Apartment manager accused of charging ‘hidden fees’ to tenants in Nevada, other states
The federal government has taken a big apartment company with operations in the Las Vegas Valley to court, alleging it collected more than $100 million in “hidden fees” from tenants in Nevada and other states.
The Federal Trade Commission and Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser teamed up early this year, just days before President Joe Biden left office, to sue real estate giant Greystar.
They claimed in court papers that the nation’s largest multifamily-rental manager used “deceptive advertising” to entice would-be tenants into applying for units and then “bilked those consumers out of hundreds of millions of dollars” by charging hidden fees for itself and its landlord clients.
According to the complaint, Greystar “consistently omits” various mandatory fees from the advertised price of available units, and under the guise of cheaper rent, it can attract more prospective tenants.
Between summer 2019 and summer 2022, on property owners’ behalf, Greystar collected more than $100 million in hidden fees from tenants at properties it managed in California, Colorado, Nevada and Utah alone, the lawsuit alleged.
Greystar’s website lists 43 apartment communities in the Las Vegas Valley.
The civil complaint, filed Jan. 16 in federal court in Colorado, days before President Donald Trump took office, also alleged that prospective tenants have “limited options for recourse.”
If they realize the “true price” before signing a lease and try to withdraw their application, they can’t recoup the hundreds of dollars they paid during the process, and if tenants want to cancel their lease, Greystar charges termination fees often totaling thousands of dollars, according to the complaint.
The FTC, which was led by Chair Lina Khan when the case was filed, is now led by Andrew Ferguson, who was designated chairman of the agency by Trump.
The case against Greystar remains open, court records show.
In response to the lawsuit, Greystar previously said that rather than working with the company “to help drive meaningful improvements for consumers in the rental housing industry, the FTC has opted for headline-grabbing litigation in the waning days” of the Biden administration.
Greystar said that the complaint was “based on gross misrepresentations of the facts and fundamentally flawed legal theories” and that the company will “vigorously defend” itself against the suit.
“The FTC’s complaint targets a longstanding industrywide practice of advertising base rent to potential residents. The idea that this is done with the goal of hiding fees from consumers is patently false,” Greystar said. “No resident at a Greystar-managed community pays a fee they have not seen and agreed to in their lease.”
Greystar, based in Charleston, South Carolina, is led by billionaire founder Bob Faith. The company says it manages and operates nearly $315 billion worth of real estate in roughly 250 markets globally.
Contact Eli Segall at esegall@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0342.