Willow Bridge Property Company Lawsuit: DOJ RealPage Settlement

Willow Bridge Property Company is facing a lawsuit from the U.S. Department of Justice and ten state attorneys general, who accuse the Dallas-based apartment manager of participating in an algorithmic rent-fixing scheme run through RealPage software. The company has agreed to a proposed settlement that would bar it from using competitor-data pricing tools and require it to cooperate with the government against remaining defendants. Willow Bridge is also a defendant in 35 consolidated tenant class actions pending in federal court in Tennessee.

What the DOJ Accuses Willow Bridge of Doing

The DOJ originally sued RealPage on August 23, 2024, in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina. On January 8, 2025, the government filed an amended complaint that named Willow Bridge and five other large landlords: Greystar, Camden Property Trust, LivCor, Cushman & Wakefield with its Pinnacle subsidiary, and Cortland Management.¹ The suit alleges violations of Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act affecting apartments across 43 states and Washington, D.C.²

The government’s case against Willow Bridge has two parts. First, the company fed nonpublic transactional data into RealPage’s revenue management system knowing that competitors’ data would be pooled into the same algorithm to generate rent recommendations. A Willow Bridge revenue management executive asked RealPage to confirm the software would “leverage actual transactional data behind the scenes” from competitors, not just publicly listed rents, and acknowledged that “shared data between the models at different communities can be a benefit in getting accurate transactional data.”³

Second, the DOJ alleges Willow Bridge executives shared competitively sensitive information directly with rival landlords. They participated in RealPage-hosted user groups where they discussed renewal increases, concessions, and how often they accepted the software’s rent recommendations alongside executives from LivCor and other competitors.¹ In one exchange, Willow Bridge’s director of revenue management requested and received Greystar’s standard “auto-accept parameters” for the software, including Greystar’s daily and weekly limits and which days of the week its auto-accept feature ran.⁴

California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s parallel complaint said Willow Bridge and other defendants provided their nonpublic data with the understanding it would set prices for competitors’ units as well as their own, “eliminating competition” in markets including Los Angeles, San Diego, Orange County, and the Inland Empire.⁵

How the RealPage Software Fits In

RealPage’s revenue management tools, branded as YieldStar and later AIRM, took in real-time transactional data from competing landlords, including occupancy rates, lease terms, and actual rents paid. The algorithm generated daily pricing recommendations for each unit, optimized to maximize revenue across all subscribing landlords in a market rather than for any single landlord competing independently.⁶

The default setting was “auto-accept.” Price recommendations took effect without a property manager reviewing them, and overrides required written justification reviewed by a RealPage “pricing advisor” who could escalate the deviation to the landlord’s leadership. The government says the system achieved roughly a 90% acceptance rate. Economists cited in the litigation have estimated the scheme inflated rents by $25 to $70 per unit per month nationwide, with increases exceeding $100 in cities including Washington, D.C., Denver, Dallas, and Atlanta.⁶ The DOJ characterizes the arrangement as a “hub-and-spoke” conspiracy, with RealPage as the hub coordinating pricing among landlords whose vertical contracts with the software vendor tied them together horizontally.⁷

The Proposed Settlement and Where It Stands

A proposed final judgment involving Willow Bridge was filed with the North Carolina federal court on December 23, 2025, and published in the Federal Register on January 21, 2026, opening a 60-day public comment period under the Tunney Act.⁸

Under the proposed terms, Willow Bridge would be barred from licensing or using any revenue management software that relies on competitively sensitive data from other landlords. The company would also be prohibited from sharing competitively sensitive information with competing landlords, required to establish and maintain an antitrust compliance program, and required to cooperate with the DOJ in the ongoing litigation against remaining defendants. The terms closely mirror consent decrees reached with other landlord defendants.⁸

Final court approval had not yet been entered as of mid-2026: a source from that period listed Willow Bridge among the “remaining defendants” alongside Cushman & Wakefield and LivCor.⁹¹⁰¹¹ The DOJ separately ended a criminal probe into rental pricing practices without bringing criminal charges.¹²

Tenant Class Actions in Tennessee

Willow Bridge is a defendant in 35 consolidated putative class actions brought by tenants, gathered as In re: RealPage, Inc., Rental Software Antitrust Litigation (No. II), Case No. 3:23-md-3071, before Chief Judge Waverly D. Crenshaw Jr. in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.¹³¹⁴

A $141.8 million proposed class settlement with certain other defendants received preliminary approval in November 2025; Willow Bridge was not among the settling parties.¹⁵¹⁶ The court described discovery volume as “massive,” with nearly 14 million documents produced in the first eight months of 2025 alone. Class certification motions are due August 31, 2026, with a hearing set for January 2027 and trial scheduled for February 1, 2028.¹⁷

Willow Bridge Must Pay Its Own Defense Costs

Willow Bridge sued its professional liability insurer, Arch Specialty Insurance Company, in the Northern District of Texas after Arch denied coverage for the antitrust litigation. On December 27, 2024, Senior Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater granted summary judgment to Arch. Applying the Texas “eight-corners” doctrine, the court held that antitrust conspiracy allegations describe intentional conduct outside a policy designed to cover negligent acts and a limited set of intentional torts such as false arrest and libel. The court dismissed the case with prejudice, finding “no possibility” the insurer would owe coverage.¹⁸¹⁴ Willow Bridge bears its own legal costs in the RealPage-related litigation.

Willow Bridge’s Public Response

Willow Bridge has not issued a direct public statement about the DOJ lawsuit, in contrast to co-defendants who released statements contesting the allegations. A spokesperson for Barrett Lo Visionary Development, the developer behind several Willow Bridge-managed Milwaukee properties, said Willow Bridge had “instituted company-wide changes to guard against” the concerns raised about the software and that “no non-public information is used to set rental rates at Barrett Lo properties.”¹⁹

Who Willow Bridge Is

Willow Bridge was formerly the residential division of Lincoln Property Company, founded in Dallas in 1965. In February 2023, Canadian real estate investor Cadillac Fairview, a subsidiary of the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, completed its acquisition of the division, and it rebranded as Willow Bridge in October 2023. It is no longer affiliated with Lincoln Property Company.²⁰ As of 2026, Willow Bridge manages more than 244,000 apartment units across 29 states, ranking as the third-largest multifamily property manager in the country on the National Multifamily Housing Council’s Top 50.²¹

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