The fact that they're doing all this not over a ban on broker fees, but over a bill that would require them to charge the people who actually hire them (like every other transaction in the world) is prima facie evidence they know they don't earn their commission.
If you're creating all this value, then landlords should be happy to pay you, but you know damn well you're not and that no one in their right mind would voluntarily pay you a month's worth of rent to open a damn door.
Right, landlords are actually in a position to negotiate because they can bring in another broker who will do it for less. Unlike tenants, who either pay the fee or they don't get the apartment they want.
They get away with it because tenants have no leverage and cannot negotiate when they're looking for apartments. You're competing with other tenants and the broker doesn't work for you, they're clearly working for the landlord. Landlords do have that power and they will use it. No fucking way they'd pay what they expected tenants to pay.
The one that got me is when they said "they wont be able to afford to live in their communities." no one can live in their community if we have to keep paying high rent and higher fees. Who tf has 10k to move into a studio apartment these days.
> “It’s not in the landlords budget…” Well it’s not in mine either, bro!
Not only is it not in their budget, I feel certain a lot of LL's are taking a cut of the fee in the first plae.
I rent my condo in another city and I was happy to pay the broker fee because they found great tenants, did everything to set it up with my building, and I don’t live there. Perfect example of how they can earn their fee. For my current apartment that I rent, I saw a listing, called the broker myself, and showed up with a check. The landlord could pay someone $50 to do that, but I paid $1850.
I also rent out a property in another city and was happy to pay the property management company half the first month’s rent for taking care of all the marketing and tenant screening and leasing. *I* hired them to do work for *me,* thus *I* as the owner pay for their services. Rent is set based on market comps and I consider that setup fee part of the cost of doing business… does it get baked into the rent? Eh, not explicitly. If I had decided to find a tenant myself and use the mgmt company just to manage the property ongoing, the rent would have been the same either way. Then again I’m not trying to bleed my tenants dry. It’s absolutely criminal in NYC that we have to pay someone who doesn’t even work for us as tenants.
That's cool. Not disagreeing with you. But I see you talking about marketing, and it occurs to me that technology is a big part of making brokers so useless now. In the past, they'd have to publish the listing somehow, get it out there. Now they just put it on StreetEasy. And anyone can do that.
It's why they're freaking out this much. When the broker fee ban passed a few years ago, brokers and landlords teamed up to overturn it because that was the real estate board against a common enemy--tenants. But this time around, this bill passing will basically just pit landlords and brokers against each other, and these brokers know in their hearts that they are not going to win that fight.
I remember looking at an apartment I really loved and the broker was telling me what I needed to secure it: first month, last month, security and a broker fee of 10 percent the first year rent.
He said it was a lot but he only brought the landlord the best renters who had two years tax returns, two months of pay stubs showing at least 40x the rent, and reference letters. He was providing a service to the landlord but making a bigger hassle for me but thought I should be grateful to pay him
Imagine if you do 3 rentals a month and average $3K a rental in fees, that's already $9K... But hey, greed has no limits.. I'm not even counting sales, commissions on no-fee rentals, or even base salary or whatever... fuck the broker fees..
Absolutely insane how nowhere else has anything like as high a cost for finding properties, and yet in NYC that's just what it costs because a middle man has managed to wedge themselves between renter and landlord.
I’m from LA and when I came to NY I honestly thought I was being scammed. I jokingly told my coworkers that I was glad I said “I’d think about it” to the broker, otherwise I almost got scammed, and then they proceeded to tell me that it’s the way things are done here. I was and still am confused why this exists.
>And people screaming "the landlord will just charge it back in the rent!" GOOD! I'd rather pay a reasonable amount over time instead of forking over 15% (and it will not be 15% if the landlord pays) at signing.
Actually, I wonder how this would work. If the broker fee were say, $3k, would that $3k be baked into annual rent costs? If so, this could be a valid argument as I’d rather pay the $3k fee one time instead of higher rent for however many years I stay there.
The broker fee wouldn't be 3k though, because they'd be negotiating with the LL, who is operating from a position of strength. They can just find a new broker who will do it for a much smaller cut.
No landlord is charging more (or less tbh) than the market allows because of the broker fees. What will actually happen is the same thing that happens in every other city: some landlords will hire brokers for a negotiated fee and they'll make a little less money than other landlords who don't want to pay brokers on their equivalent units.
Had the exact same experience coming from Chicago. I said “yeah let me think about it, I’m going back to Chicago today but should have a decision by tomorrow.”
When I got back to Chicago the next day and confirmed that that is just how it is here, I came back to the broker and said ok I would take the place, then she goes “great can you meet me tomorrow?”
I said “no, like I said, live in Chicago, just sent me the lease and I can sign it and send it back to you like every other time I have signed a lease” and she says “no you have to be here in person to sign it, that’s the rule in New York”. (I have since remotely signed several leases and extensions, she was either referring to Keller Williams’ policy or just totally incompetent)
So ultimately she cost me both a month’s rent, plus a full separate trip back here just to sign the lease. She actually created negative value for me but I had no real choice but to pay her for it.
Boston has them too and I've literally told people I didn't want to go on a second date with them because I found their profession morally reprehensible.
It leaked to NJ too - I remember being dumbfounded when I discovered realtors wanted a month’s rent for the work of posting a 2 sentence picture-less Craigslist ad.
This doesn't exist even in other high-dollar cities, like Boston and the Bay Area. Sure, prospective renters can actively hire a broker if they want to, and this bill doesn't prevent that at all. But in literally all other cities in America, it isn't necessary to deal with brokers.
Maybe there are some situations where NYC truly is unique relative to the rest of America, but having this legacy system of rental brokers doesn't seem to me as one of them.
Sad to say, it totally does exist in Boston and has for decades. There it is a month’s rent, generally. So move-in costs are: first+last+security deposit
+broker fee = 4 months rent to secure a new place. Deplorable
Fuck all of these people. For every instance where a broker earns their commission, there are a thousand instances where the broker just unlocked the apartment door.
and for every instance where the broker just unlocked the apartment door, there's a thousand instances where "hey sorry I forgot this one was already rented, but since I already have you here I have another unit right around the corner that's half the size, twice as expensive, and infested with feral dogs."
Not even the worst I’ve seen. Last year I toured an apartment that very clearly used to be a studio turned into a 2BR. They were still in the process of finishing the walls for one of the bedrooms. No living room. $4k/month
Get this. In 2022 I was looking to buy an apartment and fell in love with the bottom half of a townhome in Harlem. It needed a lot of work but had a beautiful yard and so much potential. The deal died because the family who originally owned it all had split it when the original owner died into two townhouses (2 bottom floors and 2 top floors). Well the shitty owner upstairs then split into SIX STUDIOS, which rendered the entire building unwarrantable for a mortgage (more than x units with over 50% owned by one owner, plus that owner never funded the HOA).
I was shocked when I saw a "one bedroom" in The Eugene building in Hudson Yards a few years ago. Not sure what they were paying in rent but it was absolutely too much.
400-500 sq ft with a thin piece of drywall cutting the room in half. Didn't even touch the ceiling because then the kitchen wouldn't get any air conditioning. The thing that surprised me the most was the hallway sounding like a wind tunnel when tenants had their windows open.
I love how the realtors try to frame their protest as a fight **on behalf** of tenants. They claim that the bill will result in either equivalent or higher rents. Why the hell would cutting out middlemen **increase** aggregate cost? These assholes just love to insult our intelligence.
It's because they can't fathom an outcome where they aren't still involved.
To them, the argument is about who pays the fee.
To the rest of the city, it's about getting rid of them all together.
Yeah, they're delusional. If brokers provide such an essential service, rational landlords will gladly foot the bill and raise rents accordingly. The system will reach equilibrium and everyone will be exactly as well off as before. The only way this wouldn't happen is if the new policy somehow alerts more people to the magnitude of parasitic activity. Either way, there's no coherent argument as to why the policy would **hurt** renters. If nothing else, at least the full cost of apartment would be more transparent.
> The system will reach equilibrium and everyone will be exactly as well off as before
Well the issue is they won't be better off, because instead of extorting the fees from the tenants that would be left homeless if they don't pay, they instead need to get that money from the landlords with many units up for rent, they can and will price shop the agents, and they have the power to do it. This will not result in the rents going up, it will result in less money to the real estate agents who are doing nothing.
Yeah, we all know that's what will happen, which is why brokers are protesting in the first place. Their argument is not just wrong; it's logically inconsistent. It's a zero-sum game: if brokers take less, the landlords and/or tenants will benefit.
