Six of the countrys most powerful landlords were named in a lawsuit brought forth by the U.S. Department of Justice. Blackstone, Cushman & Wakefield, Greystar, Camden, Pinnacle, Willow Bridge, and Cortland were all implicated. RealPage, a property management software company, was named in an adjacent antitrust lawsuit. These six landlords cumulatively control 1.3 million units in 43 states and Washington, D.C. They stand accused of participating in a scheme to set their rents using each others competitively sensitive information through common pricing algorithms, the Justice Department said. RealPage allegedly provided the anticompetitive pricing algorithms for the financial scandal.While Americans across the country struggled to afford housing, the landlords named in todays lawsuit shared sensitive information about rental prices and used algorithms to coordinate to keep the price of rent high, Doha Mekki of the U.S Department of Justices Antitrust Division said in a statement.Todays action against RealPage and six major landlords seeks to end their practice of putting profits over people and make housing more affordable for millions of people across the country, Mekki continued. The Justice Department claimed that the six landlords and RealPage coordinated through a variety of means. These means included directly communicating with each others senior managers about rents, occupancy, and other competitively sensitive topics.Blackstone, Cushman & Wakefield, and the other four landlords also allegedly conducted call arounds, where property managers shared competitively sensitive topics. The third charge is that RealPage hosted user groups where landlords discussed how to modify the softwares pricing methodology and strategies with focus groups.The fourth and last charge is that the six landlords shared information with competitors about parameters in RealPages software. So far, only Cortland has agreed to cooperate with the Justice Department and enter into a settlement.Cortland could be barred from using competitors competitively sensitive data to train or run any pricing model; using third-party software or algorithms to price apartments without the supervision of a court-appointed monitor; and soliciting, disclosing or using any competitively sensitive information with any other property manager as part of setting rental prices or generating rental pricing recommendations.Co-plaintiffs in the case are the Attorneys General of California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, North Carolina, Oregon, Tennessee and Washington.