The Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit last week against the largest apartment landlord in the country, Greystar Real Estate Partners, accusing it of charging tenants hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden fees.
Greystar, which according to the National Multifamily Housing Council manages nearly 800,000 apartments across the country, routinely failed to notify prospective renters of mandatory fees for services including trash collection, pest control and package delivery, the FTC said in its complaint. Combined, these apartment fees have often added up to hundreds or thousands of dollars each year. Many tenants, the agency said, did not discover the fees until after they signed a lease or moved into a Greystar property.
The real estate giant’s pricing practices, since at least 2019, have in some cases included lease-termination charges amounting to thousands of dollars, according to the lawsuit. Those charges essentially lock tenants into leases that require them to pay more than the advertised cost, the lawsuit said.
“Through their actions, Greystar is thwarting apartment hunters from comparison shopping and choosing a home that fits within their budget,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser, who filed the lawsuit Thursday with the FTC, said in a statement.
The lawsuit, which came in the final days of Lina Khan’s tenure as chair of the FTC, is a continuation of the Biden administration’s focus on reining in costs in the rental housing industry.
Last week, the Justice Department’s antitrust division expanded its lawsuit against the real estate software company RealPage, initially filed in August, to include Greystar and five other landlords, accusing them of using algorithms in coordination to keep rents high. Greystar said in a statement that the firm had never engaged in anticompetitive practices.
Greystar said the FTC’s complaint was based on misrepresentations of the facts and that the company intended to defend itself against the government’s claims.