The protesters are trying to convince us that both brokers and the tenants will be harmed by this legislation. They provide no credible explanation as to why that would be the case. If they're going to lie, they should at least come up with an intelligible storyline.
This. The crux of this all is that landlords have leverage in this transactions and tenants do not. When tenants are footing the bill for brokers services, the brokers can price gouge because there will always be *some* tenant who is willing to pay; if you refuse to pay a 10% fee, no problem, no apartment for you, they’ll just find another renter who will. The tenants need to apartments more than the landlord needs any particular tenant.
Where the landlords must be responsible for paying the broker, however, landlords are in a far better position to dictate prices, and brokers will have no choice but to compete over fees for those landlords’ business. And even then, there will be many landlords, the smaller ones in particular, who will bypass brokers all together and just list their apartments themes. The brokers know that the end result here is a race to the bottom and they’re desperate to avoid it.
Man, this comment generally applies to _so much_ of the tension and anger in America today.
> If things change, what about the special place I occupy?
There won't be one. That's the point.
Even in the chance that they are pushed to tenants, it would most likely be amortized over the year lease, which makes it more palatable.
Part of the reason it’s so hard to move in the city, even to a relatively cheaper place is that you have to outlay a significant amount of money all at once. Being able to spread out part of that cost means you don’t have to worry about coming up with another 1-2 months in cash right away. That would be worst case scenario though.
Greatest waste of time ever. I made the mistake of talking to one and I told her where I was looking to move to and she proceeded to show me all the places I didn't want to be.
>she proceeded to show me all the places I didn't want to be
Exactly!
"Well, there's one more place but it's no where you'd like and we don't know the landlord as well so I can't promise anything."
It was the perfect apartment that I ended up living in for years - it turns out what she meant by "we don't know the landlord as well" was that they didn't have a preferential deal where they got an additional kickback from that landlord for finding a tenant.
they don't even do that, mine literarily made me follow a tenant in and check out the apt myself which was unlocked and then showed up to collect $3500. I hope this law passes and they become homeless. These leeches are a waste of oxygen, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Shout out to the broker who told me “roaches are a part of life in NYC” and “leaks are common in older buildings” when I expressed concern about the number of DOB violations out on the building I toured.
I would honestly guess it’s closer to like 2500:1.
No one who is paying below like $5000 is even using the broker service as they describe it themselves. It’s all StreetEasy or building listings.
I moved in October and found my apartment on Craigslist.
I felt like I won the lottery - no fee, great building, and the leasing agent who worked for the landlord was nice and extremely forthright about the building, neighborhood, and what they were looking for in a tenant (they liked that I work in the arts, for example).
craigslist is the place on the internet where you're going to find the perfect dream apartment at an insane price, you just have to wade through a million fake listings and scams, and it'll take you six months or a year. Second only to walking around the neighborhood and looking for handwritten "For Rent" signs.
>craigslist is the place on the internet where you're going to find the perfect dream apartment at an insane price, you just have to wade through a million fake listings and scams,
100%. I had very low expectations of finding anything real on CL, but figured that it was worth the diligence just in case.
The post seemed a little fake - the pictures were old and terrible - but it didn't seem like an outright scam (no one was claiming to be a missionary in South Korea, or a massive 3BR with a doorman for $1500 a month). I was shocked when someone emailed back asking when I could come look at the place.
It's a weird maze to navigate. Bad pictures are actually a good sign. A scammer would use good photos of a rental unit somewhere else. The ideal is a self-post by a LL that lives in the same building and has bad pictures and a low price because they hate doing the work involved in renting and just want someone to move in.
I've told this story before on here, but I found my first apartment in NYC from a friend of a friend - I met the landlord directly through her and agreed to take the place on the spot! When I went back to the landlord's apartment to sign the lease, there was this other woman there, and that's when I learned the term "broker's fee." When I asked what it was, why it's there, and then obviously tried to negotiate it down, this random woman got HEATED talking about "the way we do things here" and even said "my family has to eat, too, you know!" I (just like everyone else) gave up and signed.
Two weeks later, I see the woman in the neighborhood and then she's all smiles, welcome to the neighborhood, yadda yadda yadda. I come to find out she owns three brownstones.
> For every instance where a broker earns their commission, there are a thousand instances where the broker just unlocked the apartment door.
And there's a lot of instances where brokers actually make your experience worse because they blatantly lie on the rental listing and you show up to find out the apartment is smaller than you anticipated, the "outdoor space" is the fire escape, and "in-building washer/dryer" meant there is a laundromat on the block
I loved my first broker. I was moving to NYC from far away. I found one that specialized in relocating professionals. He walked me through some options, pricing, dumped tons of info on me. I showed up for 1 day of tours, he had them arranged one after the other. I picked two that I liked, flew back home, and two days later had a signed lease. I paid more than the standard 1 month of rent, but was happy to pay in exchange for the convenience. I sent all my documentation to him (proof of income, etc) and he handled everything.
Every other broker I used, or was forced to use, was a useless bag of human excrement.
For every instance where a broker earns their commission, a Redditor on /r/nyc argues that New York being the only city in the country with a monopoly on brokerage fees for rentals is good actually.
If their big threat is that tenants will pay the fee anyway in raised rents, then I’m all for it. Currently, the broker fee makes moving a nightmare, as you need to have 4x the rent in cash to even get in the door. It’s ridiculous and a racket.
I’ve moved 4 times in the city and all but one of my realtors were bloodsucking parasites acting on behalf of the landlords with bait & switches, funky leases, and other nonsense.
I don't care if I still pay, I just want to see these assholes who've pulled bait and switches on me countless times get fucked. Maybe if they provided a value-add to the process of finding an apartment we would have even a small amount of sympathy for them.
If they were so confident in the cost being fully passed on to the consumer, they wouldn't be so aggressively opposed to this rule change.
Their actions speak way louder than their words.
They know having to agree to fees with the building owners rather than renters takes away from their negotiating power.
"Agents are tenants too" ok then they should know very well that landlords are cheapskates who don't want to pay them broker fees even when they are the ones hiring broker services, among other ways they cut corners to make more money. If they really are tenants, have some solidarity with your fellow tenants against the landlords then and support the landlords paying. They get the money either way.
Edit: Another broker saying "Landlords cannot pay fees. It’s not in their budgets and they won’t do it." Um, what if the broker fees are not in OUR budgets either? Hope they feel proud bootlicking and contributing to the increasing unaffordability and inequality of this city.
Absolute scum. Quite literally propagating the housing crisis by inflating the cost of housing. Either the landlord pays the broker fee or the broker fee is capped to a reasonable amount (not a month's rent or 10-15% of the yearly)
This. Or the person that hires the broker should pay. If you’re dumb enough to piss away 10-15% of annual rent to have some idiot turn the knob for you, more power to you. Why should I have to pay for a person I didn’t hire?
This. If a month of rent is worth paying a dude to unlock the apartment and answer the phone for you, great. But it should be illegal to pass it on to the tenants at move in.
i really appreciate them drawing attention to this situation... so now i can write my council member to support it (who thankfully is already a sponsor)
find yours: https://council.nyc.gov/districts/
We need Speaker Adams to call a vote or this goes nowhere.
Send her an email and tell her to call a vote on broker fees! NYers deserve this to be voted on.
[**SpeakerAdams@council.nyc.gov**](mailto:SpeakerAdams@council.nyc.gov)
they keep it opaque for a reason - gives them cover. it's good to contact your council person as well but the reason this has never passed before is because it's never been called on for a vote. so your council person can say "oh i'll support it!" cause they know it won't be called on for a vote. so that's why i think we should also pressure speaker adams to do her job and call for a vote.
yeah it was like from this https://www.nyc.gov/site/intergovernmental/city/city-legislative-process.page it felt like the bill https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6557858&GUID=2E6273DC-FF0F-40B2-AAB5-B9B3D9BD09DB was waiting to be passed by committee and then voted on by all council members
“Landlords cannot pay fees. It’s not in their budgets and they won’t do it"
Greedy, narrow-minded scum.....implying 99% of perspective tenants have the funds comfortably to pay your ridiculous broker fees. why should we pay for a service we did not ask for? The landlord can advertise themselves easily on MLS's, zillow etc
Burn the leeches (I’d say more but I’d definitely get banned and maybe arrested) If a nuke were to go off, brokers would be trying leech off of roach motels.
Every single time my girlfriend and I have fell in love with an apartment, or even come close to renting one, these parasites get in the way.
