Philadelphia Outlawed Rental Price-Fixing
Philadelphia Code § 9-813 makes rental price coordination a code violation, with $2,000-per-violation civil penalties and a private right of action. Passed in 2024. The second major US city to write an anti-price-fixing ordinance for residential rentals, after San Francisco, and the first on the East Coast.
In October 2024, Philadelphia became the second major American city — and the first on the East Coast — to write an anti-price-fixing ordinance for residential rentals. (San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors passed Ordinance No. 224-24 in July 2024, three months earlier.) The vehicle here was § 9-813, sponsored by Councilmember O’Rourke. The text is short. The effect is broad. No landlord may agree with another landlord to not compete on rental pricing, fees, or terms. No software vendor may sell or license a product whose purpose is price coordination. No person may use, subscribe to, or pay for another person’s services if those services involve price coordination. A landlord who coordinates rents is committing a code violation. So is the company that sells the coordination product. The civil penalty is $2,000 per violation, with each day and each affected unit counted separately. The Law Department brings the case for the city. Aggrieved tenants can sue on their own, too.
The statute does not name any company. The reason it exists is algorithmic rent-fixing. RealPage’s YieldStar and AIRM (AI Revenue Management), and the equivalent products from Yardi, take rent rolls from competing landlords, aggregate them, and recommend a price. Landlords follow the recommendation. The pricing looks competitive. The pricing is not competitive. The DOJ sued RealPage in August 2024, alleging the software functions as a cartel. Philly’s ordinance is the city-level answer to a federal case that will not resolve for years.
Most cities are waiting on the DOJ. Philly wrote its own law. WHYY covered it. O’Rourke’s office framed it as the only local response of its kind. No other East Coast city has matched it.
I think this is the most interesting housing policy the city has passed in 10 years, and the most likely to be copied. The reason is structural, not legal. A federal antitrust case takes 5-7 years to resolve. A municipal code section with a private right of action gets used next quarter. A landlord who coordinates rents is exposed to a $2,000-per-day-per-unit civil penalty the moment a tenant or the Law Department files. The risk profile changes immediately.
The city is not pretending this is the whole answer. The ordinance is a paragraph. The implementation depends on a tenant, or a plaintiffs’ lawyer, knowing the case is there. The strongest version of the law is the deterrent effect on landlords who coordinate because their competitors coordinate. When competitors face $2,000 per day per unit, and any tenant can sue for triple damages, the math pushes landlords off the software.
That is what the city is betting on. Not the fines. The math.
The other bet is on copycats. The ordinance is a template. Other cities can lift the text. Other cities can change the per-unit number. The whole framework is portable, which is the point. Philly didn’t just write a law. It wrote a law other cities might want to copy.
That is a different kind of governance. Most Philly ordinances are local curiosities. This one is meant to travel.