AG Mayes Takes on Rent Price Fixing in Arizona (video)
It's been a long time since Arizona had an attorney general who cared more about consumers than political games.
“Why is the rent so damn high?” Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes asked rhetorically on X (Twitter). Because “landlords allegedly conspired to illegally fix rental prices for hundreds of thousands of renters in the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas. So, I’m suing them.”
As an out-of-town Legislator, I was one of those renters from 2017 to 2022.
I saw rents going up pretty uniformly over those six years, as I discuss in my video below.
To give you a glimpse of a Legislator’s lavish [haha] lifestyle and to help tell the story, I have added photos from my six apartments here and in the video. From the spectacular sunsets at the El Cortez to the cramped quarters in the oddly shaped Clarendon, it’s all there.
Thank you so much, AG Mayes, for standing up to corporate landlords and protecting consumers. Thanks for looking into alleged rent price fixing.
Also, AG Mayes, you might want to look at transparency in the leasing process and excessive — and sometimes hidden, nonrefundable and nonnegotiable — fees that jack up the rents even further. The fees are a real racket.
Video Transcript
Hello, this is Pamela Powers, the Tucson Progressive. Today is February 29, 2024.
I'm a real news nerd. I read the news every morning, and there aren't very many news stories that make me jump out of my chair at 6:30 in the morning and say, “Hallelujah!”
But that happened this morning when I read this article in the Tucson Sentinel about Attorney General Kris Mayes going after multiple corporations that own apartment complexes in the state of Arizona for [alleged] rent price fixing.
Yes! I saw this firsthand as a Legislator. As somebody who lived outside of Maricopa County, I had to rent an apartment for six months every six months for six years.
And so I was constantly moving in and out and looking for apartments. And I would look at the amenities. You might have seen my video and my Substack about bullet journaling.
I went through great lengths to try to figure out what's the best deal … what's the best location ...
And you know what I came up with? And I remember telling my husband about this, that there were little differences, but the prices were always the same.
This is a great win for consumers, you know.
As she [Mayes] said that the landlords [allegedly] “illegally colluded with RealPage …” This is this website that they gave [consumer] data to.
They “colluded with RealPage to artificially raise rents and conceal their conspiracy from the public. These actions “artificially inflated prices and caused Phoenix and Tucson area residents to pay millions of dollars more in rent.”
Thank you so much! I started renting up there in December 2016, and everything was like $1,000 a month plus APS [electricity], plus the Cox Cable, plus fees.
Anyway, this is great.
You know, I saw it at $1,000 a month. A couple of years later, it was $1200 a month, plus fees, plus utilities and then $1500 a month.
So, she is spot on. I am so glad that somebody noticed that.
One thing, though, that the attorney general ought to look at is these fees because often when I was looking at the websites, there were application fees and sometimes you had to pay an application fee that was nonrefundable before you could even see what the rent was.
And I thought, “Well, that place is going to be too expensive for me because I'm too cheap to pay a fee like that!” [Is this the new “redlining”? I’m a person of modest means. They stopped me at the door with that fee because I didn’t want to throw away $50-200.]
And so, you know, it's really, really something. I mean, one year I showed up with a truck and helpers and my furniture to sign the lease … and I had talked with this apartment manager over email and done a video tour of the apartment and stuff like that ...
But I get there and all of a sudden there is more than $200 worth of fees that they're charging me on top of what they told me over the phone. This is the person that I talked to and she said, “Do you want the apartment?” She goes, “Yeah?” Then she says, “Then you got the fees.”
So, definitely look at the fees, Kris Mayes, the smart apartment, the valet garbage, you know, all kinds of things.
You expect like the pet fee or something, but they have lots of fees and so many of them are nonrefundable and not negotiable.
Like there was one year when my apartment building was 20 feet from the dumpster, and I still had to pay for valet garbage, and I had to pay for a special garbage can.
And if somebody stole my special garbage can, I had to buy another one for $75. Mind you, this was a black plastic garbage can held by another one for $75 from the apartment complex.
Anyway, it's a racket, and I'm so glad that you're looking into this, Kris Mayes. I have been waiting so long for another attorney general who would actually look out for consumers and fight for the people of Arizona rather than whatever Tom Horne and Mark Brnovich thought they were doing when they were AG's.
Anyway, it's a new day in Arizona, and I thank you so much for your hard work.
Also, one last thing. One of the reasons that I proposed my Truth In Renting bill back in 2021 and 2022 was this very thing. The fees you can't get out of, not knowing your rent, not knowing what you're getting into with the contract.
We need more transparency in the whole renting process. And so that's another thing, Kris Mayes, if you want to look at transparency.
So thank you. Bye bye.
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