F.T.C. Sues Greystar, Largest U.S. Apartment Landlord, Over Hidden Fees

The Federal Trade Commission on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the largest apartment landlord in the United States, 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 F.T.C.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’s attorney general, Phil Weiser, who filed the lawsuit with the F.T.C., said in a statement.The lawsuit, which comes in the final days of Lina Khan’s tenure as chair of the F.T.C., 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 anti-competitive practices.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while ...