BREAKING: AG Kris Mayes sues rental corporations for conspiratorial price-fixing

Democrat Kris Mayes, candidate Arizona Attorney General, speaks with the media after a televised debate against Republican Abraham Hamadeh, Wednesday, Sept. 28, 2022. (AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin)

By Camaron Stevenson

February 28, 2024

It looks like, legally speaking, rent really may be “too damn high.”

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes announced Wednesday a lawsuit against nine major rental management companies for secretly working together to drastically raise rents across the state. Mayes’ office claims the companies have violated the Arizona Uniform State Antitrust Act and the Arizona Consumer Fraud Act.

“In the last two years, residential rents in Phoenix and Tucson have risen by at least 30%,” Mayes said in a statement. “In large part because of this conspiracy that stifled fair competition and essentially established a rental monopoly in our state’s two largest metro areas.”

According to the lawsuit, the landlords conspired with the real estate analytics company RealPage to raise prices in tandem with one another, eschewing competitive business practices to create a monopoly. RealPage has denied any wrongdoing in the matter.

The largest penalty paid by a company for violation of Arizona’s consumer fraud laws in recent history was $40 million. The fine was issued to Volkswagen in 2016 for masking its vehicles’ emission levels during government testing.

Check and see if your landlord has been accused of illegally raising rent. These are the nine companies named in the lawsuit:

Author

Camaron Stevenson

Camaron is the Founding Editor and Chief Political Correspondent for The Copper Courier, and has worked as a journalist in Phoenix for over a decade. He also teaches multimedia journalism at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University.

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CATEGORIES: HOUSING | POLITICS

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