‘Extremely overwhelmed’: apartment renters face rising tide of fees

Tenants at apartment complexes operated by Greystar, the largest owner and manager of apartments in the US, don’t just pay rent. They pay a mass of fees that many renters have never heard of before. These add-ons include “boiler management fees”, “variable refrigerant flow fees”, “solar rebill” fees, even “lifestyle fees”. Tenants and lawsuits in multiple states call many of these fees inflated, illegal, predatory or overwhelming. “A fee for this, a fee for that was just crazy to me,” Nichole Collins, a former tenant at a Greystar-managed building in Colorado, said. “I had never experienced that before.” Long lists of fees are common at buildings operated by Greystar, a private-equity backed conglomerate that owns or manages more than 1 million apartments across the US. According to tenants, housing attorneys, public officials and court claims, this tangle of extra charges fattens the company’s bottom line, increases renters’ risks of eviction and undermines fair competition in the apartment market by muddying the real price they pay for shelter. The added costs that tenants at Greystar-branded complexes pay are part of a rising tide of fees that have soaked nearly every corner of the US economy. Online and at brick-and-mortar businesses, Americans are compelled to pay a deluge of extra charges – processing fees, delivery fees, service fees, overdraft fees, activation fees, termination fees, “convenience” fees and more. The stakes are high when it comes to housing. …