Yardi and FPI Settlement: What Rental Owners Should Know

FPI Management's settlement in the Yardi rent-pricing litigation received preliminary court approval on October 23, 2025. Lead plaintiffs' counsel reports a proposed $2.8 million fund. The court's order requires further settlement steps and expressly states that the settlement is not an admission or evidence of wrongdoing. Owners reviewing pricing software should understand the specific agreements, data and decision process involved.

Updated October 5, 2026. This article explains dated court records. A final FPI approval order, claims deadline or payout has not been verified for this update.

What the FPI approval order establishes

The case is In re Yardi Revenue Management Antitrust Litigation, No. 2:23-cv-01391-RSL, in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The October 23, 2025 order preliminarily approves the FPI settlement, certifies a settlement class and appoints lead counsel.

At that stage, the judge deferred formal notice and a fund-allocation plan. A fairness hearing would follow approved notice to consider final approval. The order also limits how the settlement can be used as evidence. Preliminary approval leaves additional court steps.

The lead plaintiffs' counsel's case page identifies the $2.8 million amount and describes the proposed settlement's potential support for claims against other defendants. It is a party's account. Exact software restrictions and cooperation duties require the executed agreement; the linked approval order does not set out their full terms.

Read the dates and parties before drawing a conclusion

The September 2025 settlement proposal and October preliminary approval are different milestones. Later orders in the broader case also concern different defendants or procedural questions:

• December 4, 2024: Judge Robert S. Lasnik denied defendants' joint motion to dismiss in document 187.
• October 23, 2025: Document 462 granted preliminary approval of the FPI settlement.
• March 30, 2026: Document 535 granted preliminary approval of a separate settlement with Balke Brown Transwestern and 2B Residential.
• April 29, 2026: Document 541 extended briefing dates for a motion to exclude.

Those records establish their own dated actions. They do not establish the complete current docket, a final result for every defendant or a payment available to any particular resident. Check the actual order, affected parties and later case records when acting on a settlement headline.

Why the alleged agreement matters

In its December 2024 dismissal ruling, the district court considered allegations that competing landlords contributed commercially sensitive, nonpublic information and participated in a coordinated pricing arrangement through Yardi. The court found the alleged conspiracy plausible and applied per se analysis to the alleged horizontal price-fixing agreement. It expressly distinguished a plausible allegation from proof that a conspiracy exists.

Per se analysis treats certain established restraints, including horizontal price fixing, as inherently anticompetitive. The rule of reason examines a restraint's competitive effects and justifications in context. The December order addresses which analysis applied to the pleaded arrangement. It does not make every purchase of revenue-management software unlawful.

The DOJ and FTC's March 1, 2024 statement of interest argues that competitors' joint delegation of key pricing decisions to a common algorithm can violate antitrust law even when participants retain some ability to deviate. That is the agencies' position in the filing. Keeping an override log, by itself, does not establish that a particular pricing arrangement complies with the law.

What Gibson v. Cendyn decided

In Gibson v. Cendyn Group, decided August 15, 2025, the Ninth Circuit affirmed dismissal of a case concerning Las Vegas hotel-pricing software. The plaintiffs had abandoned their appeal of the separate alleged hub-and-spoke conspiracy claim. The remaining claim challenged individual software-licensing agreements.

The court concluded that the agreements, as alleged, did not restrain competition in the relevant hotel-room market. It noted that confidential competitor-information sharing had not been alleged there. It also left unaddressed a question about binding delegation of pricing that the allegations did not present.

Read that decision alongside the allegations and procedural posture of the Yardi case. Different facts and claims matter. The hotel ruling does not provide a blanket approval of rental-pricing tools, and the FPI settlement does not establish wrongdoing by every software user.

Review the vendor inputs and the actual pricing process

An owner can turn the original article's transparency and independence questions into a documented operating review. Start with the contract, vendor documentation, actual settings and a recent pricing decision. A sales description alone may leave important questions unanswered.

• Inputs: What comes from the owner's property, publicly advertised listings or nonpublic information about competing properties? How recent and detailed is it?
• Data use: Does the property contribute information? Who can use it, how is it combined and what do the contract and technical documentation permit?
• Decision authority: Who reviews a recommendation, who can change it and are there contractual or operating requirements to follow it?
• Records: Can the team retrieve the original recommendation, the actual offer, the decision date, the approver and the property-specific explanation?
• Unanswered questions: Which answers come from verified documents, and which still need clarification? Record the gap and the person responsible for resolving it.

For example, a manager who changes a recommendation should be able to explain the actual decision using contemporaneous records. An overwritten number does not show what the tool proposed or why the offer changed. Keep that explanation connected to the owner's reporting; the monthly property management report guide explains how financial results, open issues and owner decisions fit together.

These questions improve the information available for a review. They do not determine the legality of a vendor, guarantee a particular rent or establish a defense to a claim. This article does not assess a specific property's pricing arrangement.

Connect ethics to a decision the owner can explain

Transparent management requires an owner to understand what the team is doing with data, who has authority and what supports the decision. Start with one actual workflow, identify missing information and follow the open questions through to a documented response.

For broader management education, PME offers a free six-day Property Management Excellence email course on management systems and communication. For the case developments discussed here, use the dated court records linked above.