Nichole Collins, a former tenant at a Greystar-managed building in Colorado, described her experience with fees as overwhelming. “A fee for this, a fee for that was just crazy to me,” she said. “I had never experienced that before.” Collins is the lead plaintiff in a lawsuit targeting the company, which calls pest control, trash, and billing charges at Greystar-run buildings “a lie” – “junk fees” inflated “far beyond the true cost of any services provided by Greystar”.
Fee Proliferation at Greystar Properties
Tenants at apartment complexes operated by Greystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the US, pay a mass of fees including “boiler management fees”, “variable refrigerant flow fees”, “solar rebill” fees, and “lifestyle fees”. The Guardian counted at least 125 different named fees in leases, court documents, and rental listings for apartments managed by Greystar. Combinations of these fees span Washington DC and all 42 states with listings on the company’s website, and include various upfront fees, monthly fees, and penalty charges. Half of these fees are mandatory.
Some costs come with specific dollar charges, while others – such as charges for “common area” maintenance and utilities – have no dollar amount and are listed only as “usage based” or “varies”. The Guardian found mandatory, unpriced fees in Greystar apartment listings in 40 states and the District of Columbia.
Legal Challenges and Settlements
Tenants are challenging fees charged at Greystar-managed complexes in lawsuits filed in multiple states. These include nine cases currently seeking class action status in Colorado, California, Nevada, and Massachusetts. In a statement, Greystar told the Guardian “we disagree with the allegations” in these court actions “and are actively defending those cases”. In various court filings, the company has called tenants’ legal complaints factually deficient, implausible, and “futile”.
Greystar agreed in December to pay $24m to settle claims by state and federal authorities that it had gouged renters with hundreds of millions of dollars in hidden charges at properties owned by Greystar as well as at properties the company managed for other landlords. Greystar did not admit to wrongdoing and the settlement did not put limits on the fees it charges as long as fees are disclosed.
Specific Fee Grievances
Collins’ suit, filed in 2024 in state court in Denver, says Greystar charged tenants three different billing fees just to be able to pay rent and other fees – a “new account fee” of $15 to $20, a regular “administrative billing fee” as high as $6 a month, and a “final bill fee” of $5 to $10. In court documents, Greystar says that the billing charges and other fees were fully disclosed in Collins’ lease.
Another state court case in Denver, filed in 2025, alleges that many of the fees that Greystar has charged Colorado tenants – including a $26.75-a-month boiler management fee – were improper because they shifted the costs of basic services that are required by law, such as maintaining heating systems and providing for trash disposal, onto tenants. That suit claims the size of the boiler fee “exceeds any actual expenses Greystar may have for ‘managing the boiler’, to the extent such expenses even exist and have been determined by Greystar”.
Impact on Vulnerable Tenants
In Nevada, a class action filed in September accuses Greystar and its business partners of “routinely charging illegal fees to low income and fixed income tenants” – creating a “vicious cycle” that caused these tenants to “fall further and further behind on their rent, often resulting in eviction”. Payment ledgers for the lead plaintiff, Jaslyn Cosey, showed she paid $300 in application and administrative fees to get a chance at an apartment at Glo, a complex in Las Vegas. After Greystar approved her, Cosey was charged a $150 “move-in cleaning” fee followed by monthly charges including $20 for “common area maintenance”, $6 for a utility service fee, and water, sewer, and trash services billed according to an “inscrutable ‘formula’”.
All the fees – including late charges that mounted as Cosey struggled to keep up – left her “extremely overwhelmed”, Cosey told the Guardian. “Because, you know, not only is that happening, but life is happening as well. Groceries are going up. Other things are happening as well.” These costs helped start her down a spiral that led to eviction and months of homelessness.
Industry-Wide Issue
The crush of apartment fees comes at a time when more Americans rent, rents are at record highs, and an increasing share of renters are barely able to cover their costs. Roughly half of American renters are now “cost-burdened”, meaning they spend more than 30% of their incomes on rent and utilities, according to Harvard’s Joint Center for Housing Studies. Research by Zillow shows that 65% of renters pay at least one recurring fee on top of rent.
Eric Dunn, litigation director at the National Housing Law Project, said fees charged by landlords and property managers echo the extra charges that bargain airlines pioneered. “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.”
Regulatory and Legislative Responses
In Colorado, an April 2025 study by the Urban Institute and Denver’s Community Economic Defense Project found that fees charged at properties operated by Greystar raised tenants’ monthly bills by an average of nearly 20%. Fees tied to two other major property managers raised their tenants’ monthly costs by roughly 15% to 18%. Colorado enacted a new law in 2025, “Letty’s Act”, after Greystar billed grieving family members thousands of dollars in penalty fees when their matriarch, 75-year-old Leticia Farrer, died. The law forbids landlords from charging early termination penalties when a lease ends due to a tenant’s death.
Marketing experts told the Guardian that Greystar’s fee disclosures are confusing and incomplete. “It doesn’t seem to me that there’s any way for a consumer to know what their costs are actually going to be,” Vicki Morwitz, a professor of business and marketing at Columbia University, said.
