DENVER (AP) — U.S. property management company Greystar swindled renters across the country out of hundreds of millions using deceptive advertising and hidden fees, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and Colorado.
The lawsuit arrive as renters gasp for air in America’s squeezed housing market and federal officials move to intervene. The Biden administration last week accused several major landlords and property managers, including Greystar, of scheming together to keep rents high in a sweeping lawsuit.
For years, rents have inexorably climbed, leaving half of U.S. renters — some 21 million households — spending more than a third of their income on the monthly bill. Within that group are people who are postponing doctor appointments to the pay their energy bills, removing groceries from the bag at the cash register or asking friends for a small loan.
Greystar, which the FTC said manages some 800,000 rental units across the country, posted an unsigned statement on it’s website in response to the lawsuit.
“The FTC has opted for headline-grabbing litigation in the waning days of the current administration,” the statement reads. “The complaint is based on gross misrepresentations of the facts and fundamentally flawed legal theories.”
The lawsuit accuses Greystar of not revealing fees — such as trash or package delivery services — on websites where the apartments they managed were advertised, such as Zillow, even when those rental marketplaces had sections to list those types of fees.
Many people applying to the rental properties, the lawsuit said, couldn’t learn of the fees until they filled out inquiry forms or clicked through small-print hyperlinks. In several cases, the FTC alleges that Greystar didn’t reveal the fees until applicants paid the application fee, and that the extra chargers were buried in lease agreements reaching 60-pages long.
Greystar, in their statement, said: “No resident at a Greystar-managed community pays a fee they have not seen and agreed to in their lease.”
The five members of the bipartisan commission unanimously voted to file the lawsuit, which accuses the management company of violating the FTC ACT as well as the Colorado Consumer Protection Act, according to a press release from the agency.
“To the extent that other corporate landlords are not advertising their all-in pricing and are engaging in similar tactics, they are on notice that such conduct is illegal,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.
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Bedayn is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
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