Two of the largest landlords named in Washington’s rent-fixing lawsuit will pay $9.3 million and give up the pricing software at the center of the case. D.C. Attorney General Brian L. Schwalb announced separate settlement agreements with JBG Associates, L.L.C., which the office identifies as JBG Smith, and Mid-America Apartments on Sept. 14, 2026, resolving his office’s claims that the companies illegally coordinated apartment rents through revenue management software sold by RealPage, Inc.
JBG Smith will pay $8.1 million and MAA will pay $1.2 million, money that covers civil penalties, payments to affected residents and legal fees, according to the attorney general’s announcement. JBG Smith owns more than 4,500 apartments in Washington, the office said, while MAA owns 269.
“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,” Schwalb said in the announcement. “My office will continue to use the law to make sure that DC’s housing market is fair and competitive, that law-abiding landlords can compete on a level playing field, and that DC residents who want to live in the District can afford to live here.”
What the two landlords agreed to change
Beyond the payments, both companies agreed to three operating commitments. They will stop using revenue management software that relies on any non-public or confidential data from other companies. They will stop encouraging other firms to use that kind of software or to accept the rents it recommends, and stop promoting it to other property owners. And they will stop sharing non-public information with other landlords or property managers in the way the office alleges they previously did.
The agreements also carry an enforcement mechanism. If the attorney general’s office comes to believe either company is not complying, it can appoint an independent monitor β paid for by the company β to evaluate compliance, after which the office decides what further steps to take.
The announcement describes the payments as resolving the office’s allegations and does not state that either company admitted wrongdoing.
A case that started in 2023
Schwalb sued RealPage and 14 District landlords on Nov. 1, 2023, in what his office describes as the first government lawsuit brought against the company and the landlords using its pricing products. The complaint alleged that the defendants delegated rent-setting authority to RealPage and shared confidential pricing data with it, allowing the software to estimate local supply and demand and generate what the office calls an inflated rental price.
The reach of the software in Washington is what gave the case its scale. The office says well over 30% of apartments in District buildings with five or more units β and roughly 60% of units in buildings with 50 or more β have been priced using RealPage’s revenue management software. In its original filing, the office said more than 50,000 District apartments were priced that way.
The JBG Smith and MAA agreements are the third and fourth settlements to come out of the case. William C. Smith & Co. paid more than $1 million in the first one. Avenue5 Residential and Bell Partners followed on June 12, 2026, paying $700,000 apiece for a combined $1.4 million. Adding JBG Smith and MAA brings total recoveries in the District’s case past $11.7 million, with the two newest agreements accounting for the bulk of it. The office has not announced settlements with RealPage or with the remaining named landlords, a group that includes AvalonBay Communities, Equity Residential Management and UDR.
The office said the matters were handled by Assistant Attorneys General Ashley Walters and Mehreen Imtiaz and overseen by Adam Gitlin, chief of its Antitrust and Nonprofit Enforcement Section.
Part of a widening national reckoning
Washington’s case is one front in a much larger fight over algorithmic rent-setting. Plaintiffs’ firms in multidistrict litigation in Nashville have proposed a $359.9 million nationwide class settlement covering similar claims, with a final approval hearing set for Oct. 15, 2026. Cities have gone further and legislated: a West Philadelphia renter sued Willow Bridge Property Co. and RealPage in July in what was reported as the first case filed under Philadelphia’s ban on algorithmic rent coordination.
For the two settling companies, the dollar amounts land differently. MAA’s $1.2 million is small against a national portfolio that dwarfs its 269-unit District footprint, and the REIT has spent 2026 contending with Sunbelt supply pressure that pushed it to cut revenue guidance. JBG Smith’s $8.1 million arrives during a harder stretch: the REIT reported a $59.2 million second-quarter net loss and is contesting a roughly $356.1 million D.C. Superior Court judgment in the unrelated Wardman Tower condominium case, which it has said it plans to appeal.
The more consequential term for the industry is not the money but the software ban. Two operators controlling thousands of Washington units have now committed, in writing and under threat of a monitor, to price apartments without competitors’ confidential data. Each settlement of this kind narrows the pool of landlords feeding data into the systems that make the products work.
