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# Invitation Homes, A Notorious Corporate Landlord, Rips Off Tenants in Los Angeles
March 27 2025
Written by Patrick Range McDonald.
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LANDLORD GREED - Invitation Homes, one of the largest corporate landlords of single-family home rentals in the United States, is ripping off tenants again. This time, the company pulled a bait and switch on a Los Angeles couple that left them without a home. It’s another example of how corporate landlords will do anything for bigger profits – and how they must be better regulated.
The other week, the [Los Angeles Times told the story of Cody Recker and Jessica Perez](https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-03-18/their-corporate-landlord-kicked-them-out-to-fix-their-flooding-home-instead-they-sold-it), a couple that rented a Boyle Heights home from Invitation Homes. The rent was reasonable, but the house was deteriorating because the corporate landlord failed to make repairs – a common complaint about Invitation Homes, which is [notorious for its shoddy treatment of tenants](https://www.housingisahumanright.org/is-invitation-homes-the-worst-corporate-landlord-in-the-u-s/).
Finally, the corporate landlord inspected Recker and Perez’s home and told them to move out so repairs could be done. The couple thought they could move back into the home, but within weeks, Invitation Homes pulled a bait and switch: rather than spend money to fix the house, the corporate landlord swiftly listed it for sale.
Recker and Perez were left without a home, and they’re now suing Invitation Homes.
Invitation Homes’s reputation has been horrible for years. In 2018, [Reuters investigated the corporate landlord](https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-housing-invitation/), interviewing scores of the company’s tenants. “The picture that emerges,” Reuters noted, “isn’t as much as one of exceptional services as it is one of leaky pipes, vermin, toxic mold, nonfunctioning appliances, and months-long waits for repairs.”
Reuters also found that tenants “complain about excessive rent increases and fees that can add up to hundreds of dollars a year. In a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in May in the U.S. District Court for Northern California, renters accuse the company of ‘fee-stacking.’ They allege that Invitation Homes charges tenants $95 if their rent is one minute late — even if the late payment is due to the company’s own nonfunctioning online payment portal — and then files an eviction notice to add more fees, penalties, and legal costs if the tenant wants to stay in the home.”
The latest scandal involving Cody Recker and Jessica Perez shows that Invitations Homes’ poor treatment of tenants hasn’t changed.
In addition, [Invitation Homes has contributed millions in cash](https://www.housingisahumanright.org/invitation-homes-contributed-500000-to-kill-prop-33-now-the-corporate-landlord-is-in-big-trouble-with-the-ftc/) to political campaigns that stopped activists’ efforts to expand rent control in California through a ballot measure. Why? The corporate landlord wanted to keep charging wildly inflated rent increases.
Invitation Homes, which also agreed to a $48-million settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, in 2024, for “unlawful behavior against renters,” epitomizes the predatory tactics so often used by corporate landlords to squeeze every last penny out of hard-working tenants. Big Real Estate must be better regulated. To stop excessive rent increases, rent control is a key tool that will urgently rein in corporate landlords.
Brian Callaci and Sandeep Vaheesan, of the Open Markets Institute, made that point in [an important white paper published at the Harvard Business Review](https://www.housingisahumanright.org/rent-stabilization-laws-are-essential-for-protecting-tenants-say-experts/): “Recent research shows that the market itself needs to be fixed. Any plan to overhaul the housing market needs to, first, confront the power of landlords to raise rents. Second, it requires rethinking public governance of housing markets behind simplistic prescriptions to just free the housing market from government regulation, assuming lower rents will follow. And third, it needs to provide more muscular government involvement in housing, through price regulation, more robust planning, and even direct public provision.”
If we don’t regulate predatory corporate landlords, they’ll keep doing the same thing over and over. Just look at Invitation Homes.
Follow Housing Is A Human Right on [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/housinghumanright/), [X](https://x.com/HousingHumanRt), [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/housinghumanright/), and [Bluesky](https://bsky.app/profile/housinghumanright.bsky.social).
*(Patrick Range McDonald, author and journalist, Best Activism Journalism: Los Angeles Press Club, Journalist of the Year: Los Angeles Press Club, Public Service Award: Association of Alternative Newsmedia, advocacy journalist for Housing is a Human Right, and a contributor to CityWatch.)*
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