The Landlord Lens - Trump Blocks AI Regulations as States Target Rent Pricing

Episode Date: January 2, 2026

States across the U.S. are moving to regulate AI in housing—and it’s creating serious uncertainty for landlords.In this episode of Landlord Lens, we break down Trump’s AI moratorium, the DOJ’s new AI litigation task force, and what it all means for rent pricing, compliance, and risk—especially as states target algorithmic pricing tools like RealPage.Lawmakers say AI regulations are needed to prevent rent-price coordination, discrimination, and reduced competition. Industry groups argue that patchwork state laws slow innovation and raise costs. Meanwhile, landlords are caught in the middle—unsure whether using AI tools creates legal exposure, or avoiding them puts them at a competitive disadvantage.

Trump wants to even the playing field and take one national approach to how we regulate AI. What's happening right now between the federal and the state government is a lot of these states have gotten ahead and started producing regulations. And the concern from the federal government is that a lot of these regulations will stunt our growth in innovation. Hi, welcome to another episode of The Landlord Lens. I'm Jess, joined by my co-host, Seamus Nally. And today we are talking about something that is making headlines this week, which is Trump's AI policy, his moratorium, and specifically what it means for housing. Seamus, how are you today? I'm doing great and super excited about this subject. So tell us a little bit about what's going on here.

This is a part of a larger regulation of AI, or rather anti-regulation of AI, which was previously left up to the states. Now Trump wants to rein that in and have that be at the government level. Trump wants to even the playing field and take one national approach to how we regulate AI. What does this mean specifically for housing? So anytime there's a new technology, right, there's a race to regulate is what it seems, right? Companies have a race to innovate and utilize the technology. Well, government often has a race, is in a race to regulate it. And so what's happening right now between the federal and the state government is a lot of these states have gotten ahead, right, and started producing regulations.

And the concern from the federal government standpoint is that a lot of these regulations will stunt our growth and innovation. Specifically, because AI is looked at as a matter of national security. And so I think that's why the federal government feels like they have a reason to put their thumb on the scales a little bit. But what has been interesting with this moratorium is this isn't the first time that this has been tried. As part of the one big beautiful bill in July, there is actually a provision that would have banned states from producing AI regulation for 10 years. That was actually voted down 99 to 1 to remove it. So this is take two where Trump is saying let's create a task force that can actually go out and litigate state laws where it looks like those laws will block innovation. And so that's the playing field right now.

what we're looking at when it comes to housing is really how is AI changing what housing means, specifically rentals, right, here in the United States. And a big part of that is actually tied to some of the recent cases we've seen with Real Page around prices. So I think it'd be worth it to jump into rent prices. This was just settled at the end of November. So very fresh, less than a month ago. What happened there? Because this was a high profile lawsuit and it didn't really have lasting effects because they settled. So what happened there? Yeah. So a number of states and eventually the DOJ went after RealPage, accusing them of utilizing the private data they have. So RealPage is a property management system, right? It's used by a lot of the large upmarket players, right?

Right. None of our landlords are out there. utilizing RealPage, but if you have a thousand plus doors, you may be using RealPage as your property management software. And so they were accusing RealPage of using the data that they have from all of their users, right, all these property management companies that utilize RealPage and the individual relationships those property managers have with tenants to change prices, right? Now, from RealPage's standpoint, they're doing their best to pull together what they were calling market rate. Right. From the DOJ and a number of states perspective, doing that could easily lead to price fixing and kind of collusion amongst properties, which I think is a really fine line

and is a very interesting case to kind of watch play out. As you mentioned, they settled. In a lot of cases, especially when it comes to these sorts of lawsuits, it is actually cheaper to settle and pay a big fine and get something over with than it is fight it out. I actually wish that the case kind of continued and Real Page went to the mat on the subject so we could get better guidance for all the other companies in the space. Exactly. Because if we're talking about state regulation, it would help to have some sort of framework and say here is how it is going to be regulated. But instead, they brought on their own oversight committee. So they are going to have sort of a watchdog that Real Page is specifically paying as a part of this settlement.

But I wonder, you know, how is this going to play out if after the Trump administration, they want to take a different approach? There's kind of less documentation or less to see in the regulation area because regulating AI, I mean, that's a can of worms. But if we're talking about it for housing specifically, like, what do you see as, you know, some of those behind those buzzwords like AI algorithm pricing tools? It's like, what does that actually mean in the rental industry today? Yeah, so AI and algorithms are used kind of interchangeably. But that is not the case. That's not a great description. So algorithms are step-by-step set of instructions.

