Good Riddance to New York City's Tenant-Paid Broker's Fee

Yahoo

05-06-2025

With the FARE Act set to shift the costly burden from renters to landlords, I've been reflecting on what the system actually offered me and other New Yorkers.
In 2022, when I made the decision to move to New York City from New Haven, Connecticut, I was told that finding a place to rent for the first time would be a shock to the system. But after months of research—and an unholy amount of time scrolling Zillow, StreetEasy, Apartments.com, and Craigslist—I finally found a listing for the perfect apartment. It was on the Upper West Side, within walking distance of my new job. It was a "one-bedroom flex," meaning my wife and I could set up a work-from-home space to accommodate our hybrid schedules. And it was beautiful: tucked atop a prewar, south-facing townhouse—with high ceilings, exposed brick, an ostensibly working fireplace, and a pretty incredible semiprivate rooftop terrace featuring views of 18 water tanks (I counted) that felt straight out of an Edward Hopper painting.
The only problem was that the unit—listed at $3,850 per month—was nearly double what I had ever paid for an apartment before. Also, I hadn't fully internalized that New York is one of only two major U.S. cities where tenants are expected to pay a fee to brokers who are hired by landlords to show and fill their rental properties, which usually cost one month's rent or 15 percent of the annual rent, according to The City. (Though, because there is no legal cap on how much brokers can charge, there have been reports of brokers charging tenants even more exorbitant fees for highly competitive rent-controlled or rent-stabilized apartments.) The broker's fee for my apartment was 11 percent of the annual rent ($4,300), on top of the first month's rent and the matching security deposit.
Now, the Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act—a landmark bill that shifts the burden of the broker's fee away from renters and onto the landlords who hire them, which Dwell contributor Anjulie Rao previously reported "could upend a hurdle in the city's notoriously difficult apartment hunting process"—is set to go into effect on June 11 (while the city's real estate lobby fights to block the law in the background). The FARE Act, introduced by Councilmember Chi Ossé of the 36th District and passed by City Council in November 2024, comes after years of thwarted attempts to reform the city's broker's fee system. So naturally, I've been reflecting on what I received in exchange for my compulsory broker's fee—and curious about the experiences of other New York renters.
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I certainly didn't want to dip into emergency savings, but I suppose I wanted my perfect New York apartment more. So I called the number on the listing, thus commencing the service I received in exchange for $4,300. This—in order of least to most frustrating—is more or less what I got:
No actual face time with the broker, who outsourced the showing to a colleague, which was fine (considering our later interactions), but it was still a bit jarring to be asked to Venmo a faceless-someone thousands of dollars.
A real scolding when, on a weekday afternoon, I hadn't received the application I was promised and accordingly called the broker, who was shopping at Home Depot with his wife and asked why I was disturbing him.
Typos everywhere, which is absolutely forgivable when it's an extra letter in a date ("May 1stt") but much less so when it suggests that the rent is $800 per month lower than advertised.
Incorrect information on the official lease—including the wrong expiration date, a clause that the building did not allow pets (which it did), and a disclaimer that our fireplace was strictly decorative (which it wasn't).
It's tempting to chalk my experience up to one-time bad service. But the more I reflect, the more I think that my experience is a product of a few layered problems that, taken together, amount to a systemic failure for New York renters. According to a recent New York Times story, StreetEasy reported that as of March 2o25, roughly 57.5 percent of rentals on its platform did not require tenants to pay a broker's fee. This means that avoiding paying a broker's fee could cut a New York City renter's housing options almost half in an already fiercely competitive rental market.
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When I told my coworker I was seeking the perspectives of folks who've had notable experiences with brokers, he asked me if I had tried throwing a rock. In New York, they're everywhere. Indeed, it didn't take much looking to learn that another renter on the Upper West Side, Fabrice Houdart, a human rights advocate, had a similarly frustrating encounter with not just any broker, but the very same one who listed my unit.
After not hearing back from the broker about a rental application for nearly a week, Houdart CC'ed the broker's manager, which seemed to anger the broker so much that he withdrew the offer against Houdart's wishes. The urgency was high for Houdart, a single father seeking housing near the school his twins were set to attend. Ultimately, after filing a complaint with the New York Department of State, Houdart cut his losses and secured a different apartment the following week (with a 12 percent broker's fee). But the experience left him with a sour taste. "I had this very awful experience because I had zero power. I feel the broker and the landlord have all the power," Houdart says. " [The] goal was to make as much money as possible. And I was only a number."
For other New Yorkers, forced broker's fees have acted as a barrier to renting altogether.
Alex Sramek, a technical writer, first moved to New York in 2013, and was initially excited when he found an "unreasonably cheap" three-month sublet within a three-bedroom unit in Washington Heights. Sramek moved in and immediately hit it off with his new roommates. But three months later—when the sublease period was ending and the group identified another nearby apartment to move into together—they were told they would have to come up with about a 15 percent broker's fee, which they couldn't afford. "We ended up just splitting ways," Sramek says. "We each just sublet in different apartments and we lost touch and it was kind of the end of that."
After years of bouncing around from sublease to sublease, Sramek eventually landed his own lease on a one-bedroom apartment. The catch? It was only possible for him after the New York Department of State issued guidance to pause forced broker's fees during the pandemic in 2020—guidance that the New York State Supreme Court overturned in 2021 after the Real Estate Board of New York sued.
Ever since that brief reprieve, some New Yorkers have been waiting for a bill like the FARE Act to eliminate forced broker's fees once again. Tim Samuel, a software engineer in Astoria, who has paid two broker's fees in New York and describes them as "nonsensical," was excited enough about the legislation that he and some friends attended the City Council hearing at which the bill passed in November. "We were in the background, just supporting and being there…forty-two members out of the fifty-one voted yes." That tally was enough to establish a veto-proof supermajority, meaning supporters of the bill could feel optimistic about its becoming law.
That optimism extends to the FARE Act's sponsor, Chi Ossé, who developed the bill after several poor encounters with brokers during his own apartment search in Crown Heights. Ossé kept asking himself the same question: "Do you really want one month's rent for this apartment and you're not even showing up and giving a guy a tour?"
When I recently spoke with Ossé, he made a point to say that he isn't "anti-broker." In fact, he ended up hiring a broker himself and had a perfectly positive experience. But he is "anti-things not being fair" and takes issue with the fact that the fees are forced on tenants who never hired brokers in the first place.
When I asked Ossé what greater fairness might look like as the law goes into effect, he emphasized what renters will gain: "This just makes mobilization around housing as a tenant in New York City a lot more affordable…and [it] gives tenants more bargaining power, which they don't usually have in the current system."
To me, it looks a lot like the sketch of a better future. After years of giving up money and trust in the system, New York City renters are finally set to get something back.
Top photo byRelated Reading:
Will NYC Renters Finally See the End of the Dreaded Broker's Fee?
What the Roaches in My Rent-Stabilized Apartment Taught Me About the Housing Crisis