JBG Smith and Mid-America Apartments agreed to pay Washington, D.C. $9.3 million combined, $8.1 million and $1.2 million respectively, to settle the District's antitrust suit over RealPage's rent-pricing software. The check is the headline. The more useful part for operators is inside the two consent orders, which describe, feature by feature, what a pricing tool may and may not do for eight years at MAA and 10 years at JBG.
What happened
The D.C. Office of the Attorney General announced the deals on September 14, 2026. The money covers civil penalties, money to affected residents and legal fees; the release does not break out how much goes to each. Per the same release, JBG Smith owns more than 4,500 units in the District and MAA owns 269.
The case dates to 2023, when the attorney general sued RealPage and 14 landlords, alleging they shared nonpublic data and let the software set rents. Multifamily Dive reports the consent judgments were filed last week in D.C. Superior Court. Both companies deny the allegations, and the orders say they are not an admission of liability.
This is the third round of D.C. settlements. W.C. Smith agreed to pay $1,050,000 in a deal announced in June 2025, and Avenue5 Residential and Bell Partners agreed to pay $700,000 each in June 2026. By our tally from those releases and this week's, five landlords have now agreed to pay about $11.75 million. The District says well over 30% of apartments in buildings with five or more units, and about 60% of units in buildings with 50 or more, have been priced with RealPage's revenue management software.
What the orders actually restrict
The data rule is there: neither company may use pricing software that relies on nonpublic information from other landlords. JBG's order carves out historical or backward-looking data that is at least 12 months old and not from active leases from that restriction, though a separate provision still bars software that uses other landlords' nonpublic information as an input for JBG.
What stands out is how specific the orders get about software design. For D.C. properties, neither company may knowingly license or use a revenue management tool that, among other things:
- Limits parameter settings or overrides so that a recommended price cannot go below a measure of fair market price.
- Limits or penalizes settings or overrides that would cap or eliminate recommended increases.
- Rewards or requires accepting recommended prices, whether all of them or at any set frequency.
- Requires a justification when a user rejects a recommendation.
- Auto-accepts prices without the user setting its own parameters, including a maximum increase or decrease.
- Uses day-over-day guardrails without symmetrical upper and lower bounds.
- Makes batch acceptance materially easier than batch rejection through its interface.
The orders also bar the companies from promoting revenue management software to other D.C. owners and managers (JBG may still pitch permitted software to its own clients). They require a written policy barring staff from sharing nonpublic information with competitors through channels including listservs, surveys and online forums. And they limit attendance at meetings with other operators that involve D.C. lease pricing or revenue management (for JBG, any residential leasing in the District) unless antitrust counsel attends, an antitrust policy is read, or the employee signs a compliance statement.
Before using another vendor's revenue management tool in D.C., each company must get that vendor's written assurance that the software will not stop it from complying. MAA must also get RealPage's written assent, within 30 days of the order's entry, that its LRO product complies with the federal DOJ decree. JBG represents in its order that it has already stopped using RealPage's revenue management software in the District.
The operational compliance reports described in both orders, which the District can require in certain circumstances (for JBG, after a monitor is appointed), include the monthly rate at which the company accepted recommended prices. If the District's compliance concerns are not resolved, it can move to appoint an independent monitor at the company's expense; under MAA's order, that requires a reasonable, good-faith belief of a material breach, and MAA can first ask the court to rule on it.
Why it matters for property managers
These orders bind two companies. They do not set rules for anyone else. But they are a detailed public description of what one government enforcer treats as a compliant pricing tool, and they shift the question from where the data comes from to how the product nudges the person clicking approve.
Acceptance rate is now a metric an enforcer has written into proposed consent orders. An operator that approves nearly every recommendation, with no record of its own reasoning, may have a harder time showing that people, not software, set its rents.
The settlements also do not close out other issues. MAA's order carves non-antitrust fee claims and Fair Housing claims out of the release, and names a separate District suit against MAA over fees. Multifamily Dive reports the attorney general sued MAA in April over alleged junk fees.
On resident money, be careful what your team says. Both orders let the District use the payment for any lawful purpose, including a restitution fund, and MAA's order states that it creates no right for any third party to a share. Neither the release nor the orders describe a claims process for residents.
What to do this week
This is general information, not legal advice. Antitrust exposure depends on your facts and your jurisdiction; confirm next steps with antitrust counsel.
- Walk through your pricing tool against the design list above. Check auto-accept settings, whether guardrails are symmetrical, whether rejecting a price takes more clicks than accepting one, and whether overrides require a written reason.
- Pull your monthly acceptance rate by property. Know the number before anyone asks for it, and keep a simple record of why your team overrides or accepts.
- Ask each pricing vendor, in writing, whether the product uses or was trained on nonpublic data from other landlords, and whether it would prevent you from meeting terms like these.
- Write down what staff may share with competitors. Cover email groups, market surveys and online forums, and consider limiting it to public information such as advertised rents and availability.
- Set a rule for pricing talk at industry meetings: counsel present, a policy read at the start, or no pricing discussion.
- Give leasing teams a short script for rent-refund questions. Do not promise a payout; point residents to the attorney general's announcement.
What we're watching
- Court entry. Several deadlines in both orders, and the eight-year and 10-year terms, run from the date the court enters them.
- The rest of the D.C. case. The District has announced settlements with five of the 14 landlords it sued, and MAA's order refers to a possible future agreement or judgment against RealPage in the same action.
- Copycat terms. Watch whether other attorneys general adopt the software-design list. Multifamily Dive's lawsuit tracker also notes RealPage has sued to challenge New York's and Berkeley, California's anti-algorithmic pricing laws.