to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission, asking for an investigation.
Professor Nikolas Guggenberger, who teaches law at the University of Houston, explained how this practice impacts renters. "If they had stopped that merger, the whole situation would look completely different for two reasons. One is they would not have the vast amount of data that they currently have, meaning they couldn't tweak their algorithms as well as they currently can. Second, if you have one algorithm centrally steered by one company, collusion becomes much easier than if you had two companies with competing algorithms," Guggenberger said.
RealPage did not return ABC13's request for comment. But in a statement previously provided to ProPublica, a representative wrote that their company strongly denies the allegations and will vigorously defend against the lawsuit.