Amid an ongoing lawsuit into a group of D.C. landlords who have allegedly colluded to raise rent prices, students said they struggled to find affordable off-campus housing close to GW.
Fourteen of D.C.’s biggest landlords, including five that own buildings near campus, are named in an ongoing lawsuit, with D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb alleging the landlords unlawfully colluded with property management software company RealPage to raise rent prices by up to 7 percent in the District. As the lawsuit and federal investigation continue, students living in apartment buildings like the 2400 M Street apartments and The Statesman affected by the lawsuit and investigation said they’ve noticed raises to their rents in the last year, while students looking for off-campus housing said higher rent prices and additional fees have made the search for an affordable place near GW strenuous.
Schwalb’s legal complaint, which he launched in November following a ProPublica investigation into RealPage in 2022, alleges the group of landlords engaged in a price-fixing scheme, using RealPage’s algorithms to set higher rent prices through a single entity instead of competing against each other. The legal complaint says the alleged collusion increased prices by 2 to 7 percent and is a violation of D.C. antitrust laws.
“Increases of this magnitude translate to millions in wrongfully inflated rents in the last four years alone,” the legal complaint states.
The D.C. Superior Court arranged an initial scheduling conference — the first formal hearing with the assigned judge that presents the parties with an opportunity to try and settle their case — on May 31 for the lawsuit, according to court documents.
The Department of Justice initiated a criminal investigation in March into RealPage and dozens of property managers and apartment owners across the country to determine whether RealPage’s software is facilitating a price-fixing scheme among property owners and managers.
The 14 landlords own more than 58,000 apartment units in the District, including more than 40,000 units priced using RealPage’s software. The legal complaint does not outline a timeline of when landlords used the software.
Five of the 14 defendant landlords — AvalonBay Communities Inc., JBG Associates LLC, Gables Residential Services Inc., Bozzuto Management Company and Equity Residential Management LLC — own seven buildings near the Foggy Bottom campus. The buildings include WestEnd25 at 1255 25th Street, the Westlight at 1110 23rd Street, Westbrooke Place at 2201 N Street, the 2400 M Street Apartments, The Flats at Dupont at 2000 N Street, The Wray at 515 22nd Street and The Statesman at 2020 F Street.
Renee Tapp, an assistant professor of urban and regional planning at the University of Florida, said RealPage is one of the “dominant” property management softwares in the United States and that it makes suggestions for the rent prices of more than 50,000 apartment units in the District to landlords.
Tapp said students living in larger multifamily apartment buildings, which are the main targets of the lawsuit, likely face higher rent prices, increased rates of eviction and “excessive fees.” She said students and lower-income individuals are disproportionately targeted by bigger landlords who charge nonrefundable fees for additional expenses like utilities that increase the cost of living for students without raising the actual rent price.
“It’s higher prices and worse living conditions,” Tapp said. “I would say that those are kind of the two things that I would see as kind of being likely spillovers from this lawsuit or likely things that students would encounter.”
Dilshad Dinshaw, a rising second-year graduate student and a resident of 2400 M Apartments, said she moved to a cheaper unit in the building last year after her landlord raised her rent by $500 without providing an explanation. She said her old apartment on the eighth floor of the building was slightly larger than her new unit on the second floor, which has cockroaches and overlooks trash cans.
She said her one-bedroom unit with a den, which she shares with one roommate, costs $2,808 total a month — a “reduced rate” because of their view of the trash cans — compared to her previous unit which cost $3,354 before the rent increase and $3,800 after the rent increase.
“I’m not surprised,” Dinshaw said, referring to the lawsuit’s claim that landlords are colluding to raise rent prices. “But obviously rent prices have increased everywhere as a whole as well. I mean, I feel like this is a really good location so, obviously, the rent prices are going to be more expensive, but, at the same time, I do think that these prices are getting extremely high.”
Rent prices for middle tier apartments in the District rose 3.6 percent between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2023, according to Axios.
Dinshaw added that she will start paying a technology and utilities fee, which will each cost her an additional $25 per month on top of her rent.
“That is, you know, an extra $50 now per month that I kind of really don’t understand where that money is going, why it’s necessary, etc., which has been kind of frustrating,” Dinshaw said.
Sidra Hussain, a 2024 graduate who lives in The Statesman and has lived in off-campus housing since 2020, said she was not surprised to hear about the lawsuit because she noticed a “massive increase” in rent prices when looking for a new lease last year. She said the apartment rent prices last summer were listed for hundreds more than they were in previous summers.
She said she found that big landlord-owned buildings like The Statesman, which defendant AvalonBay Communities owns, have “steep” prices compared to condominium buildings with independent landlords, like her previous unit in The President Condominiums at 2141 I Street.
Rising junior Maria McIntyre said she started looking for an apartment off campus to live in junior year with a few of her friends in November. She said she considered apartments like The Wray and The Statesman, which are both owned by landlords who are defendants in the lawsuit, but didn’t end up applying because they were “ridiculously expensive.” The Statesman’s lowest-priced studio apartments are listed at a monthly rent of $2,305, while The Wray’s lowest listed studio apartment goes for $2,679 a month.
“I know some people who lived [in The Statesman] who were like, it’s not that great of an apartment place and, once we heard how much it cost it was like, ‘Oh, that’s really not worth it,’” McIntyre said.
McIntyre said she settled on James Place, an apartment in Georgetown whose landlord is not listed in the lawsuit, which she said is a bit of a walk from campus but cheaper than buildings close to GW.
Rising junior Frances Laufer said she and her roommate struggled to find off-campus housing because units owned by big landlords had “ridiculous” rent prices like The Wray, which she said was “insanely” priced for its square footage as the rent prices range from $2,679 to $4,668 per month.
“It kind of puts a stress on students that really shouldn’t be there,” Laufer said.
