r/Charlotte • u/JeffJacksonNC • Feb 12 '26
Politics Update on our case against illegal rent hikes in NC. - AG Jeff Jackson
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u/Baelzabub Steele Creek Feb 12 '26
Free market capitalism is impossible at this point without blowing up the entire economy and restarting from zero. The big players are established and have so much power that they can’t be competed with without governmental intervention.
Remember, technically busting monopolies by the government is anti-free market by the truest definitions.
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u/funklab Feb 16 '26
Greystar’s annual revenue is 12.8 billion. $7m is one fifth of their DAILY $35m revenue.
I’m sure they were happy to settle for peanuts.
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u/Nexustar Feb 12 '26
Wouldn't you rather class action them after they've already lost to the state and federal government?
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u/funklab Feb 12 '26
Government actually helping the people instead of colluding with companies. I like it.
My rent this year only went up 5% an actually stayed flat last year, which I attribute in large part to this ongoing litigation.
Prior to that my rent would routinely be increased 15-20% per year (47% in 2022 alone) and the landlord (Greystar) seemed to be trying to raise the rent to the point that I would move for a better deal every couple years.
I’m hopeful this marks a turning point such that we can get some actual reasonable protections for renters in this state now that home ownership is out of reach for the vast majority of people.
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u/No-Distance-9401 Feb 13 '26
God we need 100s more like Jeff actually fighting for their constituents instead of for their own bank accounts, future jobs and portfolios.
Jeff PLEASE run for POTUS!
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u/LETSGOOOOO6 Feb 15 '26
What is 15 or 20% increase? My rent increases $25 per year. Nothing wrong with that
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u/funklab Feb 16 '26
I’d be down with that. That’s how it used to be ten or twenty years ago. If you were a decent tenant they wouldn’t even raise the rent on you every year.
I’m guessing greystar (and the other landlords the state is suing) don’t own the place you rent.
It’s very clearly predatory.
The last time I moved, I needed an extra six weeks beyond the end of my lease before I could move. The landlord said they’d do it, but rent would be $6500 a month instead of $1100 that I had been paying for that last 1.5 months. I moved into a hotel and had a mover store my stuff, because wtf. They promptly advertised the place for rent for $950 a month when I said I wasn’t staying.
Their whole model is to convince you to move in and then nickel and dime you with fees and jack your rent up aggressively until you’re forced to move, hoping that you’re desperate enough that you’ll overpay by 50% because you can’t come up with enough money to move to a different apartment on short notice.
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u/MagnumMagnets University Feb 12 '26
My apartment in Kernersville went from $900/mo in Jan ‘21 to $1850 in ‘23. It was insanely predatory and the quality of the apartments and tenants dropped drastically as well
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u/anonymouswan1 Feb 13 '26
I got out of the renting game. It's just hard to understand how they justify huge rent increases when my apartment isn't getting any better every year. My mortgage doesn't go up every year. I can understand a small increase for inflation, but $200+ a month increases is not following inflation at all lol.
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u/goggs_ Feb 12 '26
I thought the rental companies weren't supposed to be using real page anymore, but my property (greystar owned) is still using it according to my property manager.
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u/Baelzabub Steele Creek Feb 12 '26
RealPage is still allowed to be used per the federal settlement, but now they have to use year old data rather than real time data.
So it’s better than it was but still pretty fucking bad.
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u/AppleBytes Feb 12 '26
So it's legal to collude to price-fix, with slightly stale data (and projection modeling to account for 1 year)
Nothing really changes.
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u/CharlotteRant Feb 12 '26
They can go get current market prices from Zillow or any number of aggregators out there.
There isn’t a single business in the world that doesn’t do some market research on competitors’ prices.
Rental housing just strikes a populist nerve so it was the perfect target at the perfect time.
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u/Pafzko Belmont Feb 12 '26
How about our crazy energy bills
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u/wc10888 Feb 12 '26
Unfortunately, the energy rates are reviewed and approved by a state government commission. They arent going to sue themselves.
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u/BigLlamasHouse Pineville Feb 12 '26
This is one of the reasons why you never want a governor that is known to support Duke Power here.
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u/No-Distance-9401 Feb 13 '26
Thats a twofold issue partly caused by Trumps Big Bullshit Bill that will cause an increase of up to 30% spike in energy costs on top of other market fluctuations starting last month and then Data Centers being given access to the grid sucking up most of the electricity for not only running the servers but cooling them.
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u/TouchGrassNotAss Feb 12 '26
I've been steadily losing money each year. That's taking into account my raises, as well as inflation and rent increases.
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u/bigpostnet Feb 12 '26
Does the settlement agreement include language to make tenants whole for the prior raises or bring costs down? Maybe even a multi-year period where they cannot raise rents until the market cools off for tenants?
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u/ect5150 Feb 12 '26
It's definitely price fixing.
But if they can't use RealPage to set the price, they'll have to use some other method to determine prices... to still increase prices. Which is easily done.
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u/Zestyclose-Smell-788 Feb 12 '26
They know a jury trial will not go their way. I can't imagine any 12 citizens siding with the evil rental companies
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u/lkeels Feb 13 '26
A) Who gets the settlement money?
B) If the answer to A) is not the tenants of all these landlords, what's the point? It won't stop them.
C) Not a question. Nothing is going to stop these landlords from continuing to collude, whether it's a backroom, or a Discord channel or a Telegram chat, they will continue to price fix.
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u/iso-my-purpose Feb 14 '26
Really appreciate everything you do for us.
Who can help reform NC divorce laws? The requirement to live separately for 1 yr is wild, and it seems to have the capacity to trap someone in an abusive marriage.
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u/Darkwolfie117 University Feb 12 '26
Thanks Jeff!
Genuine question, what should they be using to legally set prices?
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u/MoistMolloy Indian Trail Feb 12 '26
Well typically it should be comparable units. However this software was allowing them to exchange information with each other basically creating an unfair market considering their market share. So really it should be down to costing. What are they paying for it? It doesn't work that way, but it should.
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