Everett tenant joins lawsuit alleging price fixing by major landlords
EVERETT — An Everett renter is among several suing some of the nation’s biggest property managers and a company that makes price-setting software, alleging they created a “cartel” to “artificially inflate the prices of multifamily residential real estate in the United States above competitive levels.”
The potential class-action lawsuit, filed last week in the U.S. District Court in San Diego, comes from five renters in California and Washington. Four of them were tenants at Greystar properties, in Redmond, San Francisco and San Diego. The fifth rented from Security Properties Residential in Everett, starting last month. All say they paid higher rents due to the practices of their property management companies and a third-party company, RealPage.
Security Properties Residential, a Seattle-based company, owns several buildings in Snohomish County, including Olin Fields on Holly Drive, Charter Club Apartments near Silver Lake and Helm Apartments just east of I-5 south of Everett, according to its website.
The complaint claims nine of the nation’s largest property managers worked together through RealPage to minimize competition. Those property management companies together own hundreds of thousands of apartments across the country. Security Properties Residential owns about 22,000 in 18 states, according to the complaint.
https://www.heraldnet.com/news/everett-tenant-joins-lawsuit-alleging-price-fixing-by-major-landlords/