Philadelphia Renter Sues Landlord For Using Banned Rent Price-Setting Algorithm

A West Philadelphia renter is suing their property manager and RealPage, the software company at the center of the national fight over rent-setting algorithms, and his case appears to be the first one anyone has brought under Philadelphia's ban on the practice.

Yiyao Liu filed the class-action lawsuit this month in Philadelphia's Court of Common Pleas against Willow Bridge Property Co., which manages the Vue32 apartment building where Liu lives and ranks among the largest residential property managers in the country.

What Philadelphia banned

Since February 2025, the city has barred landlords from working together to set prices and from using software that helps them do it. City Council passed the measure unanimously in October 2024 after Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke introduced it, and his office says this is the first case filed under the ordinance.

The worry behind the law is pretty simple. When a lot of landlords in one city feed their numbers into the same software and then take its pricing suggestions, they can end up raising rents in step with each other instead of competing, so renters lose the discount that competition would normally hand them.

O'Rourke called his bill a preemptive move at the time, since corporate landlords around the country were already using this kind of software.

What the lawsuit claims

Liu alleges that Willow Bridge used RealPage to get rent recommendations built partly on information from competing landlords that the public can't see, which is the specific thing the ordinance prohibits.

A RealPage representative said Monday that the company doesn't comment on active litigation, and Willow Bridge's general counsel didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. RealPage has pushed back on this kind of claim before, saying in a 2024 statement that a Justice Department lawsuit sought "to scapegoat pro-competitive technology that has been used responsibly for years."

The bigger legal fight

Willow Bridge was one of several large landlords the U.S. Department of Justice added as defendants to its antitrust case over RealPage's pricing algorithm. That case settled late last year, and the settlement came with no admission of guilt and no financial penalty.

Other governments have gotten money out of it. Washington, D.C.'s attorney general announced settlements last month with two landlords accused of conspiring to inflate rents through RealPage, and the two agreed to pay $1.4 million between them. Those came out of a 2023 lawsuit the district brought against RealPage and 14 of its largest residential landlords.

San Francisco banned the software first in the summer of 2024, and Philadelphia became the second city that fall. Since then the idea has spread to New Jersey, which banned it statewide, and to smaller cities like Bellingham, Washington.

What the landlord industry says

The Pennsylvania Apartment Association told Council in written testimony that "every industry relies on internal and external data analyses and responsive pricing technology." The group said these tools make operations more efficient in a way that "directly benefit[s] residents and rental communities," and it argued that the software "encourages pricing competition within the marketplace through greater transparency."

What it has done to Philadelphia rents so far

The ban has been law for about a year and a half now, and rents haven't stopped climbing. RentDataNow tracks a typical Philadelphia rent of about $1,814 a month, up 6.5% over the past year, which is running ahead of the national pace.

Sources

• The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Property manager sued for using rent price-setting algorithms that were banned"

• Philadelphia City Council, Councilmember Nicolas O'Rourke's office and the 2024 ordinance

• U.S. Department of Justice, Antitrust Division, RealPage litigation and settlement

• Office of the Attorney General for the District of Columbia, landlord settlements

• RentDataNow Philadelphia rent data (Zillow Observed Rent Index)