Banking and Finance Law Daily Wrap Up, FAIR CREDIT REPORTING—RentGrow settles FTC FCRA violation allegations, (Jul 10, 2026)

By Joe Cox, J.D.

A Consent Order including $2.25 million payment would settle allegations of violations of the Fair Credit Reporting Act and FTC Act.

The Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with RentGrow, a provider of consumer reports used for tenant screening, for $2.25 million after several alleged violations of federal law. The agreement arises out of FTC allegations that RentGrow violated the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), including by failing to use reasonable procedures to ensure the accuracy of its reports, and the FTC Act. RentGrow’s business consists of compiling information from a variety of sources into background screening reports that it sells to landlords and property managers as tenant screening reports. That status rendered RentGrow as a credit reporting agency and thus subject to the provisions of the FCRA.

Allegations against RentGrow. In a complaint filed by the FTC, allegations were made that RentGrow violated the FCRA in several ways: 1) Failing to maintain reasonable procedures to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of its consumer reports by not preventing the inclusion of duplicate case records and multiple entries for the same criminal or eviction action on tenant screening reports, which gave the false impression that applicants had more criminal convictions or had been sued for eviction more times than they actually had, 2) Failing to disclose all the information and sources of data included in its consumer reports when requested by consumers, which made it difficult for consumers to dispute inaccurate data in their reports, 3) Failing to comply with requirements related to consumer disputes of information in tenant screening reports. Further, the FTC complaint also alleged that RentGrow violated the FTC Act by misleading some consumers about the outcome of their disputes. According to the complaint, RentGrow in some cases told consumers who successfully disputed information in their tenant screening report—resulting in information being modified or deleted—that RentGrow had notified the property manager of the outcome of the dispute, but RentGrow instead told those property owners that there was no change.

Consent Order. The motion for stipulated order tendered by the Department of Justice—in which RentGrow neither admits nor denies the allegations against it—imposes a $2.25 million monetary penalty. Among the other terms of the proposed order, RentGrow also will be prohibited from failing to maintain reasonable procedures to ensure the maximum possible accuracy of the information in its consumer reports, including procedures to prevent the inclusion of multiple records for the same criminal or eviction proceedings and from failing to comply with other FCRA requirements. In addition, RentGrow will additionally be prohibited from misrepresenting that it provides updated screening reports to landlords and property managers following a successful dispute by a consumer. The order will require signing from a judge for entry and subsequent enforcement, but given the agreement underlying it, that signing is likely imminent.

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