Monster of the Week: Greystar

In the 50 largest U.S. cities, rent for a one-bedroom has climbed an average of 41% since 2020. Over half of all renters are rent-burdened, meaning they spend more than 30% of their income on rent. And that’s on top of skyrocketing cost-of-living, with groceries, gas, and healthcare costs all ballooning.

All the while corporate landlords rake it in hand over fist. In 2022, six of the largest property managers in the country made $4.3 billion in profit. This doesn’t even include Greystar, the largest corporate landlord.

There is no single landlord more responsible for the international housing crisis than Greystar. They own and manage $76 billion worth of real estate in 17 countries. In the US, they own 119,000 apartments in multiple states, and manage over 1 million units nationwide. Their Dollar Tree Bob Odenkirk CEO, Bob Faith, is worth $5 billion. Greystar is a private company so there are no public profit figures, but estimates are that they make $3-$10 billion in annual revenue.

In 2022, Greystar was one of the cabal of 25 corporate landlords caught in a price-fixing scheme to artificially raise rents through RealPage pricing software. The RealPage algorithm coordinated rent increases across all the landlords to allow them to gouge tenants. RealPage software also told landlords when to keep units vacant to help keep rents high. Rent prices went up and occupancy went down. In Washington state alone, an estimated 800,000 leases were priced by RealPage between 2017 and 2024. RealPage settled a $360 million class action lawsuit, and Greystar themselves settled a $50 million suit.

Greystar is also the king of the junk fees.They have been sued by multiple states for charging illegal junk fees that deceptively raised rent above the advertised amount. These junk fees targeted primarily low-income and fixed-income renters. These fees were not disclosed in leases, so renters signed leases with no knowledge of the dozen fees they were going to get charged every month. In some cases, Greystar charged tenants three different processing fees every month just to pay rent! And because payments would go towards the fees before they went to base rent, Greystar would be able to file evictions against tenants for getting behind on rent after drowning them in an onslaught of bullshit fees.

It comes as no surprise then that Greystar has poured hundreds of millions of dollars towards lobbying against initiatives for rent control, eviction bans, and to elect both Democrats and Republicans. Greystar executives litter the board of the largest landlord lobbying group in the country, the National Multifamily Housing Council. In California, corporate landlords like Greystar pooled over $100 million to defeat Prop 33, which would have repealed a statewide ban on rent control. This wasn’t even the first time! The same thing played out in California in 2018 with Prop 10 and in 2020 with Prop 21.

In Colorado, Greystar is on the board of the Colorado Apartment Association, a local affiliate of the NMHC. The CAA is a ‘union’ for the bosses, essentially. Greystar alone controls 6% of Colorado’s rental housing. Like in California, the CAA defeated an initiative to get rid of a statewide rent control ban. And from 2018-2023, the CAA donated $1.87 million to Democrats and Republicans running for state office. By 2024, they had donated to 54 of the 100 state legislators — 25 Democrats and 29 Republicans.

Greystar is not unique, they just happen to be the largest of the villains. And it’s not that the corporate landlords are just run by some bad apples. The root cause of this crisis is capitalism. We could swap out all of the executives of the largest corporate landlords and it would make no fundamental difference. What’s needed is a mass movement of workers fighting to rip away the profits of these behemoths.