New York, New York – Today, Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal (D/WF-Manhattan), Chair of the Assembly Committee on Housing, announced that her legislation banning landlords from colluding to artificially inflate New Yorkers’ rents was signed into law.

“Today is a win for every New Yorker who is struggling to make ends meet,” said Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal (D/WF-Manhattan, who introduced the legislation in 2024). “Multi-billion-dollar real estate giants found a way to price gouge New Yorkers and Americans by skirting longstanding state and federal antitrust laws during an affordability crisis. Finally, with today’s signing, New York’s antitrust laws have been updated to reflect the deleterious impact that algorithms can have on tenants and the real estate market.”

In 2024, the U.S Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Real Page, a real estate software company, for facilitating a rental price fixing scheme between landlords. Landlords provide Real Page with sensitive rental data, such as leasing information, lease renewal rates, vacancies and potential demand, which is then fed to an algorithm. The algorithm is trained to recommend higher rent prices, often outperforming the market, in order to yield greater revenue for landlords. Under this legislation, no building owner or property manager will be permitted to use algorithmic tools that collect such information, analyze the data and create recommendations for landlords.

According to the Council of Economic Advisors, coordinated rent fixing cost renters $3.8 billion in 2023. Municipalities across the country, such as Jersey City, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Berkeley and Providence, RI, have all passed laws banning this practice. California recently passed similar legislation in October 2025. Senator Hoylman-Sigal is the sponsor of the bill in the New York State Senate.

“My legislation empowers tenants, holds accountable those real estate giants who use gross manipulation of the market and ends the scourge of algorithmic rental price gouging,” said Assemblymember Rosenthal. “Today’s affordability crisis demands creative and innovative solutions to lower the rent. As we continue to enact laws that foster development and protect tenants from the hell being unleashed at the federal level, we must use every tool at our disposal to preserve our existing housing stock. This legislation certainly does that, and I commend Governor Hochul for signing this critical measure into law.”