Profile

Heading the firm's Residential Property Management practice, Jay Harris is a highly experienced rental housing and data privacy attorney who counsels on commercial agreements, multistate regulatory compliance, government affairs advocacy, and commercial litigation matters.

He advises multifamily and single-family rental housing operators, property technology vendors, and trade groups on legal matters across the renter life cycle:

• Marketing and Leasing
• Data Privacy, Safeguards, and Artificial Intelligence
• Resident Screening and Consumer Reporting
• Utilities, Billing, and Payments
• Tenant Risk Protection (Security Deposits, Renters' Insurance)
• Consumer Communications and Debt Collections
• Investment Due Diligence

Clients rely on Jay for his business-aware legal counsel, which enables clients to stay ahead of complex regulatory issues. He was General Counsel for several national rental housing vendors, where he directed litigation defense and enterprise compliance programs. As a business leader, he ran a national public records provider with full profit/loss responsibility. Earlier, he was expert regulatory counsel and led government affairs advocacy on property management issues for the apartment industry's leading trade groups, where he advised senior management of the industry's leading operators, vendors, lenders, and developers.

Jay recently completed a decade of service as a Board Member of True Ground Housing Partners, a non-profit affordable housing developer. He speaks frequently at industry events and runs the Residential Property Management webinar series. He is admitted to practice in Virginia and Washington, DC. He received his law degree from George Mason University School of Law and graduated from The Johns Hopkins University.