How Long to Keep Apartment Advertising Records, and How to Prove What Renters Saw: A Multifamily Evidence Guide
For compliance directors, in-house counsel and marketing leads at multifamily operators building a retention policy or answering a demand letter.
Keep apartment advertising evidence for at least three years after a page or ad changes, and longer under any dispute. Fair housing complaints can reach HUD within one year and court within two, with HUD proceeding time excluded; FTC Section 19 redress actions have a three-year limit. Keep pages as renters saw them, including the application flow, dated and hash-verified.
- The fair housing clocks run from when a practice "occurred or terminated", so measure retention from the date a page changed or came down, not when it was published.
- Capture the application flow step by step: fee cases ask whether fees were shown before the renter paid, not whether they were somewhere on the site.
- Capture desktop, mobile, screen-reader and no-consent views at the same moment, so every view can be checked against the same moment.
- Screenshots and the Wayback Machine are easy to dispute; scheduled, hash-verified captures with a custody log are cheaper for counsel to authenticate.
- A demand letter can trigger a duty to preserve that overrides any schedule: freeze, capture, export with hashes and state the gaps.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Laws and regulator guidance change; check the current rules for your properties with your counsel before acting.
The clocks that decide how long advertising evidence matters
Retention is set in practice by how long someone can bring a claim that turns on what an ad, website or listing said.
| Clock | Length | When it starts, and what stretches it | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fair Housing Act complaint to HUD | 1 year | From when the practice "occurred or terminated". For an ad that ran for months, plan from the date it came down, not the date it went up. | 42 U.S.C. 3610(a)(1)(A)(i) |
| Fair Housing Act private lawsuit | 2 years | Also from occurrence or termination. Time while a HUD administrative proceeding is pending does not count, so a year at HUD can put a lawsuit three years after the ad came down. | 42 U.S.C. 3613(a)(1)(A) and (B) |
| FTC consumer redress action under Section 19 | 3 years | From the rule violation or the unfair or deceptive practice. If the FTC opened an administrative proceeding under Section 5(b) within those three years and the resulting cease and desist order becomes final, it has until one year after the order is final. | 15 U.S.C. 57b(d) |
| Federal civil fines and penalties (default rule) | 5 years | From when the claim first accrued, unless another Act of Congress sets a different period. Counsel decides which claims it reaches. | 28 U.S.C. 2462 |
| Greystar order recordkeeping (a benchmark, binds only Greystar) | Create records for 10 years, keep each for 5 | Includes "a copy of each materially unique advertisement", with a component-and-dissemination-data option for dynamically generated ads. | FTC and Colorado v. Greystar, proposed stipulated order as posted by the FTC, Section IX and IX.E |
| Duty to preserve once a dispute is likely | No fixed length | Starts when litigation is anticipated. If electronically stored information that should have been preserved is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps, and it cannot be restored or replaced, a court can order curative measures on a finding of prejudice and, only on a finding of intent to deprive, an adverse inference, dismissal or default judgment. | Fed. R. Civ. P. 37(e) |
| State consumer protection and fair housing laws | Check your state | Not verified for this page. Ask counsel for each state you operate in. | Your state code |
Read together, three years from the day an ad stopped running covers the ordinary HUD, Fair Housing Act court and FTC Section 19 windows. Three things push it longer: a HUD proceeding pauses the two-year court clock, the five-year default can apply where a federal civil penalty is in play, and a demand letter or investigation triggers a preservation duty that overrides any schedule.
A "no application fee" banner runs from March 1 to October 31, 2025. The one-year HUD clock and the two-year court clock both start November 1, 2025 for any fair housing claim tied to that page. A HUD complaint filed in September 2026 stays open for 10 months; the court deadline moves from November 1, 2027 to roughly September 2028. A purge on a two-year schedule would have deleted the banner about ten months before that deadline; a three-year schedule keeps it until November 2028.
Why the application flow needs its own capture
Most operators who keep anything keep the homepage. The fee cases turn on what came after it. In announcing the proposed Greystar settlement on December 2, 2025, the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection said Greystar "misled consumers by advertising low rent prices and then adding mandatory fees at the end of the sales process". Those were the allegations of the January 2025 complaint by the FTC and Colorado (FTC press release). The order's Section II.C bars charging "an initial payment or deposit" without disclosing, clearly and conspicuously, the Total Monthly Leasing Price and pricing information that includes "the existence and amount of any fees or costs" (order text).
