The Metro: Renting an apartment? Extra fees may be costing you hundreds
Investigative reporter Tracie McMillan found a tangle of fees piled on top of rent at properties run by Greystar — the country’s largest landlord, with thousands of apartments across metro Detroit.
Have you ever rented an apartment and noticed extra fees tacked onto the rent? A fee for the trash. A fee for pest control. How about a fee for “managing the boiler.”
Those are among the allegations against Greystar, the biggest landlord in America. It paid $24 million to settle a lawsuit claiming it hid fees like these on top of the rent it advertised. Greystar says it did nothing wrong — and the settlement lets it keep charging the fees. It just has to list them now.
This one hits close to home. Greystar runs more than 3,000 apartments in metro Detroit, and nearly 2,000 more in Ann Arbor and Lansing. The fees can add hundreds of dollars a month. And if you miss them, many leases say you can be evicted.
It comes at a brutal time to rent. Nearly half of America’s renters already pay more than they can afford. Just yesterday, Congress passed the biggest housing bill in decades — but it leaves fees like these largely untouched.
Investigative reporter and author Tracie McMillan spent months digging through leases and court records for her new investigation in The Guardian. She joined Robyn Vincent on The Metro to explain why renting can cost so much more than the advertised price.
Hear the full conversation using the media player above.
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