Two D.C. landlords have agreed to pay $9.3 million to resolve claims that they “illegally conspired” to inflate rents across the thousands of apartments they own across the city, D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb said in a Monday press release.
It’s the biggest settlement to date in an ongoing series of suits between the D.C. attorney general’s office and 14 local landlords accused of using RealPage software to inflate rental prices at tens of thousands of apartments across the District, which resulted in renters paying millions of dollars more than they should have. Since 2025, three D.C. landlords have settled for a total of $2.4 million. Similar lawsuits have been filed in states including Maryland.
The latest to settle are Tennessee-based Mid-America Apartments, which will pay $1.2 million for allegedly inflating rents at the Post Massachusetts Avenue in Northwest D.C., one of its 269 District properties, and Bethesda-based giant JBG Smith, which owns more than 4,500 units in D.C. JBG Smith will pay $8.1 million to settle claims it inflated rents at multiple properties including The Batley in Northeast D.C., and West Half located in Southeast.
RealPage’s rental software, which uses confidential pricing data from landlords to estimate supply and demand and generate an inflated rental price, is widely employed across D.C. properties: More than 30% of apartments in buildings with five or more units and 60% in buildings with more than 50 units have been priced using it, the attorney general’s office said in its news release.
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“This leaves many District residents with no choice but to pay inflated rents,” the office said.
Impacted residents will get some of their money back through a claims administration process, though some of the settlement will go to civil penalties and legal fees. Going forward, landlords will be prohibited from using these tools to artificially inflate rents.
It’s the latest headache for JBG Smith, which has about $2.6 billion in debt tied to its properties, according to its first-quarter Securities and Exchange Commission filings for 2026.
The company was ordered to pay $356 million in damages last month for misrepresenting a condo building it owns in Woodley Park, The Washington Business Journal reported. In May, The Washington Sun reported on a property co-owned by JBG Smith where tenants face abysmal housing conditions with little redress.
Conditions at that property, The Gale Eckington, have not improved since May, and management continues to be unresponsive, one tenant told The Sun. Landlords JBG Smith and Jonathan Rose Companies still owe more than $216,000 for 208 unresolved code violations at the property, according to a public Department of Buildings dashboard.
A spokesperson for JBG Smith said in a statement that the company did not have additional comment at this time, and referred questions about the distribution of settlement funds to the attorney general’s office.
This story was updated with a response from JBG Smith.
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