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Life After RealPage & In Jamie We Trust

Big landlords must regroup after antitrust bombshell, JPMorgan's office boon, plus: Pretty Boy goes glatt

Author

Hiten Samtani
January 08, 2025

Where Do Big Landlords Go From Here?

The DoJ has now named some of the country’s biggest MF landlords as defendants in its RealPage antitrust case

It happened. As The Promote first reported Monday, the DoJ was expected to name 6 of the country’s biggest landlords as defendants in its antitrust fight against RealPage, and yesterday, it did: Greystar, Camden Property Trust, Blackstone’s LivCor, Cushman & Wakefield (plus Cushman’s PM arm Pinnacle), Willow Bridge and Cortland Management were added to the lawsuit, w/ the DoJ alleging that the landlords, who together oversee 1.3M+ units nationally, illegally colluded to drive up rents.

“Landlords agree to provide this information for use by their competitors,” the DoJ alleges, “because they understand they will be able to leverage the sensitive information of their rivals in turn.” The lawsuit, which details executives at rival firms (LivCor, Camden) trading emails about inside-baseball stuff like lease renewal increases, paints a picture of a buddy-buddy group of supposed-to-be-rival titans maximizing profits at the expense of unsuspecting renters, fueled by a wildly profitable, monopolistic software.

The alleged misdeeds – market surveys, “call arounds” – flagged by the lawsuit are so wide-ranging that industry insiders say the case has the potential to totally disrupt (in a bad way, not the VC way) how the business works. “The inability to call around for data is unreal,” said one.

The nuclear scenario for landlords: The incoming administration keeps the pressure on, landlords have to rethink their entire approach to pricing, PM & research ops within the firms are overhauled, and fundraising – pension funds break into hives at any mention of “antitrust” – gets a lot more complicated.

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Antitrust (Cont.)

The DoJ also announced that it had reached a settlement w/ one of the landlords, Cortland, which agreed to stop using competitive pricing data in its models and to stop using 3rd-party software or algorithms in its pricing. Cortland, an Atlanta-based firm which had grabbed unwelcome headlines for being the target of an FBI raid in May, said it was only able to make the settlement happen b/c it had “invested years and significant internal resources into developing a proprietary revenue management software tool that does not rely on data from external, non-public sources.” It’s still unclear where the other big landlords named stand on that front, and what would happen to RealPage’s business if they followed suit.

The softest scenario possible now: Landlords bet on it all going away under a Trump administration, and just keep their heads down for a while. Joe Biden’s crew gets to say it took on the big multifamily bullies, and goes gentle into the night. There’s reason enough to believe that this won’t happen, though: Combine Veep-elect Vance’s critical statements on institutional ownership of housing w/ Trump’s bonafide antitrust picks (Gail Slater as assistant AG, Andrew Ferguson for FTC), and a new administration might be just as tough on this issue as the current one.

In Jamie We Trust

Jamie Dimon, the new patron saint of Manhattan office titans

When I saw the news yesterday on JPMorgan’s full RTO mandate, I knew that this was the one, the get-your-ass-back-to-our-buildings diktat that New York landlords had been waiting for. While Big Tech has sex appeal and headline-grabbing deals, the Manhattan leasing market’s primary drivers are FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) and Big Law 💼 - the 2 groups are responsible for the lion’s share of high-end activity, partial to top-tier buildings and willing to shell out the big bucks: In ‘19, they paid starting-rent premiums of 18.8% compared to other industries, per CompStak; by ‘24, that premium had ballooned to 38.4%. JPMorgan’s decision, likely to be mimicked by its rivals, puts an exclamation point on what the market has been saying via deals for a while now: We’re so back

I made the above meme ^ after the announcement, then reached out to Bloomberg’s Odd Lots duo (Tracy&Joe ™️ )to see if they’d be interested in a piece on it. To my delight, they were game, and you can find it via this gift link here.

Cushman Accused of Hijacking Commissions

Jodi Pulice’s JRT alleges it was iced out of city leasing action by Cushman

Cushman is being accused of using its City Hall juice to steer lucrative city leasing assignments toward one of its senior brokers, at the expense of a subcontractor. In a spicy new lawsuit, Jodi Pulice’s JRT Realty alleges that Cushman vice-chair Diana Boutross (a curious choice btw for the gig given her mostly retail background) buddied up w/ Mayor Eric Adams’ real estate czar Jesse Hamilton to squeeze JRT out of the action – and it’s a lot of action, given that the city leases 22M sf of privately owned real estate.

“Any change in our work with JRT was driven by the city’s amended requirements for working with MWBE businesses, as well as other legitimate commercial reasons,” a Cushman spox told Crain’s. Remember that Boutross is already caught up in city corruption drama: her phone, along w/ Hamilton’s, was seized as part of an investigation into Adams’ former chief advisor, Ingrid Lewis-Martin – Boutross had taken a vacation w/ both of them to Japan. 🎋 

Pretty Boy Goes Glatt

Boxing legend Floyd Mayweather dined last night at steakhouse Reserve Cut – a favorite haunt for frum CRE heavyweights

Floyd Mayweather Jr., who has captivated CRE with his dizzying (some might say overheated) acquisition spree (see here, here, & here) was spotted last night at a favorite frum haunt: Midtown kosher steakhouse Reserve Cut 🥩 The boxing HoFer was dining w/ longtime associate Jona Rechnitz, a CRE investor who was a character in the NYPD corruption scandal a few years back. Mayweather, whose posse of bodyguards were seated at the next table, was seen chit-chatting w/ Eli Beer, founder of Israeli EMS organization United Hatzalah. Quite a night at the eatery, which also played host to Gary Barnett last week.

Quickies

Unquotable Quotes

“The only thing I didn’t do is take Nir Meir and hang him out the window like Suge Knight did.” 🪟 🧊 
- Ex-Omnibuild boss John Mingione, insisting he did all he could to stop the former HFZ principal’s fraud