Regulation and policy — what changed and what's next
Rent control expanded (OR, CA, NY, WA). The RealPage antitrust settlement (Nov 2025) ended the operating spread of early-adopter revenue management. The OBBB Act (July 2025) made Opportunity Zones permanent. ESG disclosure expanded in Europe but pulled back in US SEC rulemaking.
RealPage / antitrust: The DOJ filed an antitrust complaint in 2024 and reached a proposed settlement on Nov 24, 2025. Under the consent decree, RealPage cannot use competing landlords' nonpublic, competitively sensitive data at runtime, cannot train on data younger than 12 months old, cannot build sub-state-level models. Greystar separately settled for $50M class action plus $7M across nine states. New York State enacted a first-of-its-kind statute treating multi-landlord data pooling as antitrust regardless of public/nonpublic inputs.
OBBB / Opportunity Zones: P.L. 119-21 (signed July 4, 2025). Eliminates the December 31, 2026 sunset. 10-year rolling redesignation cycle. Enhanced incentives for Qualified Rural Opportunity Funds: 30% basis step-up at five years (vs. 10% non-rural); 50% substantial improvement threshold (vs. 100%).
ESG: SFDR (EU Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation), CSRD (Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive) expanded materially in Europe. US SEC ESG rulemaking pulled back under the 2025 administration. Global managers now run dual reporting tracks. NYC Local Law 97 reporting began Jan 1, 2024 with ~50,000 covered buildings; ~9% exceeded their 2024 cap, ~57% projected to exceed their 2030 cap.