Trion Properties Lawsuits: Buckingham, Raven, and Edge26

Trion Properties, the Los Angeles-based multifamily investment firm, has been named in lawsuits ranging from a federal Fair Housing Act complaint in Silicon Valley to a proposed habitability class action in Denver, and it has also gone to court as a plaintiff over a collapsed $84.2 million Miami deal. Its co-founder has separately been named in a Los Angeles partnership dispute. Taken together, the Trion Properties lawsuits track the firm’s “value-add” strategy of buying older apartment buildings, renovating them, and raising rents.

Buckingham Apartments Fair Housing Suit

In October 2016, tenants at the Buckingham Apartments in Redwood City, California, sued Trion in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California under the Fair Housing Act and the California Civil Rights Act. The 48-unit complex at 180 Buckingham Avenue housed a predominantly Latino community paying rents about 40 percent below market. After Trion bought the property for $15 million, it issued eviction notices to 15 units to begin renovations and, according to the complaint, planned to rebrand the building to attract tech workers from nearby employers including Google and Facebook.¹

The Buckingham Apartments Tenants’ Association and seven individual tenants, including Juan Jimenez and Laura Hernandez, alleged that Trion was deliberately displacing a minority population to make way for higher-income, predominantly white and Asian renters. They also brought unfair business practices and breach of contract claims, and sought compensatory and punitive damages plus an injunction against further evictions. The complaint cited what it called a “history of gentrification at the expense of minority populations in California,” pointing to Trion projects in Koreatown in Los Angeles, on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon, and across East Bay properties.²

Judge Vince Chhabria halted the evictions within days of the filing. The parties went to mediation, reached a contingent settlement on January 30, 2017, and the case was dismissed on February 14, 2017.³ The settlement terms were not made public.

Raven Apartments Class Action in Denver

On February 6, 2026, tenants Ashley Arias and Rachel Vargas filed a proposed class action in Denver District Court over conditions at the Raven, a 418-unit complex at 11100 East Dartmouth Avenue formerly known as the Felix. The suit names three defendants: Loft 9 Apartments LLC (the owner), Apartment Management Consultants (the property manager), and Trion Properties, identified as a former manager of the complex. It alleges violations of Colorado’s warranty of habitability and consumer protection laws.⁴

The complaint describes long-running failures at the property:

Between January 2023 and April 2024, residents submitted more than 100 work orders about heating failures. One plaintiff said her heat had not worked since October 2025; another went nearly all of January 2026 without hot water.⁵
Roaches, bedbugs, mice, and overflowing trash were reported throughout the complex.⁴
A decomposing dog was allegedly left in a vacant swimming pool.⁵
Plaintiff Rachel Vargas alleged that the lack of heat worsened a joint and skeletal condition affecting her daughter.⁴

An individual tenant, Benjamin Stark, filed a separate lawsuit one day earlier making similar heat and hot water allegations.⁶

Denver City Enforcement and Criminal Citation

The civil filings followed years of regulatory action at the Raven. City inspectors logged at least 94 tenant complaints since 2024 and substantiated 44 of them. The property accumulated 24 citations totaling nearly $50,000 in fines, and three liens totaling $33,246 were placed against it for unpaid penalties.⁷ Between January 2024 and February 2025, the Raven was the third most-fined apartment building in Denver.⁴

The property had also operated without a required landlord’s license for more than three years. In October 2025, the Denver Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection filed a criminal citation against the ownership under the Loft 9 Apartments name, only the second time a rental licensing issue had escalated to a criminal charge in the city. The charge carries a maximum penalty of $999 and up to a year in jail, with a court date set for February 24, 2026. The Denver Metro Tenants Union has said the fines and citations have done little to change conditions.⁵

Edge26 Tenant Organizing in Edgewater, Colorado

Trion has also drawn organized tenant pushback at Edge26, a 402-unit complex in Edgewater it acquired for $109 million, formerly known as Terra Village. Resident Abigail Espino, who helped form a tenant union with the nonprofit Edgewater Collective, said her rent rose more than 55 percent, from $900 to $1,400 per month. Tenants also reported extended periods without hot water in winter, and some Hispanic residents alleged that maintenance requests from their families were handled more slowly than those from white families, compounded by the absence of Spanish-speaking front-office staff. Trion later hired a Spanish-speaking employee after public pressure, though Espino said the union could not force rent rollbacks and its momentum stalled.⁸ Trion did not respond to the publication’s request for comment.

Miami Deposit Lawsuit Against Sergio Pino

Trion has also been a plaintiff. In February 2023, it contracted to buy a 230-unit apartment building at 850 Northwest 43rd Avenue in Miami from developer Sergio Pino for $84.2 million. The deal collapsed over a title dispute involving a garage shared with an adjacent office building Pino had sold in 2021 to an entity linked to Univista Insurance executives. Pino allegedly never obtained Miami-Dade County approval to split the garage for joint ownership.⁹

In March 2023, the Univista entity sued Pino and filed a lis pendens against both the garage and the apartment building, clouding the title. Trion said Pino did not respond to that litigation until a week after the scheduled May 2023 closing. Trion terminated the contract and on July 20, 2023 sued Pino and his entities in Miami-Dade Circuit Court to recover a $1 million deposit Pino had refused to return.⁹ No public outcome of that suit has surfaced.

Partnership Dispute Naming Co-Founder Max Sharkansky

Trion co-founder Max Sharkansky was named in a commercial contract case filed in October 2025 in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Riverbend PEGP LLC sued First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company along with other parties tied to a multifamily project. The complaint alleged that Sharkansky, acting as co-manager of the project entity and associated with Trion Investor LLC (which held a 66.7 percent stake), unilaterally signed and submitted loan draw requests without the knowledge or consent of co-manager Zach Murphy. The suit tied those actions to financial distress at the project, an unapproved $1.25 million service contract, mechanic’s liens, and loan defaults.¹⁰ The case was open as of the filing date.

1
The Guardian. Silicon Valley Eviction: Facebook, Trion Properties
2
Courthouse News Service. Gentrification Plan Riles Up Bay Area Tenants
3
CourtListener. Buckingham Apartments Tenants’ Association v. Trion Properties, Inc.
4
The Denver Post. Raven Apartments Denver Lawsuit
5
Denverite. The Raven Denver Apartment Lawsuit Criminal Charges
6
BusinessDen. The Docket: Real Estate Lawsuit Roundup
7
Denver7. Two Years Later, Tenants at Raven Apartments Still Waiting for Change Despite City Fines and Criminal Charge
8
Denver VOICE. Inside the Denver Tenant Power Movement
9
The Real Deal. Sergio Pino’s $84M Deal to Sell Miami Apartment Building Falls Apart
10
Unicourt. Riverbend PEGP LLC v. First-Citizens Bank & Trust Company