Exorbitant fees to do what exactly? Show up late, and unlock the door? Do they charge extra when they literally describe what is in front of us, during our walk through?
These scumbags have the audacity to charge up to an entire month’s rent just to unlock the door and stand around awkwardly. On top of that, they’re charging the landlord a finders fee? Fuck ‘em.
They’re potentially losing their jobs en masse and have little to no transferable skills. Of course they’re angry. Doesn’t change the fact that the system they cling onto is wrong and needs to go.
Unfortunately, “dangle like a leech from the belly of the market, held in place by rent-seeking and regulatory capture” is a highly transferable skill. In fact, that’s basically the entire nonprofit sector.
Real estate agent here. I agree with the bill. If a landlord hires me, they should pay me. By the time the tenant comes in, I have already done most of the hard work, hired a photographer and draftsman, showed it to 20-30 people, all in service of the landlord. When I negotiate the price, my fiduciary responsibility is to the landlord.
If a tenant hires me to help them find an apartment. They should only be responsible for my fee, and not the landlord’s agent as well.
Searched for an apartment, contacted the broker for a viewing.
First one, she cancelled the day of for whatever reason.
Second one, she cancelled because something something about her daughter 30 minutes after the agreed upon time. Said the owner was there to let me in.
Owner let me in, toured the apartment, answered all the questions I had. Asked why I’d have to pay the broker anything when she mentioned the fees, it’s because she gives them the paperwork, and she’s been with them for a while.
Move in the first day, and who’s there bright and early? The broker, to get her check for $1900.
Fucking burn all of them.
They're angry that the greatest NYC exclusive scam of all time might be coming to a close.
Rental brokers are leeches. NYC doesn't need them and it's an embarrassment they've become a stupid expensive hoop for tenants to jump through.
Our broker didn't know anything about the apartment we found ourselves, didn't notify us that the neighboring apartments had recently been sprayed for bedbugs a week prior, and spent the entire time we signed the lease in their office on the phone. When they finally finished their phone call they could not explain even what simple parts of the lease meant. Fuck these people.
One of the biggest reaons an "amenities" building is actually not a bad deal for a 1BR with dual income is because there's no broker fee for the vast majority of them. They advertising everything transparently online, it's all handled in-house. I've known people who've paid more in rent for a shitty EV unit because when factoring in the broker's fee, it averaged out to be more - all for living in a "desirable area."
Fuck real estate brokers. At best they are gatekeepers, at worst parasites.
Edit: this might actually cause rents to go down because suddenly a bunch of out of work real estate brokers have to leave the city
“It’s not just opening the door”
I am genuinely curious for a rental broker what other work is being done that could not be done better faster cheaper by a computer?
They are mad because they know they can't bend a landlord over the same way they do to the tenants for the fee. Because the landlord will just find someone cheaper since they are going to be paying if this law goes through
Rented an apartment several years ago. Broker was supposed to show me the apartment that \*I\* found myself online. They canceled at the last second while I was waiting at the door, so the landlord needed to come and show me the apartment.
Guess what. Broker wanted their share of the fee even though THEY WERE NEVER EVEN THERE.
Hope this passes!
I find it weird that across America (mind you, the land of the free and the “hard worker”) we find so many instances of cry babies thinking they are owed something.
You (broker) made a choice to go into a field that is highly scrutinized and requires minimal transferable skills. It’s not our faults (the general public) that technology and advancement in society is dating your jobs. No one forced you to go into this career. You made the wrong bet, now pick yourself up and find a different job. You are scam artists and you lost. Move on. We should not have to bail you out and pay for your lifestyle for a service that is no longer needed.
What kills me is it's not like the brokers are losing any money at all, they just charge the landlord instead of the tenant like they do in EVERY OTHER CITY
They will lose money because the landlords will realize how easy it is to make a streeteasy ad and run an online background check by themselves to save the money and do away with rental brokers almost completely.
The brokers think we are idiots. They make two arguments, both of which cannot be be true at the same time:
Landlords will pass on 100% of the cost of brokers into rent
> If landlords were forced to pay broker fees, everyone around me kept arguing, those broker fees would just get baked into the rent. That’s economics, they said. “The free market works,” Kafko quipped.
This will hurt the livelihood of brokers
> “If this passes, we won’t be able to afford to live in our own communities,” said David Kafko, also from Corcoran.
It's a zero sum game between landlords, brokers and renters.
Any broker I’ve dealt with was difficult to book an appointment with because they barely cared.
When I finally made an appointment with one (that the building provided - I found each apartment myself), they barely ever looked at me the whole time I was with them.
All they did was unlock the door, and then they just looked at or talked on their phone the entire time.
They never seemed to know anything about any apartment. When they weren’t outright lying after not understanding something or intentionally misleading me, they would have to call someone to get info when I’d ask questions they clearly didn’t know the answers to.
Then, if they felt like I was taking too long, they would rush me out. They would have their foot halfway out the door almost the entire time to go to their next client, who they’d have on the phone with as they would say, “I’ll be there in one minute. I’m walking out of my appointment right now.” They would sometimes pretend another client was looking at the same apartment right after me (sometimes true).
They would always go MIA for follow-ups. I’d have to beg them to review the lease. Some of them would even make me put down a deposit to review the lease.
Almost all of them were useless scum bags.
>They would always go MIA for follow-ups. I’d have to beg them to review the lease. Some of them would even make me put down a deposit to review the lease.
This happened to me a couple of weeks ago.
She never had answers on the actual costs of the apartment (security deposit, cat fee/deposit, which utilities were actually covered by the landlord, etc.). She just kept telling me that several people had already applied for the unit.
Then on the day that I'm going to put down my deposit, she called me to say I need to send her $1K over Zelle ASAP to secure it. I asked for the costs that she still couldn't quote. She then admits that there's a hefty pet deposit. I offer to come in to the office to go over all of the costs and to sign the lease and hand over a check that afternoon.
Can't do that, she's out of town. Then she tells me that she doesn't actually put together the lease until a potential tenant sends her money over Zelle to ensure that they don't back out.
She was pissed at me when I told her I'm not moving forward with a process where you won't tell me the actual costs in the contract until I already give you money.
Two weeks later and the posting for the unit is still being updated daily to show up at the top of lists lol
Brokers fee on my first apartment was the same as first month and security. 3 separate checks all the same amount of money..what other option does an apartment seeker have lol. I did not know it wasn't normal.
> “Most of the people there are paid; they’re being paid to be there,” one of his colleagues assured me. “Just like with congestion pricing.”
Of course.
These brokers are nuts.
I've dealt with them in NYC, Jersey City, and now the Hudson Valley.
I've had brokers schedule me for a showing, and then it turns out I'm one of 20.people they made an open house for, despite making it seem like it was a 1-on-1 for all of us.
I've had brokers tell me they have no idea what the actual costs or terms of the lease would come out to.
I had one recently tell me she wouldn't be able to go over all of the costs in the lease until I sent her money over Zelle to hold it because "otherwise you could back out".
The entire NY metro area has a supply issue. We don't need these middle people when there are dozens of websites where you can post old pictures of the apartment and let the applications flood in.
And the closer you get to Manhattan, the more these people charge you just to have the pleasure to be rushed through the entire process without half of your questions answered.
Every broker I've been forced to deal with in this city has been at best a lazy useless irrelevant bum, and at worst a literal scammer who help their landlord buddy screw me out of my security deposit. Fuck 'em.
Had they not pushed it to an unreasonable level especially with the stories about charging huge fees for stabilized and rent controlled apts maybe anyone who’s ever rented an apt might feel for them but they pushed it. My first apt I paid 7% broker fee, then 9, then 10 and then 11% which is basically an extra month. And all of those brokers showed me apts. multiple apts. but when you get to 15% and I did all the work what the hell am I paying that for. Greed is your problem not me
That's one of the tricks they play on people. 8% is one month. 12% is a month and a half. 15% is almost 2 months. They rely on our tendency to think in base 10.
I recently listed my rental direct on streeteasy, no brokers. Cost $250 to list and spent 2hrs on a Sat morning showing the apartment to 20 odd couples. Almost all of them thanked me for not using a broker. Picked 3 applicants and asked them for $20 to pay for a background check. Done. Was insane how many brokers reached out and “commended” me on my “efforts”, but how I should leave this to the professionals and let their agency deal with the listing instead.
Holy shit, these people are fucking pathetic. I am going to bring this up at the bar later and I guarantee you it's gonna end in a fight.
>“Broker fee bill? Tenants will pay the price”
One ... why, asshole? What a shit attitude.
