High rents are the result of cooperation between real estate agents and landlords: Ministry of Justice

The U.S. Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit against Texas-based real estate company RealPage, accusing the company of artificially inflating rental prices across the country. The lawsuit alleges that RealPage's software uses nonpublic data from landlords to create price recommendations, effectively stifling competition and driving up rents for millions of Americans.

According to the U.S. Department of Justice, RealPage's software allows landlords to share confidential and competitive information and adjust their rents.

“Americans should not have to pay more rent just because a company found a new way to work with landlords to break the law,” the attorney general said. Merrick Garland it said in a statement.

He added: “The rent is damn high and that's one of the reasons why.”

The lawsuit, filed in North Carolina, alleges that RealPage has a monopoly in the commercial revenue management software market, controlling 80% of the market nationwide. The software is used to manage three million rental units across the United States, most of them in the Southern states.

RealPage has denied the allegations, saying its customers have full control over their rental rates and can reject the algorithm's recommendations. “RealPage's revenue management software is intentionally designed to comply with the law, and we have worked constructively with the Department of Justice in the past to prove this,” a company spokesperson said, according to PYMNTS.com.