$24 Million: The Nation's Largest Landlord Settles Over Hidden Rent Fees

Greystar, the nation's largest multi-family rental property manager, agreed to pay $24 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the Federal Trade Commission and the State of Colorado, announced December 2, 2025, alleging the company advertised deceptively low rental prices that excluded mandatory monthly fees renters were required to pay.DOCUMENTED

Of the total settlement, $23 million will go directly to the FTC for consumer redress and $1 million to the State of Colorado, resolving a lawsuit the two had jointly filed in January 2025.DOCUMENTED

What the complaint alleged

According to the joint complaint filed by the FTC and the Colorado Attorney General's office in January 2025, Greystar displayed a deceptively low rental price to prospective tenants during their initial search and shopping process, without disclosing that renters would also be required to pay a series of fixed, mandatory monthly fees covering services such as pest control, valet trash collection, package concierge service, and utility administration. These fees were not presented as part of the headline price a prospective renter would see while comparing units, but were instead added later in the leasing process.DOCUMENTED

"Greystar misled consumers by advertising low rent prices and then adding mandatory fees at the end of the sales process," said Christopher Mufarrige, Director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection, in the agency's announcement of the settlement. "At a time when Americans are struggling to find affordable housing, the FTC is focused on monitoring the housing marketplace to ensure that competitors are meaningfully competing on price and that consumers receive transparent pricing."DOCUMENTED

The settlement's disclosure requirements

The settlement requires Greystar to display the Total Monthly Leasing Price — defined as base rent plus all mandatory monthly costs or fees — more prominently than any other pricing representation in its advertising. Greystar must also clearly and conspicuously disclose the existence, amount, nature, and purpose of any fees or costs, and specify whether each is mandatory or optional, before charging a prospective renter any payment or deposit.DOCUMENTED

The order additionally prohibits Greystar from requiring an initial payment from a prospective tenant without first disclosing all relevant pricing information, and imposes ongoing reporting and record-keeping requirements to allow regulators to monitor compliance over time.DOCUMENTED

A separate, related algorithmic pricing case

The FTC's hidden-fee settlement is legally distinct from a separate multistate lawsuit in which Greystar was one of several landlords accused of participating in an algorithmic rent-setting scheme using pricing software from RealPage. In that case, a coalition of nine state attorneys general reached a separate $7 million settlement with Greystar in November 2025, resolving allegations that the company shared competitively sensitive, non-public data with competing landlords through RealPage's revenue-management software, which used that shared data to recommend synchronized rent increases across otherwise competing properties.DOCUMENTED

Under that separate state settlement, Greystar agreed to stop using any revenue-management product incorporating external, non-public competitor data to generate rental pricing recommendations, and to identify an antitrust compliance officer to the participating states.DOCUMENTED

Signals of a broader rulemaking to come

In a concurring statement accompanying the settlement, which the two Republican commissioners approved by a 2-0 vote, Chairman Andrew Ferguson said he had "directed Commission staff to begin the process of proposing a rule to address unfair or deceptive fees in rental housing." Such a rule would extend the FTC's prior efforts targeting so-called drip pricing — the practice of advertising an incomplete price and adding mandatory charges later in a transaction — specifically into the residential rental market, an industry not previously covered by a dedicated federal fee-disclosure rule.DOCUMENTED

Legal analysts tracking the case have noted that a formal rulemaking, if it proceeds, would apply the disclosure standards Greystar is now individually bound to follow across the broader rental housing industry, potentially reshaping how landlords nationwide are required to advertise pricing regardless of whether they have faced their own FTC enforcement action.

The two-commissioner, 2-0 vote approving the settlement reflects the FTC's current reduced-commissioner composition following departures earlier in the administration, a detail that has shaped how several 2025 settlements were finalized despite the agency ordinarily operating with a full five-member Commission. Regardless of that procedural context, the substantive disclosure requirements imposed on Greystar, and the prospect of a broader rental-fee rule Chairman Ferguson has directed staff to begin drafting, together signal that hidden mandatory fees in residential leasing are likely to remain a defined FTC enforcement priority well beyond this single settlement.REVIEWED

Housing affordability advocates have pointed to the Greystar case as particularly significant given the company's scale: because Greystar manages units in markets across the country, a pricing-transparency standard applied to a single company approaching a million rental units carries a different order of practical impact than a comparable settlement with a smaller, regionally concentrated landlord, even before any broader industry-wide rule takes effect.REVIEWED

Renters attempting to comparison-shop across different apartment complexes have long faced a version of this problem industry-wide: because mandatory fee structures vary significantly between properties and are frequently disclosed only late in the leasing process, an advertised base rent alone has historically provided a poor basis for comparing the true cost of different rental options, a gap the FTC's settlement and any subsequent rulemaking are specifically intended to close.REVIEWED

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