US renters call for action to combat surge of ‘take it or leave it’ apartment fees

Across the US, many renters are calling for national action to stem add-on charges that spike their housing costs and increase their risk of eviction.

“The rental housing market is one where consumers have little power,” Farah Momin, a renter in Seattle, told the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in April. “Landlords can impose fees through take-it-or-leave-it lease terms, and the cost/disruption of moving means that tenants may absorb unfair charges rather than leave. Federal baseline protections are needed to level this playing field.”

Momin – who said she has “experienced firsthand the confusion, financial strain and sense of powerlessness that rental junk fees create” – offered her remarks as one of hundreds of tenants, activists and industry officials who have weighed in on the FTC’s new rulemaking process for developing regulations on rental housing fees.

Of 471 comments available for public download, nearly 400 explicitly supported regulation or listed problems with junk fees, according to a Guardian analysis.

More than 60 commenters opposed or raised concerns about regulation, most of them members or representatives of trade groups.

“Restrictions on reasonable fees create practical barriers, inflate base housing costs, and reduce access to valued resident services,” leading industry groups said in a joint statement to the FTC. “Fees and charges are a necessary part of pricing structures.”

Tenants have faced a surge in fees on top of rent as the property management industry, which uses fees to expand profit margins, has expanded across new swaths of American housing. Buildings run by property managers have increased their share of the rental market by 47% in the last decade, according to a Guardian analysis of census data. Professional management is most common in complexes with 50 units or more, the only segment where it is used in more than half of all units.

Federal changes coming?

The effort to regulate junk fees in rental housing comes after years of back and forth between industry leaders and public officials, and a growing body of lawsuits challenging fees.

In 2022, the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission considered including rental housing in a broad effort to regulate junk fees. The National Apartment Association (NAA) and other industry players pushed back, coordinating 3,800 public comments opposing regulation. The FTC ultimately limited new junk fee regulations to event tickets and short-term rentals.

The renewed rulemaking process follows two FTC settlements over junk fees in rental housing. In 2024, Invitation Homes, the country’s largest landlord of single-family rental homes, agreed to a $48m settlement over allegations that it unfairly charged tenants “millions of dollars in junk fees and other bogus amounts”. Invitation Homes did not admit wrongdoing in the case. It said in a statement that it “believes that its disclosures and practices are industry leading, both among its professional peers as well as the millions of smaller owners of single-family homes for lease.”

In December, the FTC and the state of Colorado announced a $24m settlement with Greystar, the country’s largest owner and manager of apartments, over similar allegations. Greystar did not admit wrongdoing in the settlement.

In a press release addressing the case, Greystar said its practice of “advertising base rent to potential residents”, and then adding mandatory fees, was a “longstanding, industrywide practice”. The company told the Guardian that it has taken “a proactive leadership position in advocating for industry-wide clarity, consistency and transparency”.

Apartment industry groups say they support transparency and disclosing fees, but in public comments to the FTC they argue against any policy that would “prevent the effective use of fees and charges in rental housing”.

The rulemaking effort has also attracted the attention of lawmakers. In April, a coalition of 27 state attorneys general submitted a comment urging the agency to embrace a “clear minimum federal standard” for junk fees in housing.

In mid-April, the first public comment period about FTC regulations closed. Officials said they were still reviewing comments in late May, and planned to suggest a timeline once that work was complete. The FTC’s previous rulemaking on junk fees took two and a half years from initial announcement in October 2022 to rules going into effect in May 2025.

‘Total’ pricing

The text of the FTC’s January rulemaking announcement echoed the Greystar settlement. Under the terms of the settlement, Greystar must disclose a “total monthly leasing price” that includes base rent and all mandatory, fixed fees, but not the cost of mandatory, variable utility fees. Those fees can include charges for in-unit utilities as well as “common area” utility charges, which are divided up among tenants to cover the costs of electricity, gas, water, and maintenance in hallways, lobbies and other shared areas outside tenants’ own apartments.

The FTC also sent letters to 13 of the nation’s largest property management software providers after the settlement. The letters warned industry leaders including RealPage, Yardi Systems and Turbo Tenant that advertising incomplete prices can result in penalties up to $53,088 per violation and legal action.

Supporters of additional regulation say that “total” prices for rent that include all mandatory fees will promote fair competition and reduce tenant costs.

“When you add all those junk fees, the price disparity will be more obvious,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida. “You just gotta be upfront about what you’re charging.”

Frost said he has been forced to pay multiple fees as a renter, including a $300 application fee. In 2023 and 2025, Frost introduced the End Junk Fees for Renters Act. That legislation would apply only to housing backed with federal financing, but would ban certain fees, require a total rent price that includes all fees and require landlords to report the history of maintenance, legal issues, and rents for a property. Senator Jeff Merkley, Democrat of Oregon, introduced a companion bill in the Senate last June. Neither bill has Republican cosponsors.

Most states do not have explicit protections against rental junk fees. Only a handful – including Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota and Nevada – require landlords to advertise a total monthly leasing price. Another 17 states have regulations addressing certain types of junk charges in rental housing, such as application or late fees, according to a November report by the National Consumer Law Center.

In a statement, the National Apartment Association, a leading landlord and property management trade group with more than 113,000 members, argues that “rental housing is already highly regulated at all levels of government … Fees and charges are a necessary part of pricing structures that keep rental housing communities financially stable.”

For its part, Greystar urges that the FTC require the apartment industry to follow the same rules it agreed to follow as part of its settlement with the agency. The company’s public comments to the FTC support rolling fixed, mandatory fees into advertised prices, and oppose including variable mandatory utility fees.

Local affiliates of the National Apartment Association submitted comments based on an NAA template. Many argued that rental housing transactions are too complex to use “all-in pricing”, a term used to refer to advertising rents that include mandatory fees. The NAA told the Guardian that all-in pricing could “artificially inflate rental housing costs”.

Utility fees a top concern

Mandatory utility fees were the most common complaint among comments that supported regulation or complained about fees. Many landlords now bill tenants for building-wide and in-unit utility costs through third-party “ratio utility billing services” companies. These services bill tenants using a custom formula, not documented individual usage.

Most Greystar leases examined by the Guardian used Utah-based Conservice, a private-equity backed firm that describes itself as the “largest utility management provider in the nation”.

Utility charges were one of the first worrying signs about Shaun Cordeiro’s new landlord, Greystar, he told the Guardian. Cordeiro, a behavioral economist, moved into a Greystar building on Boston Harbor in 2022. The water bills for the apartment he shared with his partner, based on a formula Cordeiro said he never saw, did not seem to line up with their usage, he said.

When Cordeiro brought it up to management, “they kind of tried to play it off as, you know, it all comes out in the wash.” he said. “I’m like, I’m an economist. It does not just ‘come out in the wash.’”

Cordeiro didn’t take action until later, when Greystar began charging him eviction and legal fees after a health crisis led the couple to fall behind on rent. The fees, which Cordeiro disputed, created a negative balance on his account that meant he could never catch up on rent unless he paid the fees.

In November 2023, Cordeiro filed a class action in federal court in Massachusetts alleging that Greystar violated state law by charging eviction fees without a court order. The case is pending.

In court filings, Greystar denied any “unlawful or unfair” conduct and alleged that Cordeiro and his partner owed more than $5,000 in unpaid rent and fees.

“There are so many things that we just allow to happen that we accept – this fee here, or this extra charge here or there,” Cordeiro said. It feels, he said, like “often it’s not worth the fight. But it is.”

Unless people fight back, he said, “these large corporations are just going to continue to operate as they do.”