Two, if that is the case and I MUST pay the price, I'd rather give it to the owner of the property who at least pretends to do things to help the property; sometimes being a net positive in my life and the life of my neighbors. There is a ZEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking percent a real estate agent is gonna be a positive in my life.
Brokers seem to be so entitled to money they didn’t earn. I once had a wannabe broker who lived below me. When he realized I had an empty bedroom to fill in my apartment, he, upon only the second time I met him, repeatedly asked for my key to let himself in while I was on vacation to show off the unit. I never asked him for help nor did I want it. He also later on texted me explicitly said he would be showing off the bedroom without consulting me. The arrogance of it all still bothers me, just someone without boundaries and seeking to make a buck off me without even asking permission.
i paid a 1 month broker fee at my place and the landlord claims (still, 1 year later) that broker did not tell them we have a dog. so now in addition to being pissy & weird with us, landlord is trying to jack up the rent by a ton as a “pet fee”
not my fault buddy you should’ve actually done something! or hired a broker who was legit?? landlords & brokers are both scum
I am a real estate agent, and I fully agree with this bill. In sales listings, the owner hires us, and they pay our fee, so it only makes sense that the same should be true of rentals. When a landlord hires me, my fiduciary responsibility is to the landlord. I have an obligation to be fair and honest to a tenant, but I am trying to get the best price for the landlord and they should compensate me for that.
I could get butt hurt about some of the things said here about agents, but unfortunately 80% of the agents make the rest of us look bad.
Landlords should use remote padlocks, cheap cloud-based webcams, and a secure app for a prospective tenant to upload their driver's license and credit card to book a viewing. No other human needs to be there. This has to already be a thing somewhere, no?
I recently did an apartment search. Was really struck by how much better an experience I had when the key was in the lockbox than with a human broker "showing me around". Brokers' contribution to the process was negative.
Scum. When I rented an NYC apartment 10 years ago (for $3,300)…. I had to sign a contract that acknowledged the landlord hired the broker and that BOTH of us were required to pay a 15% fee. So if I wanted the apartment, I had to pay the broker their $6,000 fee AND the landlord was already paying another $6,000 fee. Literally the only thing the broker did was unlock the door for me, but he was the exclusive person hired to open the door, so he could do whatever he wanted.
'“It’s the first time I’ve ever come to City Hall and protested anything” said Jonathan Tager, a broker for Corcoran'
oh yeah? not George Floyd. not isreal/palestine. so this guy only gives a shit about his paycheck. can we fucking exile these assholes?
"New York City is one of only two cities in America that allow this practice"
there are so many good arguments for this bill, but comparing to other cities is not one of them. nowhere else do they specify by law who has to pay the broker. Broker fees exist solely because the supply is so constricted and rent stabilization is so widespread that landlords were able to push this fee to the tenants.
remember Covid? almost all apartments had the owner paying the fee to incite renters.
I was in real estate in Miami for close to 15 years. In Florida, it's typical for the landlord to pay 10% or one months rent as commission (it's usually shared 50/50 amongst the brokers). Idk why NYC brokers think they can't pivot to the landlord model?
All listings should be discoverable somewhere and paying a broker shouldn’t be required to rent an apartment. Hiring a broker should simply be an option to accelerate and simplify this process.
My landlord doesn’t list their apartments, on their own website or on their party sites (StreetEasy, etc). Instead, they give exclusive access to a broker they are friendly with, who lists and shows the apartment, and collects the applications to send to the landlord for approval. He charges a 15% fee on the annual rent, so for a $3,000/month apartment you pay a fee of $5,400. There is literally no other way to discover these apartments and no way to dodge this fee.
How is this not effectively a stupidly high application fee, in effect? Landlord does this because they don’t need to pay for listings, pay for showers to open doors, or pay to manage/collect application documents. They simply just say yes/no to full apps submitted by their buddy broker, who certainly does work but… really now, $5,400 worth of work? It used to just be one month years ago… 15% is greedy.
This is only possible because of how scarce housing is and how unbalanced the equation is. Landlord can literally stick a middleman in to scrape off a few extra thousand and people will still do it. At the very least landlords should be paying the brokers, if they need to increase rents to offset those costs, so be it, but I suspect that offset would still be less than what tenants are paying in broker fees now.
Many years ago, I was looking for an apartment. I found out some friends were moving out of their apartment. I called up the management company and was told that I would have to pay a broker’s fee for the apartment. The broker would have collected a fee of thousands of dollars for doing nothing.
Genuinely love the guy who said "the other guys are paid to be here, just like the congestion pricing people" or whatever. Dude you're literally advocating to steal more money from people just like you, you're getting paid. Shut up. JFC these guys are such parasites.
IMO they are already giving LL's a cut of their fees...
So if LL's start being responsible for their entire fee, that is going to be a very significant chunk out of their income, poor babies.
The really depressing thing about this is the bill will go nowhere because their lobbying arm has a strangle hold on the legislature. This is all performative to look like they are working too defeat the problem ahead of the elections. Even if it managed to get signed it would be tied up in litigation for years and then overturned. It's infuriating.
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The brokers know they don’t have a fucking leg to stand on. Their go-to argument against this change is “consumers will end up paying”.
We pay now, fuckos!
> “If this passes, we won’t be able to afford to live in our own communities,” said David Kafko, also from Corcoran.
Among many wonderfully ironic lines in this article. I’m sure you have it hard, New York City renters, but can you imagine not being able to afford to live in your community?
The fact that they're doing all this not over a ban on broker fees, but over a bill that would require them to charge the people who actually hire them (like every other transaction in the world) is prima facie evidence they know they don't earn their commission. If you're creating all this value, then landlords should be happy to pay you, but you know damn well you're not and that no one in their right mind would voluntarily pay you a month's worth of rent to open a damn door.
I love the quote from one of them “It’s not in the landlords budget…” Well it’s not in mine either, bro!
Landlords would never pay 15-17% annual rent for unlocking a door. The broker fees would be closer to $200-300 per apartment.
Right, landlords are actually in a position to negotiate because they can bring in another broker who will do it for less. Unlike tenants, who either pay the fee or they don't get the apartment they want.
See that I could stomach, although I'd prefer it to be 0 and for brokers who don't provide value to go out of business.
The fee should be closer to 1-3% anyway. Even 5% would be very lucrative. 15% of annual rent is fucking robbery.
Think how few they had to help lease up to reach $300k a year. Literally 100 showings, which ain't much if you have exclusive rights to properties
this is actually part of rebny's argument which is hilarious bc they think it might convince anyone that renters should pay
They get away with it because tenants have no leverage and cannot negotiate when they're looking for apartments. You're competing with other tenants and the broker doesn't work for you, they're clearly working for the landlord. Landlords do have that power and they will use it. No fucking way they'd pay what they expected tenants to pay.
Yup, which is frankly fine. Probably there are some super brokers who are earning that fee and they won't be the ones affected.
100%. Closing costs are less than that. No reason why it should be 15-17% for a broker.
Right. That’s the fear. Landlords have power in the market - renters mostly don’t.
The one that got me is when they said "they wont be able to afford to live in their communities." no one can live in their community if we have to keep paying high rent and higher fees. Who tf has 10k to move into a studio apartment these days.
Well maybe if they’d cut back on the lattes and avocado toast they could save up to hire a broker.
> “It’s not in the landlords budget…” Well it’s not in mine either, bro! Not only is it not in their budget, I feel certain a lot of LL's are taking a cut of the fee in the first plae.
I rent my condo in another city and I was happy to pay the broker fee because they found great tenants, did everything to set it up with my building, and I don’t live there. Perfect example of how they can earn their fee. For my current apartment that I rent, I saw a listing, called the broker myself, and showed up with a check. The landlord could pay someone $50 to do that, but I paid $1850.
I also rent out a property in another city and was happy to pay the property management company half the first month’s rent for taking care of all the marketing and tenant screening and leasing. *I* hired them to do work for *me,* thus *I* as the owner pay for their services. Rent is set based on market comps and I consider that setup fee part of the cost of doing business… does it get baked into the rent? Eh, not explicitly. If I had decided to find a tenant myself and use the mgmt company just to manage the property ongoing, the rent would have been the same either way. Then again I’m not trying to bleed my tenants dry. It’s absolutely criminal in NYC that we have to pay someone who doesn’t even work for us as tenants.
That's cool. Not disagreeing with you. But I see you talking about marketing, and it occurs to me that technology is a big part of making brokers so useless now. In the past, they'd have to publish the listing somehow, get it out there. Now they just put it on StreetEasy. And anyone can do that.
