RealPage Algorithm May Be Artificially Inflating Rents Near Bases

In 2024, U.S. Senators called for an investigation into whether the RealPage revenue management algorithm is artificially inflating rents for military families living off-base near military installations. RealPage's software, used by major property management companies, aggregates proprietary pricing data across competing landlords and recommends rental rates -- a practice the Department of Justice has challenged as potentially anticompetitive. Because BAH rates are calculated based on local rental market surveys, algorithmic rent inflation creates a vicious cycle: artificially high rents drive up BAH calculations, which then flow as guaranteed revenue to landlords, who use the same algorithm to push rents even higher. This matters because military families living off-base -- which is the majority of service members -- are uniquely vulnerable to algorithmic rent manipulation. Landlords near military installations know that tenants receive a fixed BAH that is publicly listed by pay grade and location. This information asymmetry means landlords can price units at exactly BAH or slightly above, extracting the maximum possible government subsidy while leaving families to cover the overage. When an algorithm coordinates this pricing behavior across multiple landlords simultaneously, the 'market rate' that BAH is supposed to track becomes an artificial construct. The structural issue is that BAH was designed for a competitive rental market where landlords independently set prices based on supply and demand. Algorithmic pricing tools like RealPage's fundamentally alter that market dynamic by enabling what antitrust experts describe as tacit collusion -- landlords do not need to communicate directly when they all use the same algorithm that recommends the same prices based on the same data. The result is that rents near bases converge upward, eliminating the competitive pressure that was supposed to keep BAH adequate. Senators requested that DoD provide information on whether RealPage or similar algorithms are being used by landlords near military installations by February 2025. The investigation is complicated by the fact that property management companies are not required to disclose their pricing tools to tenants or to the government. The DoD does not track which landlords near bases use algorithmic pricing, and BAH rate surveys do not account for whether the rents being surveyed are the product of competitive pricing or algorithmic coordination. If algorithmic pricing is inflating rents near bases by even 5-10% -- consistent with estimates from the DOJ's antitrust case against RealPage -- the impact on military families is substantial. A 7% inflation on a $2,500 rent is $175/month, or $2,100/year, that a family pays because an algorithm told every landlord in the area to charge more. Multiplied across hundreds of thousands of off-base military families, the aggregate cost to service members and to the federal government (through higher BAH rates) runs into the billions.