Seattle CB121000, designed to regulate the use of rent pricing algorithms, is scheduled to go into effect in early August 2025. Unfortunately, it has already sparked a lot of misinformed and inaccurate industry chatter.
Far from being a roadblock to innovation, the ordinance establishes reasonable, necessary guardrails that benefit operators and residents by promoting fair competition and setting a clear standard for responsible pricing practices.
REBA supports policies that increase fairness and preserve market integrity. CB121000 does just that, prohibiting rent pricing systems from using non-public competitor data. This strikes us a simple matter of fairness. One can argue it goes a bit too far by also banning the use of publicly-available rent data; however, as we’ve previously explained, there are many reasons why competitive data should not be a core part of a multifamily pricing algorithm as they should be guardrails, not guiderails.
The ordinance does not ban the use of third-party pricing software or algorithms. It simply confirms that these tools can’t be used to enable data pooling across independent operators. That’s a good thing.
REBA Rent never engaged in data pooling across independent operators and is fully compliant with CB121000. The platform generates pricing recommendations based solely on a property and property manager’s own data: no competitor rent rolls and no shared private datasets are used. Although CB121000 clearly defines a landlord as the owner or the property manager, for those who are worried about sharing data across multiple properties with different owners, REBA Rent offers configurable controls that allow calculations to occur strictly at the individual property level or within highly selective pooling for internal portfolios.
Seattle’s ordinance is not a ban, it’s a baseline. And it’s one REBA Rent already meets. By setting smart boundaries, ordinances like CB121000 create a healthier rental ecosystem and pave the way for better business practices industrywide.