sensitive information with competitors and to accept a court-appointed monitor if it uses a third-party pricing algorithm that is not certified pursuant to the terms of the consent decree.
While the consent decree does not carry a financial penalty or the acknowledgment of wrongdoing, the company would be required to cooperate with the DOJ in claims against other defendants.
The consent decree follows the DOJ’s enforcement actions against RealPage and the landlords Cortland Management LLC and Greystar Management Services LLC.
“The Trump-Vance Administration is committed to an economy that works for all Americans,” said Assistant Attorney General Abigail Slater of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division. “Landlords across America are on notice that the competition laws protect renters from the harms caused by competitors sharing competitively sensitive information or aligning prices, whether through an algorithm or otherwise.”