So the question in a fee dispute is rarely "was the fee on the website?" It is "was the fee on screen before the renter paid the application fee?" You need each step of the apply flow, in order, up to and including the payment screen, with the fee breakdown visible or provably absent at each step. If the apply flow is hosted by a third-party leasing or PMS vendor, capture it anyway: the renter experienced it as your application, and a complaint will describe it that way. For the fee rules themselves, see the FTC rental junk fee rule explainer.
What to keep, surface by surface: eight records
Each item is a surface a claim can cite. Keep it as rendered, dated, in every view, and tied to the internal record that explains it.
- 01
Pricing cards and the homepage price
The "starting at" figure, any total monthly price and the text next to them. Capture on every change; the number moves with availability. Keep the PMS rent and fee values that fed the card on that date, so you can show whether the card matched them.
- 02
Floor plan and unit pages
Each plan's price, fees, square footage and availability, plus any disclaimers in expandable sections. Capture the expanded state as well as the default view: a fee that is technically on the page but folded away is a prominence argument.
- 03
The fee guide or fee page
Every fee with amount, purpose and whether it is mandatory, plus the date each line changed. Pair the capture with the PMS fee schedule version in force that day.
Illustrative example The admin fee line reads $150 in captures through April 30 and $250 from May 1. The PMS change log shows the edit on April 29 by the revenue manager. That pairing answers "when did renters first see $250?" in one exhibit.
- 04
Each step of the application flow
Every screen from "Apply now" to the payment screen, in order, including fee summaries, checkboxes and the screen where the application fee is charged. This is the surface the Greystar order's Section II.C turns on.
- 05
Every ILS listing, separately
Listing sites map, cache and override fields their own way, so your website capture does not prove what a listing said. Brynson's analysis of 6,000 properties and 1.6 million units found that although 97% of listings had been updated within the previous 90 days, conflicting mandatory fees, missing amenities and contradictory terms persisted (the listing accuracy report). Capture each listing on its own schedule.
- 06
Paid and social ads, with targeting
Creative, copy, landing page, run dates and the audience settings. A complaint can ask who was shown an ad, not only what it said. Export the settings when the campaign launches and each time it changes, rather than counting on the ad platform to show past settings later.
- 07
Promotions and banners
Specials, "no fees" claims and limited-time offers, with the time they went up and came down. A one-weekend banner is invisible to a weekly screenshot habit.
- 08
Listing photo originals and edits
The original file, each edited or virtually staged version, and who approved publishing it. A capture shows what renters saw; the original shows what the unit looked like. Keep both with the decision that connects them.
Capture the view the claimant used, not the one you test on
Pages render differently by device, assistive technology and consent choice, and each claim turns on one view.
| View | Why it matters | Claims it answers |
|---|---|---|
| Desktop | The layout most internal reviews use. Fee tables and footnotes often show here and collapse elsewhere. | Fee disclosure, fair housing copy |
| Mobile and tablet | Accordions, carousels and truncated cards can hide a fee or disclaimer that desktop shows in full. | Fee prominence, "clear and conspicuous" arguments |
| Screen reader | What assistive technology announces, including unlabeled buttons and images without alt text. | Website accessibility demand letters |
| Visitor who declined cookies | Consent banners can suppress chat widgets, pricing scripts or embedded apply flows, so the page a privacy-minded renter saw may differ. | Fee disclosure, accessibility, tracking disputes |
Capture all four at the same moment; four views on four days prove four different pages. For accessibility claims, pair this with the ADA demand letter guide.
