Dive Brief:
- Avenue5 Residential and Bell Partners agreed to pay Washington, D.C., a combined $1.4 million and to change certain business practices to resolve allegations that they conspired with other landlords, using RealPage’s pricing software, to inflate rents at more than 50,000 apartments in the district, according to a June 12 press release.
- Avenue5 Residential and Bell Partners will each pay $700,000 in civil penalties, money to impacted residents and legal fees, per their respective consent agreements. They also agreed to reform their rent-setting practices and to stop sharing non-public information with other landlords, but the firms do not admit fault.
- The settlements are the latest developments in a case that the D.C. attorney general’s office filed in 2023 against RealPage and 14 landlords, accusing them of “unlawfully agreeing to exchange competitively sensitive data in violation of the District of Columbia Antitrust Act.” RealPage settled a major price-fixing suit with the Justice Department in November 2025 but faces additional lawsuits from D.C. and various states.
Dive Insight:
Seattle-based Avenue5 owns 667 units in D.C., per the release, and at the time the lawsuit was filed in 2023, Greensboro, North Carolina-headquartered Bell Partners owned more than 1,300 units in the city. Avenue5 allegedly used RealPage’s software to set rents for three of its district buildings, while Bell Partners used it for two local properties.
If the attorney general’s office learns that one of the firms may not be complying with the terms, it will appoint an independent monitor at the company’s expense to evaluate compliance and determine any additional penalties, per the settlement agreement. Multifamily Dive reached out to Avenue5, Bell Partners and the D.C. attorney general’s office for comment but did not hear back by publication time.
D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in the release that Avenue5 and Bell Partners deserve credit for being among the first of the parties “to come to the table and reform their anticompetitive rent-setting practices.”
“We will continue working to hold RealPage and all the remaining defendant landlords accountable to ensure that DC’s housing market is fair, competitive, and free of illegal collusion,” Schwalb said.
So far, only one other landlord — William C. Smith & Co. — has settled. Last June, W.C. Smith, which owns 9,000 units in the Washington region, agreed to pay $1 million but denied that it violated any law or engaged in anticompetitive conduct.
In D.C. proper, more than 30% of apartments in multifamily buildings with five or more units, and approximately 60% of units in large multifamily buildings of 50 or more units, have been priced using RealPage’s software, per the OAG. Schwalb said in the 2023 release announcing the lawsuit that “defendants’ coordinated and anticompetitive conduct amounts to a District-wide housing cartel.”
A new judge is likely to oversee the case when it is scheduled to go to trial in March 2027, due to standard two-year judicial rotations in the D.C. Superior Court, MLex reported on Friday. Associate Judge Todd Edelman first oversaw the case before it transitioned to the current judge, Shana Frost Matini.
The remaining 11 housing firms named in the case are:
- AvalonBay Communities
- Bozzuto Management Co.
- Camden Summit Partnership
- Equity Residential
- Gables Residential Services
- GREP Atlantic, a subsidiary of Greystar
- Highmark Residential
- JBG Smith Properties
- Mid-America Apartments
- Paradigm Management II
- UDR
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