How to Sue RealPage
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- How to Sue RealPage
There are many reasons to sue RealPage, which tells landlords if they should rent to you. Does one fit your situation?
Landlords and property managers use RealPage’s tenant screening reports to determine whether they should rent their apartments to tenant applicants. When those RealPage reports are inaccurate, you suffer harm. A lawsuit against RealPage is a way to hold RealPage accountable for the damage they caused you. Learn how and who can help.
When you want to buy a new car, the automobile financier will surely run a credit check on you. When you apply for a job, the employer will likely run a criminal background check on you. When you apply for insurance, the insurer will likely run a background check on you. Companies embrace background and credit checks to minimize their risk and make sure they are selling to, hiring, or insuring someone reliable. Another player in the background check to reduce risk game is a company called RealPage. It provides management software for landlords, property managers, and property management companies. Amongst those services are background check services called LeasingDesk and RealPage Screening Solutions.
As a background check lawyer, I see the catastrophic problems that happen when background check reports - whether focused on credit, employment, criminal, insurance, medical, or rental histories - contain inaccurate information. When RealPage makes mistakes on Its background checks people lose homes, lose opportunities, suffer reputational damage, and suffer emotional damage. There are other ways that RealPage can cause harm.
This article tells you how to begin a RealPage lawsuit. A RealPage lawsuit is how people hold RealPage accountable when its negligence, violation of applicable laws, or privacy violations cause you harm.
What Is RealPage?
Landlords and property managers rely on RealPage background screening reports to assess risk. In the case of landlords and property managers, they want to minimize the risk associated with renting to prospective tenants. These reports evaluate several key factors to determine a tenant’s suitability, including:
- Credit history
- Income level
- Criminal background
- Previous rental behaviors and experiences
- History of rent payments
- Debt-to-income ratio
- Records of evictions
- History of property damage
Based on the information, RealPage generates a score that categorizes applicants as either pass or fail. Landlords, property managers, and others involved in leasing decisions pay a significant amount for these reports and value them for their ability to summarize your rental risk profile quickly.
However, the rapid nature of this assessment means that the review process may overlook critical details. Inaccuracies can arise due to outdated information, uncorrected errors from previous landlords, or simple clerical mistakes. These mistakes and oversights can lead to an unfair or downright wrong pass-or-fail outcome for you, the applicant.
Reasons to Consider Suing RealPage?
There are several reasons to consider a RealPage lawsuit. They include:
- Disputed errors in background checks. Even though it is not strictly a credit reporting company, RealPage is subject to a federal law called the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA). The FCRA gives consumers several rights, including (1) the right to give permission for someone to get your background check report, (2) the right to receive a free background check, (3) the right to privacy, (4) the right to review of copy of any background check report run on you, (5) the right to know which information in your report caused any adverse decision, (6) the right to dispute errors in the report, and (7) the right to compensation if RealPage violates any of these rights. The most common one is when RealPage errs in handling background check mistakes. As soon as you find or learn about an error in your RealPage background check, contact the consumer law attorneys at Consumer Attorneys.
- Some errors don’t require disputes. A RealPage lawsuit can also begin without a dispute. The FCRA requires RealPage to use reasonable care when handling, compiling, and selling your information. RealPage mixing up your file, misstating your public records, erroneously identifying you as deceased, failing to timely investigate your dispute, failing to adequately correct its errors, or doing something else unreasonable could be enough for a lawsuit against RealPage.
- Violating privacy. A lawsuit against RealPage can also originate if RealPage does something to violate your privacy rights. This includes providing your report without your consent, not protecting your data well enough and suffering a breach, giving your data to the wrong person, or not protecting you sufficiently from identity theft.
- The RealPage Class Action Lawsuit. There is currently a class action lawsuit RealPage is a party to, where hundreds, even thousands, of plaintiffs allege that RealPage and other background check companies used all the information they obtained to increase rental rates purposefully and unfairly. Plaintiffs in this RealPage class action lawsuit will not receive the individual attention from the court that they would if they file a Real Page lawsuit independently. In other words, your own separate Real Page lawsuit is likely to get you more compensation than if you are part of a huge group of settling plaintiffs.
