Renters are being charged more than the price they were promised. Corporate landlords advertise one rent and then layer on mandatory fees for basic parts of renting a home. Application fees, administrative charges, online payment fees, and other add-ons increase the total cost while staying hidden until the final steps.

These practices are widespread and growing. They are built into the systems large landlords use to manage properties, including online platforms that allow fees to be introduced, changed, and enforced with little transparency or accountability.

The FTC has proposed a rule to address unfair and deceptive rental housing fees. This is a critical opportunity to stop landlords from using hidden charges to inflate rent and mislead renters.

But corporate landlords are already preparing to fight back. They will submit coordinated comments claiming these fees are necessary, transparent, or optional. Those claims do not reflect what renters are actually experiencing.

These junk fees are already happening. They are raising housing costs, limiting access to housing, and extracting money from renters without providing real services.

The FTC must go further than disclosure. It must ban these practices outright.

Submit your official comment now and tell the FTC to ban junk fees in rental housing and hold corporate landlords accountable.