New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill added her state to a growing list banning algorithmic pricing tools blamed for higher apartment rents.
Sherrill signed the Forbidding the Algorithmic Inflation of Rent (FAIR) Act into law Monday in Newark. New Jersey becomes the fourth state to regulate software lawmakers and regulators said allowed landlords to coordinate rents.
“Landlords, who should be competing to provide the best price to renters, are instead colluding to drive prices up through so-called ‘algorithmic pricing,’” Sherrill said in a statement. “That stops now.”
Sherrill won last November on a platform of improving housing affordability, alongside New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger. Mamdani has made gains in his efforts. Spanberger’s legislative success has been modest so far.
New Jersey’s law takes effect July 1, 2027, giving landlords roughly a year to review whether their pricing software falls under the new rules.
New York, California and Connecticut each passed similar statewide restrictions last year. Those laws coincide with a wave of city-level bans that started with San Francisco and Philadelphia and spread to Jersey City, Minneapolis, San Diego and Hoboken.
Jersey City passed a local version of the ban in May 2025, well before Trenton acted.
“We’re in the middle of a housing crisis, and it’s gotten worse because corporate landlords are using algorithms to jack up everyone’s rent,” Assemblywoman Katie Brennan, who represents Jersey City and sponsored the bill, said in a statement.
Lawsuits drove the crackdown
The push against rent-setting algorithms started in courtrooms, not statehouses. Renters filed class-action lawsuits accusing RealPage and dozens of major landlords of using the company’s software to coordinate rent hikes instead of competing.
Last October, Greystar, the nation’s largest landlord, and 25 other property firms agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit, paying more than $141 million collectively.
In 2024, the U.S. Justice Department separately sued RealPage and six large landlords. RealPage settled last year along with Greystar, LivCor and Cortland Management. Property management company Willow Bridge recently settled with the DOJ.
New Jersey Attorney General Matthew Platkin filed a similar antitrust suit last year against RealPage and 10 of the state’s largest landlords. That ongoing litigation helped build the case for the FAIR Act.
What the N.J. law bans
The FAIR Act targets software that pools nonpublic, competitively sensitive data – such as rents, occupancy levels and lease terms – from multiple landlords to recommend pricing. That effectively lets competitors set rents together instead of against each other.
“This bill gives families the power to end illegal rent increases that tear apart communities,” Ana Maria Hill, 32BJ SEIU vice president and New Jersey state director, said in a statement.
The law doesn’t cap rents, require landlords to lower prices, or ban ordinary tools like spreadsheets or public rent-estimate databases. It targets only software that facilitates coordination among otherwise competing owners.
Under the law, the attorney general must set up an online portal where renters can report suspected violations. It also preempts local governments from adopting conflicting rules of their own.
Property tax relief, housing investments
The signing came three weeks after Sherrill enacted New Jersey’s $60.7 billion fiscal 2027 budget, which she called an “affordability-focused spending plan”. It raised the First-Time and First-Generation Homeownership Program from $40 million to $45 million annually and created a $35 million homelessness fund.
Fair Share Housing Center backed those additions but warned the budget leaves most of the Affordable Housing Trust Fund untapped for construction. Only about $36 million is expected for production in fiscal 2027, despite the fund typically collecting over $100 million a year from the realty transfer fee.
The budget and the FAIR Act both build on an April executive order creating the Housing Governing Council. The state’s chief operating officer chairs the cross-agency body, and the Department of Community Affairs, the Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, the Economic Development Authority and NJ Transit co-chair it. It aims to cut through state approval delays by coordinating financing, identifying surplus land, and setting production targets, with recommendations due to the governor by late September.
Separately, the administration expanded NJ HOMES, a technical-assistance program helping towns identify zoning barriers to new construction. Its first cohort launched earlier this year; applications for a second cohort of 30 municipalities closed July 1.
How that assistance and FAIR Act enforcement perform will shape how observers judge Sherrill’s housing plan this fall.