Right. The same input will always produce the same output of an algorithm. AI is a little different, right? AI is learning based on the different inputs it has over time, which people refer to as the training data. And so the same input will not necessarily produce the same output. The reason I bring that up is algorithms have been used to understand a market rate price for a very long period of time. Right. And that at times is very helpful to the consumer.

There's other times when prices are going up that the consumer or the renter, right, would perceive that as wildly unfair. Yeah. But in general, these algorithms are utilized to give a more complete and more real-time understanding of a given market. The best example I have of where this is actually impacting me is I was a early Airbnb host in Colorado here where I live. And at that time, I could charge a pretty high nightly rate, right? Airbnb rolled out what it called smart pricing. And smart pricing looked at the other listings in the area on a given night, and it suggested what price you should charge to be competitive. Right. And what happened is over just the three to four years where I was Airbnb, more and more supply popped up. So my nightly rate just dropped, dropped, dropped and dropped. And so smart pricing, or in this case, an algorithm that they were utilizing, actually was a huge benefit to the consumer. Because it dropped all the prices in the area as it saw a new supply come online. It's the same idea as to what happens with Uber's, what happens with hotels, what happens with the airlines, exactly.

So algorithms have been utilized to find a market rate price for a very long period of time. I do think because we've gone through this period of rapid rent increases, they are the boogeyman, right? Yeah. But if you looked at an algorithm at work in a place like Austin or other cities in Texas that are actually experiencing a... 45% drop. Exactly. Yeah. Because a huge jump in supply.

These algorithms would be wildly helpful to the renter because what they're saying is drop the rent, drop the rent, drop the rent, drop the rent. Right. And so I think they'd become kind of the boogeyman. both the algorithms and AI in this situation. I'd also speak to, and as kind of a technologist, AI has been already wildly helpful within the housing space. And I'll speak to even our utilization at TurboTenitone. We utilize AI to actually look at all questions added to an application,

look at lease agreements, and look at listing descriptions for fair housing violations, right? Yeah. It's really good at that because you can share, hey, these are all. all the laws for fair housing. State laws, yes, state laws, city laws, you can get really specific with it. And it can review that all for you. And so that helps our landlords from not maliciously,

but often from a spot of unknowingly, yeah, stepping in it, right? AI as a blanket term. And when you look at a lot of this state regulation, what really makes me nervous is AI is being used as a very broad framework. But I think the actual implementation is super important as to whether or not it's a huge benefit for the user or potentially causing harm. Yeah, absolutely. And that kind of gets into one of the questions that I wanted to ask you for our users who are largely landlords. What would you point out as some of the potential risks that they should be aware of or get ahead of or not use AI for or not kind of do their own like GPT search for?

And how do you think they can use it responsibly? Yeah, I would definitely say don't stop using AI, right? In your own life and in your business, it's an absolute force multiplier. Where I think people always have to be cautious is just like if you were to have an assistant or a coworker and they create some documentation for you, read it, you know what I mean? Make sure you're going through it to understand how it's working. Always kind of fact-checked it. So let's say you're in chat, GPT, and you're looking at what a rent price?

in my area, right, and asking that, well, also pop on to Apartments.com, pop on to Realtor.com, Redfin, and see what rent prices are like in your area to get some idea, right? And don't just trust it, trust it blindly. And then I would also say that it's always good to be aware as to what is happening in your community, both in terms of a regulation, but also in terms of like, is more supply coming online, and so are rent prices dropping? Well, I just want to close out with a couple more questions for the listeners. If you are a landlord and you're listening to this, you're feeling a little bit uneasy. Maybe you're not even using AI today.

What would you suggest they start doing? I would suggest that people take the manual processes they have and try utilizing AI for some of it, right? Or find a product that is intelligently weaving AI into the experience, right? shameless plug for TurboTenet, something that we're trying to do, make it feel both very approachable and have it kind of work behind the scenes to benefit landlords. So I think that's a great step forward. I don't think that most of our landlords have to worry about some of the price fixing and collusion elements that they're seeing on real page. That's primarily something done by the more upmarket players. Right. Invitation homes.

and that sort of level. Exactly, yeah. Corporate landlords have the data to have the data to do all that and are quicker to take advantage of those things. Yeah, absolutely. All right, thank you guys so much for tuning into the landlord lens. If you have some personal experience using AI in your rental management process,

please drop a comment in at the bottom of this video. We would love to hear more. And as always, like and subscribe and share with a friend. Thank you. TurboTenant is the all-in-one platform for landlords to manage their rental properties. From vacancy to tenancy, we have you covered with industry-leading tools and expert advice. Landlord better from anywhere for free at turbotenant.com.