AvalonBay Sells Another D.C. Apartment Building To Local Owner
AvalonBay has offloaded a fifth D.C. apartment building in under a year.
The Arlington, Virginia-based REIT sold a 234-unit apartment building just north of the Van Ness Metro station for $69.8M, D.C. deed records show.
The buyer was D.C.-based developer and owner WC Smith, with its first acquisition in more than two years. WC Smith took out a $52.5M loan from Walker & Dunlop for the acquisition, property records show.
The sale was the result of a Tenant Opportunity to Purchase Act process, a WC Smith spokesperson told Bisnow.
The company was approached last year by a lawyer representing a tenants association, which was seeking a partner for a TOPA acquisition, according to the spokesperson. The building at 4501 Connecticut Ave. NW is branded The Albemarle.
“We’re excited to add The Albemarle to our portfolio of more than 90 managed properties throughout Washington, including two on the same block as The Albemarle, and look forward to providing best-in-class property management services to the residents,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
AvalonBay did not respond to Bisnow’s request for comment.
The REIT had owned the 1960s-era property since 2013.
Last March, the property was reportedly under contract to Arlington-based nonprofit True Ground Housing Partners, which was planning to convert it into affordable housing. That sale never went through.
True Ground Housing Partners declined Bisnow’s request for comment.
AvalonBay has a large D.C.-area portfolio, with 40 communities totaling 14,253 units as of the end of January, according to its fourth-quarter earnings report. But it’s on a streak of shedding quite a few assets in the District proper.
The sale comes after the REIT offloaded 1,248 units last year in a four-building portfolio sale to Foulger Pratt, Bisnow first reported. The nearly half-a-billion-dollar sale was made up of NoMa properties, one Gallery Place property and an H Street property.
While the sale fits into a pattern for the seller, it’s more of an anomalous move for the buyer.
It has been years since WC Smith, which solely owns properties in the District, purchased any type of asset. Its last acquisition was a development site near Nationals Park in October 2023, a spokesperson confirmed.
That site is part of a larger development WC Smith is planning on South Capitol Street, and it has advanced other projects in recent years like Skyland Town Center, where it broke ground in 2024 on the 126-unit final phase.
The company at the end of last year sold off its headquarters building for a loss, and it told Bisnow last year it had lost millions of dollars due to unpaid rent.
In February 2025, WC Smith President John Ritz told Bisnow it wrote off $7.2M in bad debt and had a $9.1M balance in accounts receivable, with 80% of those amounts coming from past-due rent at affordable properties. A spokesperson now tells Bisnow it has written off $28M since the start of the pandemic.
Since then, D.C. lawmakers passed the Rental Act, legislation that limited which buildings would be subject to TOPA in the city and attempted to take on the issue of unpaid rent and eviction delays.
WC Smith has a $1.7B residential portfolio totaling 9,000 units, according to its website. The company named a new CEO at the beginning of 2025, when its former chief operating officer, Brad Fennell, took over for Chris Smith. It was the first time in the company’s 56-year history that someone outside the founding family held the top role.
UPDATE, MARCH 31, 5:25 P.M. ET: This story has been updated with more information on WC Smith's activity.