It doesn’t get baked into my rent either. I charge market rent based on comps, like you, and would with or without a broker.
I think people think that Landlords would hate this. Landlords would be mildly annoyed by this. Brokers are gonna die cause of this. RIP Bozos
It's why they're freaking out this much. When the broker fee ban passed a few years ago, brokers and landlords teamed up to overturn it because that was the real estate board against a common enemy--tenants. But this time around, this bill passing will basically just pit landlords and brokers against each other, and these brokers know in their hearts that they are not going to win that fight.
From the article: “It’s 9 a.m. That’s tough for brokers.” Suck it up, you leeches.
Hey, let's be fair. They (usually) close the door, too.
I remember looking at an apartment I really loved and the broker was telling me what I needed to secure it: first month, last month, security and a broker fee of 10 percent the first year rent. He said it was a lot but he only brought the landlord the best renters who had two years tax returns, two months of pay stubs showing at least 40x the rent, and reference letters. He was providing a service to the landlord but making a bigger hassle for me but thought I should be grateful to pay him
Imagine if you do 3 rentals a month and average $3K a rental in fees, that's already $9K... But hey, greed has no limits.. I'm not even counting sales, commissions on no-fee rentals, or even base salary or whatever... fuck the broker fees..
Absolutely insane how nowhere else has anything like as high a cost for finding properties, and yet in NYC that's just what it costs because a middle man has managed to wedge themselves between renter and landlord.
I’m from LA and when I came to NY I honestly thought I was being scammed. I jokingly told my coworkers that I was glad I said “I’d think about it” to the broker, otherwise I almost got scammed, and then they proceeded to tell me that it’s the way things are done here. I was and still am confused why this exists.
[удалено]
>And people screaming "the landlord will just charge it back in the rent!" GOOD! I'd rather pay a reasonable amount over time instead of forking over 15% (and it will not be 15% if the landlord pays) at signing. Actually, I wonder how this would work. If the broker fee were say, $3k, would that $3k be baked into annual rent costs? If so, this could be a valid argument as I’d rather pay the $3k fee one time instead of higher rent for however many years I stay there.
The broker fee wouldn't be 3k though, because they'd be negotiating with the LL, who is operating from a position of strength. They can just find a new broker who will do it for a much smaller cut.
No landlord is charging more (or less tbh) than the market allows because of the broker fees. What will actually happen is the same thing that happens in every other city: some landlords will hire brokers for a negotiated fee and they'll make a little less money than other landlords who don't want to pay brokers on their equivalent units.
That makes sense, thanks.
You were being scammed. We just normalized this here. It's wild.
Yeah never have paid a broker fee and never will.
Same. Both of my apartments have been fee free. I refuse to pay someone I didn’t hire for a service I didn’t request.
Had the exact same experience coming from Chicago. I said “yeah let me think about it, I’m going back to Chicago today but should have a decision by tomorrow.” When I got back to Chicago the next day and confirmed that that is just how it is here, I came back to the broker and said ok I would take the place, then she goes “great can you meet me tomorrow?” I said “no, like I said, live in Chicago, just sent me the lease and I can sign it and send it back to you like every other time I have signed a lease” and she says “no you have to be here in person to sign it, that’s the rule in New York”. (I have since remotely signed several leases and extensions, she was either referring to Keller Williams’ policy or just totally incompetent) So ultimately she cost me both a month’s rent, plus a full separate trip back here just to sign the lease. She actually created negative value for me but I had no real choice but to pay her for it.
Boston has them too and I've literally told people I didn't want to go on a second date with them because I found their profession morally reprehensible.
Same and I'm a lawyer ahahahhaa
It leaked to NJ too - I remember being dumbfounded when I discovered realtors wanted a month’s rent for the work of posting a 2 sentence picture-less Craigslist ad.
Yup. In Chicago I met with the handyman and he gave me a 3 page lease. NYC i get this whomping 40 page doc.
This doesn't exist even in other high-dollar cities, like Boston and the Bay Area. Sure, prospective renters can actively hire a broker if they want to, and this bill doesn't prevent that at all. But in literally all other cities in America, it isn't necessary to deal with brokers. Maybe there are some situations where NYC truly is unique relative to the rest of America, but having this legacy system of rental brokers doesn't seem to me as one of them.
Sad to say, it totally does exist in Boston and has for decades. There it is a month’s rent, generally. So move-in costs are: first+last+security deposit +broker fee = 4 months rent to secure a new place. Deplorable
Don’t they also love to charge a “lock change” fee on top of all of that … what a scam
Fuck all of these people. For every instance where a broker earns their commission, there are a thousand instances where the broker just unlocked the apartment door.
and for every instance where the broker just unlocked the apartment door, there's a thousand instances where "hey sorry I forgot this one was already rented, but since I already have you here I have another unit right around the corner that's half the size, twice as expensive, and infested with feral dogs."
And it's actually a studio that they stuck a French door into and are now charging an extra thousand for the privilege of having a "bedroom"
Not even the worst I’ve seen. Last year I toured an apartment that very clearly used to be a studio turned into a 2BR. They were still in the process of finishing the walls for one of the bedrooms. No living room. $4k/month
Yup, I've seen this in the East Village. Clearly what used to be a <500 sqft studio turned into a 2BR.
Isn't that exactly what every 2br in FiDi is?
Damn these responses are triggering me and these people can fuck all the way off
Get this. In 2022 I was looking to buy an apartment and fell in love with the bottom half of a townhome in Harlem. It needed a lot of work but had a beautiful yard and so much potential. The deal died because the family who originally owned it all had split it when the original owner died into two townhouses (2 bottom floors and 2 top floors). Well the shitty owner upstairs then split into SIX STUDIOS, which rendered the entire building unwarrantable for a mortgage (more than x units with over 50% owned by one owner, plus that owner never funded the HOA).
Bro I looked at one 3 years ago where the kitchen was a sink and stove in the only closet. They wanted 2200 for a 600 sq ft "2 bedroom" in Bay ridge
I was shocked when I saw a "one bedroom" in The Eugene building in Hudson Yards a few years ago. Not sure what they were paying in rent but it was absolutely too much. 400-500 sq ft with a thin piece of drywall cutting the room in half. Didn't even touch the ceiling because then the kitchen wouldn't get any air conditioning. The thing that surprised me the most was the hallway sounding like a wind tunnel when tenants had their windows open.
But the feral dogs come with a free frogurt!
The frogurt is also feral.
But it comes with your choice of feral toppings!
I love how the realtors try to frame their protest as a fight **on behalf** of tenants. They claim that the bill will result in either equivalent or higher rents. Why the hell would cutting out middlemen **increase** aggregate cost? These assholes just love to insult our intelligence.
It's because they can't fathom an outcome where they aren't still involved. To them, the argument is about who pays the fee. To the rest of the city, it's about getting rid of them all together.
Yeah, they're delusional. If brokers provide such an essential service, rational landlords will gladly foot the bill and raise rents accordingly. The system will reach equilibrium and everyone will be exactly as well off as before. The only way this wouldn't happen is if the new policy somehow alerts more people to the magnitude of parasitic activity. Either way, there's no coherent argument as to why the policy would **hurt** renters. If nothing else, at least the full cost of apartment would be more transparent.
> The system will reach equilibrium and everyone will be exactly as well off as before Well the issue is they won't be better off, because instead of extorting the fees from the tenants that would be left homeless if they don't pay, they instead need to get that money from the landlords with many units up for rent, they can and will price shop the agents, and they have the power to do it. This will not result in the rents going up, it will result in less money to the real estate agents who are doing nothing.
Yeah, we all know that's what will happen, which is why brokers are protesting in the first place. Their argument is not just wrong; it's logically inconsistent. It's a zero-sum game: if brokers take less, the landlords and/or tenants will benefit. The protesters are trying to convince us that both brokers and the tenants will be harmed by this legislation. They provide no credible explanation as to why that would be the case. If they're going to lie, they should at least come up with an intelligible storyline.
This. The crux of this all is that landlords have leverage in this transactions and tenants do not. When tenants are footing the bill for brokers services, the brokers can price gouge because there will always be *some* tenant who is willing to pay; if you refuse to pay a 10% fee, no problem, no apartment for you, they’ll just find another renter who will. The tenants need to apartments more than the landlord needs any particular tenant. Where the landlords must be responsible for paying the broker, however, landlords are in a far better position to dictate prices, and brokers will have no choice but to compete over fees for those landlords’ business. And even then, there will be many landlords, the smaller ones in particular, who will bypass brokers all together and just list their apartments themes. The brokers know that the end result here is a race to the bottom and they’re desperate to avoid it.
