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Rents are soaring. Is a popular software tool to blame?

Prosecutors say a tech company is helping landlords work together to drive up rents. The lawsuit's outcome could change how we pay for everything.

Big-time apartment owners, it turns out, also had a secret weapon: a Texas company called RealPage, which sells software to property managers to help them set rents and juice their profits. The cases offer a revealing glimpse at how corporate apartment owners rely on technology to wring every last dollar out of tenants, who often have little idea how their rents are calculated or why a double-digit annual percentage increase is justified. To avoid this, the plaintiffs will try to establish that a rim does, in fact, exist — that apartment managers either agreed with one another to use RealPage to collectively raise prices, or at least used its software knowing and expecting that their competitors would do the same and that they would all benefit by participating.

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