Screenshots, the Wayback Machine and verified captures compared
Federal Rule of Evidence 901(a) asks for "evidence sufficient to support a finding that the item is what the proponent claims it is" (FRE 901). For a past web page: the right page, on the right date, in the right view, unchanged since.
| Test | Ad hoc screenshots | Wayback Machine | Scheduled, hash-verified captures |
|---|---|---|---|
| Right page on the right date | Only if someone happened to take one | Only if a crawler visited; many pages are never captured | Daily and on change, by schedule |
| Replayable (scroll, expand, click into the apply flow) | No, a flat image | Partly; archived copies are often incomplete | Yes, the page as it worked |
| Shows who captured it and how | Usually a person's memory | The archive's own process, outside your control | Configuration logged with each capture |
| Tamper-evident | No; easy to dispute as edited | Hosted by a third party | Hash recorded at capture, chained to the previous one |
| Multiple views at once | Rarely | One crawler view | Desktop, mobile, screen reader, no-consent |
| Gaps stated | Unknown | Unknown | Reported in writing |
What Weinhoffer means for the Wayback Machine
In Weinhoffer v. Davie Shoring (5th Cir., January 20, 2022, No. 20-30568), the district court took judicial notice of auction terms from a Wayback Machine snapshot. The Fifth Circuit reversed, noting that other circuits had allowed archived pages where someone with personal knowledge of the archive authenticated them under Rule 901, which "indicates that exhibits derived from these sources are not inherently or self-evidently reliable" (opinion; summary by MoloLamken in the National Law Journal). No testimony authenticated the snapshot; a footnote points to the Internet Archive's instructions for requesting an authentication affidavit. Use the Wayback Machine for a page nobody else kept, as a fallback, not a program.
FRE 902(13) and 902(14) in plain English
Rule 902(13) covers a record "generated by an electronic process or system that produces an accurate result", and 902(14) covers data copied from a device or file "authenticated by a process of digital identification". Both work by a qualified person's written certification plus advance notice to the other side, instead of a live foundation witness (FRE 902). The committee note on 902(14) says that if the hash values of an original and a copy match, "it is highly improbable that the original and copy are not identical". The notes on both rules say a certification establishes authenticity only; the other side can still object on other grounds, such as hearsay. So the goal of a capture program is a record your counsel can authenticate cheaply, not one that wins by itself.
Proving a negative: showing a phrase or fee never appeared
Many claims allege something was there: a discriminatory phrase or a "no fees" promise. A negative can only be shown across a defined set of captures, so the statement has three parts: which pages, which dates and views, and where coverage was missing.
"Across 80 captures of 9 property websites between January 1 and June 30, in desktop and mobile views, the phrase 'adults only' does not appear. Captures are missing for Property 4 from March 3 to March 5 because the site was down; no claim is made for those dates."
Stating the gap is what makes the rest credible. The same search works for fees: "first appears on the payment step on May 1, in no earlier capture" is a timeline counsel can use.
How to place website evidence on legal hold when a letter arrives
A demand letter, AG inquiry or FTC civil investigative demand can mean litigation is anticipated, and Rule 37(e) reaches information that should have been preserved in anticipation of litigation. These steps freeze the evidence before the next website update overwrites it.
- 1
Name a hold owner the day the letter arrives
Counsel issues the hold and names one person to run it. Record the date the letter was received.
- 2
Scope the hold by property, surface and date range
List the properties, pages, listings and campaigns the letter touches, and a date range that starts well before the earliest date it alleges. When in doubt, include the whole property.
- 3
Suspend deletion for everything in scope
Stop scheduled purges of captures, ad accounts, PMS fee history and photo libraries for the scoped properties. Tell the vendors who host any of them in writing.
- 4
Capture the current state before anyone fixes anything
Take a full capture of every in-scope surface in every view now. The page as it stood when the letter arrived is evidence too.
- 5
Export the history with hashes and a custody log
Export the captures for the date range with their hash values and the configuration that produced them. Log every export: who, when, to whom and why.
- 6
Document coverage gaps in writing
List the dates, pages or views for which no capture exists and the reason. Counsel decides how to use the gaps; hiding them is worse than having them.
- 7
Release the hold only in writing
Keep everything until counsel releases the hold. Then return the records to the normal retention schedule rather than deleting them on the spot.