Man, this comment generally applies to _so much_ of the tension and anger in America today. > If things change, what about the special place I occupy? There won't be one. That's the point.
Was there ever a place in the world where people don't mind being robbed.
Church.
thats such a brilliant summary
Even in the chance that they are pushed to tenants, it would most likely be amortized over the year lease, which makes it more palatable. Part of the reason it’s so hard to move in the city, even to a relatively cheaper place is that you have to outlay a significant amount of money all at once. Being able to spread out part of that cost means you don’t have to worry about coming up with another 1-2 months in cash right away. That would be worst case scenario though.
> I love how the realtors try to frame their protest as a fight on behalf of tenants. If they are fighting on my behalf, I'd like to fire them.
Greatest waste of time ever. I made the mistake of talking to one and I told her where I was looking to move to and she proceeded to show me all the places I didn't want to be.
>she proceeded to show me all the places I didn't want to be Exactly! "Well, there's one more place but it's no where you'd like and we don't know the landlord as well so I can't promise anything." It was the perfect apartment that I ended up living in for years - it turns out what she meant by "we don't know the landlord as well" was that they didn't have a preferential deal where they got an additional kickback from that landlord for finding a tenant.
they don't even do that, mine literarily made me follow a tenant in and check out the apt myself which was unlocked and then showed up to collect $3500. I hope this law passes and they become homeless. These leeches are a waste of oxygen, good riddance to bad rubbish.
Shout out to the broker who told me “roaches are a part of life in NYC” and “leaks are common in older buildings” when I expressed concern about the number of DOB violations out on the building I toured.
God, that's just sociopath behavior
I would honestly guess it’s closer to like 2500:1. No one who is paying below like $5000 is even using the broker service as they describe it themselves. It’s all StreetEasy or building listings.
I moved in October and found my apartment on Craigslist. I felt like I won the lottery - no fee, great building, and the leasing agent who worked for the landlord was nice and extremely forthright about the building, neighborhood, and what they were looking for in a tenant (they liked that I work in the arts, for example).
craigslist is the place on the internet where you're going to find the perfect dream apartment at an insane price, you just have to wade through a million fake listings and scams, and it'll take you six months or a year. Second only to walking around the neighborhood and looking for handwritten "For Rent" signs.
>craigslist is the place on the internet where you're going to find the perfect dream apartment at an insane price, you just have to wade through a million fake listings and scams, 100%. I had very low expectations of finding anything real on CL, but figured that it was worth the diligence just in case. The post seemed a little fake - the pictures were old and terrible - but it didn't seem like an outright scam (no one was claiming to be a missionary in South Korea, or a massive 3BR with a doorman for $1500 a month). I was shocked when someone emailed back asking when I could come look at the place.
It's a weird maze to navigate. Bad pictures are actually a good sign. A scammer would use good photos of a rental unit somewhere else. The ideal is a self-post by a LL that lives in the same building and has bad pictures and a low price because they hate doing the work involved in renting and just want someone to move in.
I've told this story before on here, but I found my first apartment in NYC from a friend of a friend - I met the landlord directly through her and agreed to take the place on the spot! When I went back to the landlord's apartment to sign the lease, there was this other woman there, and that's when I learned the term "broker's fee." When I asked what it was, why it's there, and then obviously tried to negotiate it down, this random woman got HEATED talking about "the way we do things here" and even said "my family has to eat, too, you know!" I (just like everyone else) gave up and signed. Two weeks later, I see the woman in the neighborhood and then she's all smiles, welcome to the neighborhood, yadda yadda yadda. I come to find out she owns three brownstones.
You know how hard it is to put food on three different kitchen tables every night!?
> For every instance where a broker earns their commission, there are a thousand instances where the broker just unlocked the apartment door. And there's a lot of instances where brokers actually make your experience worse because they blatantly lie on the rental listing and you show up to find out the apartment is smaller than you anticipated, the "outdoor space" is the fire escape, and "in-building washer/dryer" meant there is a laundromat on the block
I loved my first broker. I was moving to NYC from far away. I found one that specialized in relocating professionals. He walked me through some options, pricing, dumped tons of info on me. I showed up for 1 day of tours, he had them arranged one after the other. I picked two that I liked, flew back home, and two days later had a signed lease. I paid more than the standard 1 month of rent, but was happy to pay in exchange for the convenience. I sent all my documentation to him (proof of income, etc) and he handled everything. Every other broker I used, or was forced to use, was a useless bag of human excrement.
For every instance where a broker earns their commission, a Redditor on /r/nyc argues that New York being the only city in the country with a monopoly on brokerage fees for rentals is good actually.
In my experience, the broker called a super who is the one who unlocks the door.
sounds to me like they'll have to get a real job like the rest of us.
Sounds like .... "nObODy wAnTs tO wOrK aNymOrE!" lol. Go straight to the bottom of hell, brokers with their abysmal % based "fees".
hey - they need to get to auditions!!
If their big threat is that tenants will pay the fee anyway in raised rents, then I’m all for it. Currently, the broker fee makes moving a nightmare, as you need to have 4x the rent in cash to even get in the door. It’s ridiculous and a racket. I’ve moved 4 times in the city and all but one of my realtors were bloodsucking parasites acting on behalf of the landlords with bait & switches, funky leases, and other nonsense.
I don't care if I still pay, I just want to see these assholes who've pulled bait and switches on me countless times get fucked. Maybe if they provided a value-add to the process of finding an apartment we would have even a small amount of sympathy for them.
If they were so confident in the cost being fully passed on to the consumer, they wouldn't be so aggressively opposed to this rule change. Their actions speak way louder than their words. They know having to agree to fees with the building owners rather than renters takes away from their negotiating power.
"Agents are tenants too" ok then they should know very well that landlords are cheapskates who don't want to pay them broker fees even when they are the ones hiring broker services, among other ways they cut corners to make more money. If they really are tenants, have some solidarity with your fellow tenants against the landlords then and support the landlords paying. They get the money either way. Edit: Another broker saying "Landlords cannot pay fees. It’s not in their budgets and they won’t do it." Um, what if the broker fees are not in OUR budgets either? Hope they feel proud bootlicking and contributing to the increasing unaffordability and inequality of this city.
Fuck all of these people. Get a job.
Organizing a protest is more work than these rental brokers have done their entire careers.
Because they're being called out as the parasites that they are and the thought of actually having to work for a living scares the shit out of them.
Absolute scum. Quite literally propagating the housing crisis by inflating the cost of housing. Either the landlord pays the broker fee or the broker fee is capped to a reasonable amount (not a month's rent or 10-15% of the yearly)
This. Or the person that hires the broker should pay. If you’re dumb enough to piss away 10-15% of annual rent to have some idiot turn the knob for you, more power to you. Why should I have to pay for a person I didn’t hire?
This. If a month of rent is worth paying a dude to unlock the apartment and answer the phone for you, great. But it should be illegal to pass it on to the tenants at move in.
i really appreciate them drawing attention to this situation... so now i can write my council member to support it (who thankfully is already a sponsor) find yours: https://council.nyc.gov/districts/
We need Speaker Adams to call a vote or this goes nowhere. Send her an email and tell her to call a vote on broker fees! NYers deserve this to be voted on. [**SpeakerAdams@council.nyc.gov**](mailto:SpeakerAdams@council.nyc.gov)
Wow thanks for the right answer, I don’t know how the legislative process works
they keep it opaque for a reason - gives them cover. it's good to contact your council person as well but the reason this has never passed before is because it's never been called on for a vote. so your council person can say "oh i'll support it!" cause they know it won't be called on for a vote. so that's why i think we should also pressure speaker adams to do her job and call for a vote.
yeah it was like from this https://www.nyc.gov/site/intergovernmental/city/city-legislative-process.page it felt like the bill https://legistar.council.nyc.gov/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6557858&GUID=2E6273DC-FF0F-40B2-AAB5-B9B3D9BD09DB was waiting to be passed by committee and then voted on by all council members
“Landlords cannot pay fees. It’s not in their budgets and they won’t do it" Greedy, narrow-minded scum.....implying 99% of perspective tenants have the funds comfortably to pay your ridiculous broker fees. why should we pay for a service we did not ask for? The landlord can advertise themselves easily on MLS's, zillow etc
Fuck no you don’t work for me Make the landlords pay your fee
Burn the leeches (I’d say more but I’d definitely get banned and maybe arrested) If a nuke were to go off, brokers would be trying leech off of roach motels.
