New Jersey enacted a new antitrust law aimed at software that helps landlords set rent in coordination with each other. It does not create a rent cap, a licensing scheme, or a new notice requirement — it adds specific conduct to what already counts as an antitrust violation under the "New Jersey Antitrust Act." Here's what the enacted text actually says, in its own words.
The "Forbidding the Algorithmic Inflation of Rent (FAIR) Act" started as Assembly Bill A3497 (identical Senate bill S451). The Assembly Committee Substitute (First Reprint) was approved by the Governor on July 20, 2026 as P.L.2026, c.43. It doesn't stand alone as its own title — it supplements the existing "New Jersey Antitrust Act," P.L.1970, c.73 (C.56:9-1 et seq.), adding new sections codified at N.J.S.A. 56:9-20 through 56:9-26 (sections 1–7 of the act); its two uncodified sections (sections 8–9, an Attorney General rulemaking grant and the effective-date clause) appear as notes to that chapter rather than as separate statute sections.
Section 4 states it is unlawful, and a violation of the New Jersey Antitrust Act, for:
"a. a rental property owner, or any agent, representative, or subcontractor thereof, to receive, subscribe to, contract for, or otherwise exchange any form of consideration in return for the use of, the services of a coordinator;
b. a coordinator to facilitate a tacit or express agreement among rental property owners that restricts competition with respect to residential dwelling units, including by performing a coordinating function;
c. two or more persons to engage in or otherwise facilitate parallel pricing coordination;
d. any agent or representative of a coordinator or subcontractor thereof to engage in parallel pricing coordination; or
e. any person to perform a coordinating function."
In plain terms: a landlord can't pay for a coordinator's pricing service, a coordinator can't run that service, and no one — landlord or coordinator — can perform the "coordinating function" the act defines, or engage in "parallel pricing coordination" with another landlord. Each of those quoted terms is itself defined in section 3, and the definitions do the real work of drawing the line.
Section 3 defines "rental property owner" broadly and without any size cutoff:
"'Rental property owner' means a person that owns, directly or indirectly, one or more rental residential dwelling units. Any person that holds a controlling interest in an entity that owns a rental residential dwelling unit shall be deemed to constitute a single rental property owner with that entity." (N.J.S.A. 56:9-22)
So the act doesn't exempt small landlords from its definitions by unit count — a person who owns a single rental unit is a "rental property owner" the same as a large portfolio owner. What actually limits who is exposed to a violation is the conduct described in section 4: using a coordinator, acting as one, or engaging in a coordinated pricing agreement with another owner. A "coordinator" is separately defined as any person who operates algorithmic revenue-management software or an algorithmic device that performs a coordinating function for a rental property owner, including a rental property owner performing that function for their own benefit.
Section 3 (N.J.S.A. 56:9-22) defines the terms that do the actual work of the act:
"Algorithmic device" means a device that uses one or more algorithms to process or otherwise perform calculations of data, including, but not limited to, data concerning rental prices, material lease terms, or occupancy levels. An algorithmic device does not include: (1) a spreadsheet that (a) operates without artificial intelligence and (b) requires human analysis to process or otherwise perform calculations of data; or (2) a database that only uses an algorithm to query unprocessed data stored on or within that database.
"Coordinating function" means: (1) collecting the competitively sensitive information of two or more rental property owners for the purpose of analyzing or processing information through the use of an algorithm or other automated process, including by using the information to train an algorithm, where the algorithm or other automated process is used to set or recommend rental prices, material lease terms, or occupancy levels; (2) setting rental prices, material lease terms, or occupancy levels pursuant to an underlying algorithm or other automated process that analyzes or processes competitively sensitive information of any other rental property owner, including by using that competitively sensitive information to train an algorithm; or (3) setting for or recommending to two or more rental property owners: rental prices, material lease terms, or occupancy levels pursuant to the same or a substantially similar underlying algorithm or other automated process, that facilitates parallel pricing coordination.
"Parallel pricing coordination" means a tacit or express agreement between two or more rental property owners to raise, change, maintain, or manipulate pricing for the leasing of reasonably interchangeable residential dwelling units, unless required to do so in accordance with affordability controls. This includes agreements between a coordinator and multiple property owners.
"Tacit agreement" means mutual consent demonstrated without verbal or written communication. Mutual consent may, but need not, be demonstrated by a pattern of conduct.
Quoted directly from the Assembly Committee Substitute (First Reprint) for A3497 as enacted, P.L.2026, c.43 section 3 (N.J.S.A. 56:9-22).
Section 3 also lists what does not count as a coordinating function: (1) using competitively sensitive information solely for research, statistical analysis, or testing, where it isn't used to set or recommend prices or terms; (2) developing an estimated amount of rent made available to the public at no cost; (3) a real estate brokerage database available on equal terms to subscribers that lists properties but doesn't set, recommend, or collect information to set or recommend prices or terms; and (4) a government entity setting or limiting rents through affordability controls in accordance with law (N.J.S.A. 56:9-22).
Section 4 frames every prohibited act as "a violation of the 'New Jersey Antitrust Act,' P.L.1970, c.73 (C.56:9-1 et seq.)" — not the Consumer Fraud Act. Section 5 (N.J.S.A. 56:9-24) confirms that "sections 6 through 17 of P.L.1970, c.73 (C.56:9-6 through 9-17)" — the Antitrust Act's existing enforcement machinery — apply to a section 4 violation. Those existing sections include: civil injunctive relief, available to the Attorney General or to a private party in Superior Court, with attorneys' fees if a permanent injunction issues (N.J.S.A. 56:9-10); a private treble-damage suit, recovering the greater of $1,000 or three times actual damages plus attorneys' fees and costs, which the Attorney General may also bring on the State's behalf (N.J.S.A. 56:9-12); and, for a knowing violation, criminal liability graded as a third-degree crime (or second-degree above a $1,000,000 trade-value threshold, or for bid-rigging on public contracts regardless of value), carrying fines that run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars for corporate defendants (N.J.S.A. 56:9-11). Separately, section 7 (N.J.S.A. 56:9-26) requires the Attorney General to set up a location on the Department of Law and Public Safety's website to receive complaints, and section 8 lets the Attorney General adopt implementing rules under the Administrative Procedure Act. Section 6 also bars a municipality from enacting an ordinance that conflicts with the act, while preserving ordinances "explicitly authorized or required by any other law" — a category that includes the local rent-control ordinances this site tracks, which are a separate subject from algorithmic-coordination pricing.
Approved July 20, 2026, the act's uncodified section 9 provides: "This act shall take effect on the first day of the twelfth month next following the date of enactment." Counting twelve months forward from the July 20, 2026 approval date and taking the first day of that resulting month works out to July 1, 2027 — a computed date, since the text itself states a formula rather than a calendar date.
Nothing in the enacted text turns ordinary, independent rent-setting into a violation. The conduct section 4 prohibits requires a coordinator, a "coordinating function," or a tacit or express agreement with another rental property owner — not simply owning and pricing a rental unit. A landlord who reviews comparable local listings and sets a number themselves, without pooling pricing or lease data with other owners through shared software and without any agreement (spoken, written, or tacit through a pattern of conduct) with another landlord about pricing, does not fit the act's definitions of "coordinator," "coordinating function," or "parallel pricing coordination." A basic spreadsheet that a person operates and analyzes by hand is also explicitly outside the "algorithmic device" definition. That said, this is a plain reading of the statute's own text, not a case-by-case legal determination — a landlord who uses any shared pricing or revenue-management software should understand what data it collects and how it sets prices before assuming this act doesn't reach it.
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