If you’re renting at an apartment complex anywhere in the U.S., chances are your landlord is using software from a North Texas-based company to decide how much to charge you.
RealPage, headquartered in Richardson, became the nation’s dominant provider of software that landlords use to set rent prices after federal regulators approved a controversial merger with competitor Lease Rent Options in 2017, a ProPublica investigation found.
The firm sells software, operating systems and provides analytics to the rental industry and has acquired dozens of companies over the years. Its products include YieldStar, an algorithm-based service RealPage has said can help landlords “outperform the market 3% to 7%,” according to the ProPublica report.
RealPage went public more than a decade ago in a stock sale valued at $135.3 million. It was acquired and taken private by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo in 2021. RealPage has more than 31,700 customers, according to ProPublica. The firm’s software now serves more than 22 million units around the world from offices in North America, South America, Europe and Asia.
Here are five things to know about how RealPage rose to become the residential power player it is today, and its presence in North Texas:
Founder Steve Winn has become a billionaire and political donor
RealPage founder Stephen Winn has amassed a fortune of $1.7 billion, according to Forbes. Winn founded RealPage in 1998 when he bought Little Buddy, a firm that provided lease accounting software for landlords, from Thomson Corp. for $10 million as part of the sale of his father’s accounting software company Computer Language Research Inc.
Winn, who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1969 with an electrical engineering degree, was initially not interested in the real estate business, but changed his mind about Little Buddy after realizing the industry had no dominant software provider, making the market ripe for expansion, according to a Bloomberg report.
In 2021 and 2022, Winn donated $345,300 to political campaigns and organizations, including $112,500 to Texas Sen. John Cornyn, $50,000 to the Republican National Committee and $44,600 to the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
One of the world’s largest private equity firms bought RealPage in 2021
San Francisco-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, bought RealPage in 2021 in a $10.2 billion deal, making RealPage a privately-held company. Winn remained CEO of RealPage after the transaction until August 2021, when board member Dana Jones took on the role.
“RealPage’s industry-leading platform is critical to the real estate ecosystem and has tremendous potential going forward,” Orlando Bravo, founder and managing partner of Thoma Bravo, said when the deal was announced in 2020.
Thoma Bravo’s holdings include investments in tech and software firms. The company, which has offices in San Francisco, Chicago and Miami, manages more than $122 billion in assets.
RealPage moved from Carrollton to Richardson in 2016
RealPage moved its headquarters from Carrollton to Richardson in 2016, reviving a telecom corridor landmark and bringing about 1,400 employees to its office on Lakeside Boulevard once likened to a suburban shopping mall.
The firm leased the 400,000-square-foot building because it was “busting at the seams,” Winn said at the time, and did not have room to expand in its 250,000-square-foot office in Carrollton.
The huge, barrel-vaulted building – built in the early 1990s for Northern Telecom – is well-known to commuters traveling along the North Central Expressway. In 2017, RealPage brought back a holiday tradition when it placed a giant lighted Christmas wreath on the highway side of the building.
The company grew through dozens of acquisitions
RealPage has grown dramatically in recent years through a series of acquisitions. The firm acquired Seattle-based Knock CRM in September and Alabama-based WhiteSky Communications in 2021. WhiteSky provided internet, voice and cable services to owners of apartments, student housing, hotels and assisted living centers.
In 2019, RealPage bought North Carolina-based real estate tech firm Investor Management Services, which provided web-based analytical and tech services for more than 50,000 property investors in 92 countries. That same year, RealPage paid $580 million for Buildium, a Boston-based real estate property management systems firm.
RealPage spent $400 million on mergers in 2018, including $218.5 million on electronic payment platform ClickPay and $103 million on LeaseLabs, a digital marketing services and software provider for apartments. In 2017, the company paid $250 million for California-based property management services platform On-Site Manager Inc. and spent $70 million on utility and energy management systems provider American Utility Management.
Founder is involved in Wells Fargo’s big project in Irving
Winn’s investment firm, Mirasol Capital, sold Wells Fargo its site at West Las Colinas Boulevard and Promenade Parkway in Irving for its $455 million, 800,000-square-foot regional office center. That will be the largest office development in Las Colinas since 1985.
Mirasol kept 17 acres between the Wells Fargo site and the Toyota Music Factory’s entertainment center, where it plans to build a mixed-use retail and residential project.