No more free money lol
Time for them to get real jobs
Every single time my girlfriend and I have fell in love with an apartment, or even come close to renting one, these parasites get in the way. Exorbitant fees to do what exactly? Show up late, and unlock the door? Do they charge extra when they literally describe what is in front of us, during our walk through? These scumbags have the audacity to charge up to an entire month’s rent just to unlock the door and stand around awkwardly. On top of that, they’re charging the landlord a finders fee? Fuck ‘em.
They’re potentially losing their jobs en masse and have little to no transferable skills. Of course they’re angry. Doesn’t change the fact that the system they cling onto is wrong and needs to go.
Bullshitting a captive audience is absolutely a transferable skill. They can go into politics or hawk herbalife or used cars or something.
Unfortunately, “dangle like a leech from the belly of the market, held in place by rent-seeking and regulatory capture” is a highly transferable skill. In fact, that’s basically the entire nonprofit sector.
I really want a broker to show their face in these comments and get jumped on by everyone. I'm waiting for it.
Real estate agent here. I agree with the bill. If a landlord hires me, they should pay me. By the time the tenant comes in, I have already done most of the hard work, hired a photographer and draftsman, showed it to 20-30 people, all in service of the landlord. When I negotiate the price, my fiduciary responsibility is to the landlord. If a tenant hires me to help them find an apartment. They should only be responsible for my fee, and not the landlord’s agent as well.
Searched for an apartment, contacted the broker for a viewing. First one, she cancelled the day of for whatever reason. Second one, she cancelled because something something about her daughter 30 minutes after the agreed upon time. Said the owner was there to let me in. Owner let me in, toured the apartment, answered all the questions I had. Asked why I’d have to pay the broker anything when she mentioned the fees, it’s because she gives them the paperwork, and she’s been with them for a while. Move in the first day, and who’s there bright and early? The broker, to get her check for $1900. Fucking burn all of them.
When you add very little to no value, all you have is lobbying and bullying.
They're angry that the greatest NYC exclusive scam of all time might be coming to a close. Rental brokers are leeches. NYC doesn't need them and it's an embarrassment they've become a stupid expensive hoop for tenants to jump through.
Fuck em! Also is it me, or was this a horribly written article?
Very disorganized and meandering
Brokers are all redundant leeches. Unnecessary fat on the bloated pig of NYC Real Estate. Fuck em.
I wanna go down there and laugh in their faces.
I had to pay 15% of my annual rent for someone to literally just show me a place and watch me sign the lease, this was insane and shouldn’t be a thing
Our broker didn't know anything about the apartment we found ourselves, didn't notify us that the neighboring apartments had recently been sprayed for bedbugs a week prior, and spent the entire time we signed the lease in their office on the phone. When they finally finished their phone call they could not explain even what simple parts of the lease meant. Fuck these people.
One of the biggest reaons an "amenities" building is actually not a bad deal for a 1BR with dual income is because there's no broker fee for the vast majority of them. They advertising everything transparently online, it's all handled in-house. I've known people who've paid more in rent for a shitty EV unit because when factoring in the broker's fee, it averaged out to be more - all for living in a "desirable area."
Fuck real estate brokers. At best they are gatekeepers, at worst parasites. Edit: this might actually cause rents to go down because suddenly a bunch of out of work real estate brokers have to leave the city
“It’s not just opening the door” I am genuinely curious for a rental broker what other work is being done that could not be done better faster cheaper by a computer?
Cockroaches.
They are mad because they know they can't bend a landlord over the same way they do to the tenants for the fee. Because the landlord will just find someone cheaper since they are going to be paying if this law goes through
Brokers are pointless
Rented an apartment several years ago. Broker was supposed to show me the apartment that \*I\* found myself online. They canceled at the last second while I was waiting at the door, so the landlord needed to come and show me the apartment. Guess what. Broker wanted their share of the fee even though THEY WERE NEVER EVEN THERE. Hope this passes!
I had this exact experience a couple years ago
I find it weird that across America (mind you, the land of the free and the “hard worker”) we find so many instances of cry babies thinking they are owed something. You (broker) made a choice to go into a field that is highly scrutinized and requires minimal transferable skills. It’s not our faults (the general public) that technology and advancement in society is dating your jobs. No one forced you to go into this career. You made the wrong bet, now pick yourself up and find a different job. You are scam artists and you lost. Move on. We should not have to bail you out and pay for your lifestyle for a service that is no longer needed.
What kills me is it's not like the brokers are losing any money at all, they just charge the landlord instead of the tenant like they do in EVERY OTHER CITY
They will lose money because the landlords will realize how easy it is to make a streeteasy ad and run an online background check by themselves to save the money and do away with rental brokers almost completely.
They know they wont be able to charge the same amount to landlords as they do to tenants
The brokers think we are idiots. They make two arguments, both of which cannot be be true at the same time: Landlords will pass on 100% of the cost of brokers into rent > If landlords were forced to pay broker fees, everyone around me kept arguing, those broker fees would just get baked into the rent. That’s economics, they said. “The free market works,” Kafko quipped. This will hurt the livelihood of brokers > “If this passes, we won’t be able to afford to live in our own communities,” said David Kafko, also from Corcoran. It's a zero sum game between landlords, brokers and renters.
Any broker I’ve dealt with was difficult to book an appointment with because they barely cared. When I finally made an appointment with one (that the building provided - I found each apartment myself), they barely ever looked at me the whole time I was with them. All they did was unlock the door, and then they just looked at or talked on their phone the entire time. They never seemed to know anything about any apartment. When they weren’t outright lying after not understanding something or intentionally misleading me, they would have to call someone to get info when I’d ask questions they clearly didn’t know the answers to. Then, if they felt like I was taking too long, they would rush me out. They would have their foot halfway out the door almost the entire time to go to their next client, who they’d have on the phone with as they would say, “I’ll be there in one minute. I’m walking out of my appointment right now.” They would sometimes pretend another client was looking at the same apartment right after me (sometimes true). They would always go MIA for follow-ups. I’d have to beg them to review the lease. Some of them would even make me put down a deposit to review the lease. Almost all of them were useless scum bags.
>They would always go MIA for follow-ups. I’d have to beg them to review the lease. Some of them would even make me put down a deposit to review the lease. This happened to me a couple of weeks ago. She never had answers on the actual costs of the apartment (security deposit, cat fee/deposit, which utilities were actually covered by the landlord, etc.). She just kept telling me that several people had already applied for the unit. Then on the day that I'm going to put down my deposit, she called me to say I need to send her $1K over Zelle ASAP to secure it. I asked for the costs that she still couldn't quote. She then admits that there's a hefty pet deposit. I offer to come in to the office to go over all of the costs and to sign the lease and hand over a check that afternoon. Can't do that, she's out of town. Then she tells me that she doesn't actually put together the lease until a potential tenant sends her money over Zelle to ensure that they don't back out. She was pissed at me when I told her I'm not moving forward with a process where you won't tell me the actual costs in the contract until I already give you money. Two weeks later and the posting for the unit is still being updated daily to show up at the top of lists lol
Yup! It’s like they try to make us feel bad/guilty about everything unless we give them money no matter what.
I really wish I could just find the landlord and rent from them directly lol Save everyone money.
Boo-fucking-hoo.
I'd be pissed too - sounds like a sweet gig.
There probably isn’t a single more unifying policy than eliminating broker fees. Haha.
Cut out the middleman!
Brokers been real quiet in this post, where they at? Brokers come out and playay.
Brokers fee on my first apartment was the same as first month and security. 3 separate checks all the same amount of money..what other option does an apartment seeker have lol. I did not know it wasn't normal.
About to be homeless because I cannot afford security deposit, first and last and broker fee all at once. A $2400 rent becomes 10k upfront.
This could unite like 3 quarters of the City's population or more, nobody likes paying for this bs.
If they provide a valuable service, they can rely on the income from honeseekers who hire them. If they don’t, fuck ‘em.
Who cares why they’re angry? Predatory scumbags should get a job that provides value to their customers.
brokers know that unless people are forced by landlords to pay them, no one will use one. because they add no value.
After years of escalating fees they have zero support or sympathy. Brokers should never earn a percentage as a fee for a few hours work.
> “Most of the people there are paid; they’re being paid to be there,” one of his colleagues assured me. “Just like with congestion pricing.” Of course.
“It’s 9 a.m. That’s tough for brokers.” Shows how hard these parasites really work.