Retention schedule template
Three years covers the ordinary federal clocks above; counsel may set five where civil penalties are in play and sets the final numbers for your states. Every row needs one owner.
| Record | Minimum keep | Extend when | Owner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Website captures (pricing, floor plans, fee guide, amenities) | 3 years after the page changed or came down | Any demand letter, complaint or investigation touching the property | Marketing ops |
| Application flow captures, each step | 3 years after the flow changed | Any fee or accessibility claim | Leasing ops with the PMS admin |
| ILS listing captures, per site | 3 years after the listing changed | Any claim citing a listing | Marketing ops |
| Paid and social ad creative, targeting and run dates | 3 years after the campaign ended | Any fair housing complaint | Digital marketing |
| PMS fee schedule versions and change log | 3 years after superseded | Any fee claim | Revenue management |
| Photo originals, edits and approval decisions | 3 years after the photo was retired | Any misrepresentation claim | Marketing with the photo reviewer |
| Review and approval records (who approved what copy, when) | 3 years after the approved item retired | Any claim on that item | Compliance |
| Anything under legal hold | Until counsel releases the hold in writing | Not applicable | Legal |
SiteArchiver is the evidence layer of Compliance360. It captures the pages that carry price, fees, floor plans, amenities and applications daily and whenever they change, as desktop, tablet, mobile, screen-reader and no-consent visitors, on a hash-chained ledger. Teams can replay or compare any two dates, run a prove-absence search that states coverage gaps, open matters with legal holds and chain of custody, and export an evidence package that verifies offline. Fee Transparency findings point to the capture that proves them, and FrameCheck registers each listing photo against its original and keeps the reviewer's decision. SiteArchiver preserves what a page showed; it never gives a legal verdict.
Frequently asked questions
At least three years after the ad, page or listing changed or came down, which covers the ordinary HUD, Fair Housing Act court and FTC Section 19 clocks. A pending HUD proceeding, a federal civil penalty claim (five years by default) or a longer state period can run past that. Keep anything tied to a complaint, demand letter or investigation until counsel releases the hold.
They are easy to dispute: they rarely fix the date reliably, cannot be replayed, show one view and cannot show they were not edited. They also seldom cover the application flow, where fee claims are decided. Scheduled captures with recorded hash values and a custody log are easier for counsel to authenticate.
Sometimes, but do not rely on it. In Weinhoffer v. Davie Shoring the Fifth Circuit held a court should not have taken judicial notice of a Wayback Machine snapshot, and noted that other circuits had accepted archived pages when someone with personal knowledge of the archive authenticated them. The archive also misses many pages, and the copies it holds are often incomplete.
Each capture is run through a hash function that produces a fingerprint, and each fingerprint is recorded together with the previous one, forming a chain. Changing any capture changes its fingerprint and breaks the chain, so edits are detectable. It shows a record has not changed since capture; it does not decide whether the page was compliant.
Freeze captures of the pricing pages, fee guide, every application step and each listing for the alleged period, plus the PMS fee schedule versions and change log. Capture the current state before fixing anything, export with hashes and a custody log, and write down any coverage gaps. Have counsel issue the hold the day the letter arrives.
Search a defined set of captures for the phrase or fee and state the result with its scope: which pages, which dates, which views. Then list any dates or pages with no capture and why. A negative is only as strong as the coverage behind it, so the stated gaps are part of the proof.
How we checked this
Written by the Brynson Research Team and checked against the primary sources below. Each source shows the date we last read it. We update this page when the rules change; see the change log.
- 42 U.S. Code 3610: Administrative enforcement; preliminary matters, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- 42 U.S. Code 3613: Enforcement by private persons, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- 15 U.S. Code 57b: Civil actions for violations of rules and cease and desist orders, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- Federal Rule of Evidence 902: Evidence that is self-authenticating, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- Federal Rule of Evidence 901: Authenticating or identifying evidence, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37: Failure to make disclosures or to cooperate in discovery, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- 28 U.S. Code 2462: Time for commencing proceedings, Legal Information Institute, Cornell Law School. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- FTC and State of Colorado v. Greystar Real Estate Partners, LLC: [Proposed] stipulated order for permanent injunction, monetary judgment and other relief (D. Colo. No. 1:25-cv-00165-CNS), Federal Trade Commission, December 2025. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- Greystar agrees to pay $24 million to stop deceptive advertising practices, Federal Trade Commission, December 2, 2025. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- Weinhoffer v. Davie Shoring, Inc., No. 20-30568, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, January 20, 2022. Accessed 2026-10-22.
- 5th Circuit raises bar for introducing historical snapshots of websites into evidence, MoloLamken LLP, reprinted from The National Law Journal, April 6, 2022. Accessed 2026-10-22.
Change log
- First published.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Laws and regulator guidance change; check the current rules for your properties with your counsel before acting.