Avalon the Albemarle residents choose a buyer

by Marlene Berlin

The vote is in, and the winner is clear. Residents of Avalon the Albemarle apartments at 4501 Connecticut Avenue are awarding their right to purchase the building to WC Smith.

WC Smith, a relative latecomer to the process, received 124 votes. True Ground Housing Partners, the first to make an offer to Avalon owner AvalonBay, got 12 votes. The Avalon’s tenants association announced the results on Friday, June 6th.

Avalon residents organized the Albemarle Tenant Association in April to exercise their rights under DC’s Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act, or TOPA, to either pursue their own purchase of the building or to award their right to purchase to a third-party buyer. The formation of their tenant association was also part of the process. TOPA gives tenant organization the rights to negotiate building improvements and other benefits. And, the tenants vote on their purchaser of choice.

WC Smith is a family-owned real estate firm that has been operating in DC since 1968. Just under half of its portfolio is rent-stabilized buildings. True Ground is an affordable housing developer and nonprofit with roots in Arlington, Virginia. It had proposed converting the building to affordable housing, grandfathering in existing residents.

The voting took place from Tuesday, June 3rd through Thursday, June 5th. On June 2nd, DC Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced that WC Smith is paying $1 million to settle a rental price-fixing lawsuit. While it’s the first of several defendants to agree to a settlement, WC Smith does not admit wrongdoing.

“We have consistently asserted that we did not participate in any of the activities alleged by the Office of Attorney General in the RealPage litigation. We now have been dismissed from this case without admission of the allegations or acceptance of liability,” WC Smith president John Ritz said in a statement.

The Office of the Attorney General sued in November 2023, alleging that 14 landlords and real estate software firm RealPage were illegally colluding “to artificially raise rents by participating in a centralized, anticompetitive scheme, causing District residents to pay millions of dollars above fair market prices.”

The District, separately, limits the amount and frequency of rent increases in apartment buildings constructed prior to 1976. Avalon the Albemarle is one of those rent-stabilized buildings.