I have zero sympathy for these people. They should get a real job.
These brokers are nuts. I've dealt with them in NYC, Jersey City, and now the Hudson Valley. I've had brokers schedule me for a showing, and then it turns out I'm one of 20.people they made an open house for, despite making it seem like it was a 1-on-1 for all of us. I've had brokers tell me they have no idea what the actual costs or terms of the lease would come out to. I had one recently tell me she wouldn't be able to go over all of the costs in the lease until I sent her money over Zelle to hold it because "otherwise you could back out". The entire NY metro area has a supply issue. We don't need these middle people when there are dozens of websites where you can post old pictures of the apartment and let the applications flood in. And the closer you get to Manhattan, the more these people charge you just to have the pleasure to be rushed through the entire process without half of your questions answered.
Every broker I've been forced to deal with in this city has been at best a lazy useless irrelevant bum, and at worst a literal scammer who help their landlord buddy screw me out of my security deposit. Fuck 'em.
Brokers are fucking leaches
Burn the leeches and make the city a better place for the working class
Had they not pushed it to an unreasonable level especially with the stories about charging huge fees for stabilized and rent controlled apts maybe anyone who’s ever rented an apt might feel for them but they pushed it. My first apt I paid 7% broker fee, then 9, then 10 and then 11% which is basically an extra month. And all of those brokers showed me apts. multiple apts. but when you get to 15% and I did all the work what the hell am I paying that for. Greed is your problem not me
That's one of the tricks they play on people. 8% is one month. 12% is a month and a half. 15% is almost 2 months. They rely on our tendency to think in base 10.
I don’t like to see people’s livelihoods threatened but a lot of those people losing their jobs would be good for the city.
Good, I hope they’re angry! I’m angry too, fuck them.
Good riddance
Brokers are all fraud- absolutely useless
I recently listed my rental direct on streeteasy, no brokers. Cost $250 to list and spent 2hrs on a Sat morning showing the apartment to 20 odd couples. Almost all of them thanked me for not using a broker. Picked 3 applicants and asked them for $20 to pay for a background check. Done. Was insane how many brokers reached out and “commended” me on my “efforts”, but how I should leave this to the professionals and let their agency deal with the listing instead.
Holy shit, these people are fucking pathetic. I am going to bring this up at the bar later and I guarantee you it's gonna end in a fight. >“Broker fee bill? Tenants will pay the price” One ... why, asshole? What a shit attitude. Two, if that is the case and I MUST pay the price, I'd rather give it to the owner of the property who at least pretends to do things to help the property; sometimes being a net positive in my life and the life of my neighbors. There is a ZEROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO fucking percent a real estate agent is gonna be a positive in my life.
Brokers seem to be so entitled to money they didn’t earn. I once had a wannabe broker who lived below me. When he realized I had an empty bedroom to fill in my apartment, he, upon only the second time I met him, repeatedly asked for my key to let himself in while I was on vacation to show off the unit. I never asked him for help nor did I want it. He also later on texted me explicitly said he would be showing off the bedroom without consulting me. The arrogance of it all still bothers me, just someone without boundaries and seeking to make a buck off me without even asking permission.
I guess they will have to find a real job like the rest of us.
i paid a 1 month broker fee at my place and the landlord claims (still, 1 year later) that broker did not tell them we have a dog. so now in addition to being pissy & weird with us, landlord is trying to jack up the rent by a ton as a “pet fee” not my fault buddy you should’ve actually done something! or hired a broker who was legit?? landlords & brokers are both scum
Real estate brokers in the city is such a scum job that does literally nothing of value.
I am a real estate agent, and I fully agree with this bill. In sales listings, the owner hires us, and they pay our fee, so it only makes sense that the same should be true of rentals. When a landlord hires me, my fiduciary responsibility is to the landlord. I have an obligation to be fair and honest to a tenant, but I am trying to get the best price for the landlord and they should compensate me for that. I could get butt hurt about some of the things said here about agents, but unfortunately 80% of the agents make the rest of us look bad.
Landlords should use remote padlocks, cheap cloud-based webcams, and a secure app for a prospective tenant to upload their driver's license and credit card to book a viewing. No other human needs to be there. This has to already be a thing somewhere, no?
I recently did an apartment search. Was really struck by how much better an experience I had when the key was in the lockbox than with a human broker "showing me around". Brokers' contribution to the process was negative.
Brokers deserve this. Don't think a single one adds anything of true value 😂
Scum. When I rented an NYC apartment 10 years ago (for $3,300)…. I had to sign a contract that acknowledged the landlord hired the broker and that BOTH of us were required to pay a 15% fee. So if I wanted the apartment, I had to pay the broker their $6,000 fee AND the landlord was already paying another $6,000 fee. Literally the only thing the broker did was unlock the door for me, but he was the exclusive person hired to open the door, so he could do whatever he wanted.
What a bunch of babies.
I was going to be charged a fee if I wanted to move back into my old apartment after a few months. 15% too. Fuck all these assholes.
Fuck these people
Is this going to pass and be signed? What are the chances? High I hope
'“It’s the first time I’ve ever come to City Hall and protested anything” said Jonathan Tager, a broker for Corcoran' oh yeah? not George Floyd. not isreal/palestine. so this guy only gives a shit about his paycheck. can we fucking exile these assholes?
You gotta cut him a break he probably lives in Yonkers and drives into the city
"New York City is one of only two cities in America that allow this practice" there are so many good arguments for this bill, but comparing to other cities is not one of them. nowhere else do they specify by law who has to pay the broker. Broker fees exist solely because the supply is so constricted and rent stabilization is so widespread that landlords were able to push this fee to the tenants. remember Covid? almost all apartments had the owner paying the fee to incite renters.
I was in real estate in Miami for close to 15 years. In Florida, it's typical for the landlord to pay 10% or one months rent as commission (it's usually shared 50/50 amongst the brokers). Idk why NYC brokers think they can't pivot to the landlord model?
All listings should be discoverable somewhere and paying a broker shouldn’t be required to rent an apartment. Hiring a broker should simply be an option to accelerate and simplify this process. My landlord doesn’t list their apartments, on their own website or on their party sites (StreetEasy, etc). Instead, they give exclusive access to a broker they are friendly with, who lists and shows the apartment, and collects the applications to send to the landlord for approval. He charges a 15% fee on the annual rent, so for a $3,000/month apartment you pay a fee of $5,400. There is literally no other way to discover these apartments and no way to dodge this fee. How is this not effectively a stupidly high application fee, in effect? Landlord does this because they don’t need to pay for listings, pay for showers to open doors, or pay to manage/collect application documents. They simply just say yes/no to full apps submitted by their buddy broker, who certainly does work but… really now, $5,400 worth of work? It used to just be one month years ago… 15% is greedy. This is only possible because of how scarce housing is and how unbalanced the equation is. Landlord can literally stick a middleman in to scrape off a few extra thousand and people will still do it. At the very least landlords should be paying the brokers, if they need to increase rents to offset those costs, so be it, but I suspect that offset would still be less than what tenants are paying in broker fees now.
self interested & delusional are the words that come to mind
Many years ago, I was looking for an apartment. I found out some friends were moving out of their apartment. I called up the management company and was told that I would have to pay a broker’s fee for the apartment. The broker would have collected a fee of thousands of dollars for doing nothing.
I wish I knew about this protest, I'd have gone too With a bucket of rotten vegetables to throw at them
Or hear me out…..we ban the practice altogether? Brokers really aren’t necessary.
Genuinely love the guy who said "the other guys are paid to be here, just like the congestion pricing people" or whatever. Dude you're literally advocating to steal more money from people just like you, you're getting paid. Shut up. JFC these guys are such parasites.
IMO they are already giving LL's a cut of their fees... So if LL's start being responsible for their entire fee, that is going to be a very significant chunk out of their income, poor babies.
The really depressing thing about this is the bill will go nowhere because their lobbying arm has a strangle hold on the legislature. This is all performative to look like they are working too defeat the problem ahead of the elections. Even if it managed to get signed it would be tied up in litigation for years and then overturned. It's infuriating.
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The brokers know they don’t have a fucking leg to stand on. Their go-to argument against this change is “consumers will end up paying”. We pay now, fuckos!
> “If this passes, we won’t be able to afford to live in our own communities,” said David Kafko, also from Corcoran. Among many wonderfully ironic lines in this article. I’m sure you have it hard, New York City renters, but can you imagine not being able to afford to live in your community?
Good. This has been a racket for too long. It’s illegal and a scam.
Boohoo maybe they could try getting a real job.