From [HERE] As politicians ask regulators to turn up the heat on data firm RealPage, the Department of Justice has opened an antitrust investigation into the use of its YieldStar software, ProPublica reported Wednesday.

RealPage’s algorithm is widely used by apartment landlords nationwide to establish rental rates. Now the feds are examining whether the software has allowed landlords to collude on pricing.

The inquiry will look into questions about a 2017 merger between RealPage and its largest pricing competitor, ProPublica reported.

An investigation by ProPublica last month said YieldStar eased the way for landlords to impose double-digit rent increases, and the piece spurred a flurry of lawsuits and criticism from lawmakers.

The software uses an algorithm to price apartment rents, based on inputs from a variety of market-specific data sets. The goal is to remove subjectivity from the process – but sources interviewed by ProPublica believe the algorithm artificially inflates rents and recommends increases that most landlords wouldn’t attempt otherwise.

“As a property manager, very few of us would be willing to actually raise rents double digits within a single month by doing it manually,” Andrew Bowen, vice president corporate sales for RealPage, was quoted as saying at a convention last year.

ProPublica’s story led to a flurry of lawsuits against RealPage, along with an outcry from federal lawmakers. U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown wrote a letter to the Federal Trade Commission that said RealPage’s technology may allow “anticompetitive and potentially unlawful collusion.” Democratic Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Dick Durbin of Illinois Corey Booker New Jersey expressed similar complaints in a letter to the Justice Department.

RealPage couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday. Last month, the data firm disputed ProPublica’s findings, calling them “misleading and inaccurate.” [MORE]