Jaslyn Cosey thought she had secured an affordable two-bedroom apartment at a Las Vegas complex. Then the bills started arriving. A $150 move-in cleaning charge. Twenty dollars monthly for common area maintenance. Six dollars for a utility service fee. Water, sewer, and trash billed by formula she could not decipher. By the time late fees mounted, Cosey was drowning. She eventually lost the apartment and spent months homeless.
Cosey is one of thousands of renters ensnared by Greystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the United States. The company oversees more than 1 million units across the country, and tenants at its properties face a staggering array of add-on charges that many have never encountered before. Boiler management fees. Variable refrigerant flow fees. Solar rebills. Lifestyle charges. Pest control surcharges. Application fees stacked upon administrative fees stacked upon billing fees just to pay rent itself.
A Guardian investigation identified at least 125 different named fees in Greystar leases and rental listings spanning Washington DC and 42 states. Roughly half are mandatory. Some carry specific dollar amounts; others are vague, listed only as "usage based" or "varies." The newspaper found mandatory, unpriced fees in Greystar listings across 40 states and DC.
Nichole Collins, a former tenant at a Greystar-managed Colorado building, described the experience as relentless. "A fee for this, a fee for that was just crazy to me," she said. "I had never experienced that before." Collins now leads a lawsuit against Greystar filed in Denver state court, alleging that pest control, trash, and billing charges are inflated "far beyond the true cost of any services provided."
The lawsuits are mounting. Nine class action cases currently seek class status in Colorado, California, Nevada, and Massachusetts. A Nevada case filed in September accuses Greystar of "routinely charging illegal fees to low income and fixed income tenants," creating a vicious cycle that pushes vulnerable renters deeper into debt and toward eviction. Another Denver suit filed in 2025 alleges that fees for basic services legally required by landlords, such as maintaining heating systems and trash disposal, are improperly shifted to tenants at inflated rates. A boiler management fee of $26.75 monthly at Colorado properties, the suit claims, "exceeds any actual expenses Greystar may have for managing the boiler."
Research backs up tenant complaints. An April 2025 study by the Urban Institute and Denver's Community Economic Defense Project found that Greystar fees raised tenants' monthly bills by an average of nearly 20 percent. Fees at two other major property managers raised costs by 15 to 18 percent.
Greystar disputes the allegations. In court filings, the company calls tenant complaints "factually deficient" and "implausible." In a statement to the Guardian, Greystar said it "would never knowingly implement a resident cost that we believe violates any law," and that all fees were disclosed in lease agreements. The company also contends that boiler management and similar charges are permitted under state law.
Yet in December, Greystar agreed to pay $24 million to settle claims by Colorado's attorney general and the Federal Trade Commission that it had gouged renters with hundreds of millions in hidden charges. The company did not admit wrongdoing. Significantly, the settlement did not restrict the fees Greystar charges going forward, only requiring that fees be disclosed.
The settlement was striking for another reason: $24 per unit managed by the company amounts to less than the monthly trash disposal fee many of its tenants pay.
Court documents and the FTC lawsuit revealed that Greystar profits directly from the fees it charges. Although the company claims it does not determine fees at properties it merely manages for other landlords, it acknowledged working "closely with property owners to recommend and determine the appropriate pricing model and rates." The FTC alleged that Greystar "takes a percentage of these fees" and that "the more fees Greystar-managed properties charge, the more money Greystar makes."
The FTC suit estimated Greystar collected more than $100 million in hidden fees from tenants in California, Colorado, Utah, and Nevada alone between August 2019 and August 2022. Renters were often shown deceptively low advertised prices, then hit with hundreds of dollars in application and deposit fees before learning the full scope of mandatory charges.
This explosion of housing fees mirrors a broader American trend. Research by Zillow shows 65 percent of renters now pay at least one recurring fee atop rent. A surge in cost-burdened renters has coincided with this creep. Roughly half of American renters now spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing, according to Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies.
Eric Dunn, litigation director at the National Housing Law Project, compared the model to airline pricing. "Airlines used to offer flights that look really cheap," he said. "It's only $60 to fly to Chicago. But then when you add in the runway fee, and the take-off and landing fee and the fuel surcharge, and all this stuff winds up being $200."
For Cosey, the math was simple and devastating. The fees were not just numbers on a statement. "Not only is that happening, but life is happening as well," she told the Guardian. "Groceries are going up. Other things are happening as well." She fell behind, accrued late charges, faced eviction, and lost her home. The apartment complex that advertised itself as an "urban sanctuary" became the instrument of her financial collapse.
Author James Rodriguez: "Greystar's fee structure is a masterclass in obscuring the true cost of shelter, and a $24 million settlement that fails to restrict future fees is little more than a cost of doing business for a company extracting millions from America's most vulnerable renters."
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