Is a system to tell landlords how much to charge for rent illegal?

I'm David Brancaccio in New York. If you want to sell a stock, you check the market price on a screen to get the going rate.

What if you're a landlord looking to rent an apartment?

There's a company for that.

It's called Real Page, where Landlords sign up to get rental pricing data,

but is that illegal collusion on prices real

page has been hit with lawsuits in Arizona and Washington marketplaces Matt

Levin has that. Big corporate landlords provide real page with data you can't just see on Zillow.

For example, the Renna Tenant actually pays versus what's advertised publicly.

In return, Real Pages algorithm says,

hey, that Two-Bbed apartment with off-street parking

you got?

Here's what you should charge for it,

based on what everyone else is charging.

University of Wisconsin law professor Peter Carstinson says Realpage is basically a cartel enabler.

That information exchange in and of itself. That's an agreement in restraint of trade.

Arizona and Washington DC have sued Real Page and the landlords that use it for

wide-scale rent fixing.

Real Page did not respond to a request for comment.

In public statements, the company says lawsuits

misunderstand its algorithm. Shanti Singh at the Advocacy Group

tenants together says renters lose bargaining power when a secret algorithm

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