Two DC landlords will pay $9.3 million over alleged rent-fixing

Two of Washington's biggest landlords, JBG Smith and Mid-America Apartments, will pay a combined $9.3 million to settle claims they used RealPage's pricing software to inflate rents across the District, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced. JBG Smith pays $8.1 million while MAA pays $1.2 million.

According to the attorney general's office, RealPage's revenue-management software priced more than 30% of apartments in DC multifamily buildings with at least five units, and about 60% of units in buildings with 50 or more, so in the District's largest buildings the algorithm set the rent on most of the doors.

What the software did

RealPage's product takes non-public, competitively sensitive pricing data from landlords, analyzes supply and demand, and spits out recommended rents. The DC lawsuit alleged that JBG Smith, MAA, and 12 other landlords fed that shared data into the same system and followed its recommendations rather than competing on price, which the office called an illegal price-fixing cartel.

The gap between the two firms explains the gap between the two fines. JBG Smith owns more than 4,500 apartments in DC and used the software at multiple properties, while MAA owns 269 and used it at one, so the penalty roughly tracked the footprint.

Schwalb framed it as a fairness problem, saying "District residents face severe housing affordability challenges, and yet some of the largest residential landlords made things worse by illegally colluding to artificially push rents even higher."

What it likely did to rent, and what we can't say

Rent in Washington rose from about $2,143 in 2021 to $2,528 now, an 18% climb over five years, and some share of that ran through RealPage in the buildings the case covers.

What no one can cleanly isolate is how much of it, though the Department of Justice's own case against RealPage estimated the software nudged rents up by low single-digit percentages in concentrated markets, and DC's high adoption rate, 60% in big buildings, is exactly the kind of concentration where the effect would be largest. But separating an algorithm's push from a genuine supply shortage inside a citywide average isn't something our data or anyone else's can do precisely, and we'd rather say that than hand you a fake figure.

The measurable harm is narrower and more certain, since the software let competing landlords price off each other's private data instead of undercutting one another, and competition is the thing that normally caps rent. Remove it and the ceiling rises.

What the settlement changes

The consent orders bar both firms from using rent-setting software that relies on other landlords' private pricing data, from sharing their own private data in ways that enable coordination, and from pushing other landlords to adopt the tools. The office can appoint an independent monitor at the companies' expense if it suspects violations.

Two things this doesn't do, though. It doesn't lower anyone's current rent, and it doesn't touch the 12 other landlords named in the lawsuit or the majority of RealPage-priced units still operating in the city, so it's a first settlement rather than a resolution.

DC now joins a lengthening list. We covered the Philadelphia RealPage lawsuit, the New Jersey ban, San Francisco two years after its own ban, and the national RealPage class-action settlement that may put money back in renters' pockets. The through-line across all of them is that removing the software is a real fix for coordination and a small one for price, since the thing actually driving DC rent is the same shortage driving it everywhere.

DC residents can send housing complaints to [email protected].

Sources

• WJLA / 7News (September 2026), for the settlement terms and Schwalb statement

• DC Office of the Attorney General, JBG Smith consent order

• RentDataNow Washington, DC rent data, anchored to the Zillow Observed Rent Index, June 2026