Consider Your Legal Options
The good news is that renters sue RealPage for many reasons and that your own RealPage Inc lawsuit might be warranted if any of these apply. To help you consider those options, contact a lawyer with experience with RealPage background check lawsuits. The attorneys at Consumer Attorneys have decades of experience suing background check companies, including handling RealPage lawsuits.
Write and Send a Demand Letter
One of the legal options before filing a RealPage lawsuit is to write a demand letter, also known as a dispute letter.
How to Write a Demand Letter
A demand letter to RealPage is a formal document (an attorney can help you) that outlines the specific issues you have with RealPage, like the inaccuracies in your screening report. In the demand letter, you identify the problem, its impact on your life, why the problem is a problem, and the way you want RealPage to correct it. The letter sets a deadline for response and outlines potential legal actions if RealPage does not meet those. You should write in a firm yet professional tone, being careful to identify all inaccurate, misleading, and false information
How to Send a Demand Letter
To send a demand letter to RealPage, have our attorney review or draft the letter to ensure it accurately reflects legal considerations. Send the letter via certified U.S. mail. This delivery confirmation will come in handy later and sending the letter via the mail allows you to preserve your rights to sue RealPage. Send the letter to: RealPage, 2201 Lakeside Blvd., Richardson, Texas 75082.
How Much Will a Lawsuit Against RealPage Cost?
When you contact and engage Consumer Attorneys in your lawsuit against RealPage, consultations are free and you will not pay anything out-of-pocket. The FCRA provides that when RealPage is sued by a consumer and the consumer is victorious, RealPage pays for your legal fees and costs.
Lawsuits against RealPage
We have successfully sued RealPage on many occasions. These include:
- J.J. v. RealPage. In this case, we sued RealPage on behalf of an Ohio resident who could not rent an apartment when RealPage erroneously said they were guilty of two felonies. RealPage did not want to go to trial, so they settled with us and J.J. for a favorable amount.
- E.F. v. PealPage. The same thing happened to E.F., a Texas resident. We sued RealPage when it falsely said in its report that E.F. was guilty of one felony. Again, RealPage wanted to settle, and we did for a favorable amount.
- J.B. v. RealPage. When J.B., a Florida resident, applied for an apartment and the management company hired RealPage to run a tenant screening, RealPage falsely stated that J.B. had been evicted from a prior residence. We sued. RealPage settled. J.B. was happy.
Contact Us
Let us know if you’ve applied to live in an apartment building and been denied due to an error in your RealPage background check report. Let us know if you ever see an error in a RealPage report. We have lawyers nationwide and have helped thousands of people recover when companies like RealPage don’t follow the law.
You can call us at 1-877-615-1725, email us at [email protected], visit our website to fill out the online intake form, or visit our website and use our virtual chat option.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you have been affected by inaccurate or false information in a RealPage tenant report, you should consult a consumer protection lawyer. The lawyers at Consumer Attorneys know the rights of consumers and know how to get you compensation through effective and decisive legal action. We serve consumers all over the United States. We know how to listen. We can be both aggressive and empathetic. And we are always eager to take on large companies like RealPage that make millions but can’t obey the laws that affect consumers. We are deeply committed to helping our clients, and we are proud of our role in their journey towards justice
Landlords, property managers, and property management companies use a company called RealPage to assess a tenant applicant’s creditworthiness and reliability. RealPage offers many services. The ones that affect renters are called LeasingDesk and RealPage Screening Solutions. Before renting to someone, a landlord or property manager pays RealPage to run a credit check, criminal background check, eviction record check, and check of other records. RealPage then prepares a report and identifies the tenant applicant with a “Pass” or a “Fail” rating. When a RealPage screening report or any information about a tenant applicant is wrong, the consequences for that tenant are devastating.
Daniel Cohen is the Founder of Consumer Attorneys. Daniel manages the firm’s branding, marketing, client intake and business development efforts. Since 2017, he is a member of the National Association of Consumer Advocates and the National Consumer Law Center. Mr. Cohen is a nationally-recognized practitioner of consumer protection law. He has a we... Read more
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