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Lawmakers press state’s biggest landlords over whether they used RealPage software to inflate rents — Greystar, Brookfield Properties, Cushman and Wakefield, Blackstone’s Apartment Income REIT among dozen named

Federal lawmakers want to know how landlords used software made by RealPage, which gathers competitively sensitive leasing data.

The letters come in the wake of a sprawling antitrust lawsuit filed by the Department of Justice this month against the company RealPage over software it developed that gathers competitively sensitive leasing data from the landlords of millions of units to algorithmically suggest rental prices. While the lawsuit plays out, Senators Elizabeth Warren and Edward Markey, and US Representative Seth Moulton, are shifting attention to the companies that have allegedly used the software to help suggest rent prices, including firms that develop and own thousands of apartments in Massachusetts. Warren, who has long decried corporate landlords as harmful to everyday renters, said Wednesday that cracking down on tactics that inflate rent prices is key to solving the broader housing crisis.

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