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by brooklyndavs 3589 days ago
I was able rent my apartment off of craigslist from a old school Brooklyn family. I think they did go through a broker but they also paid for the broker fees I believe. I didn't have to pay anything to a broker.

Is there some legal requirement in New York that rentals must go through a broker? I don't know any other city in the country that you probably will pay a broker fee to rent an apartment. It just seems like the real estate industry dipping their hands into the NYC rental market as a completely unnecessary middle man. I wonder if this is because of New York's history of being majority rentals which, until recently, was fairly unique in the US.
3 comments
xapata 3589 days ago
No, there is no legal requirement. Other big cities often have brokers. Boston, for example, has many brokers, despite being much smaller than NYC.

Brokers serve the owner, not the renter. While it may seem like the renter is paying the broker's fee, it's really the owner. Compare the rents of equivalent apartments, one with and one without a broker. You'll find that the one with a broker is "cheaper" by approximately the annualized broker's fee. [0]

[0] My own research, randomly sampling Craigslist postings in NYC.

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beamatronic 3589 days ago
These used to be popular in San Francisco even [1]

"Todd founded Rent Tech in 1995 using text pagers to alert clients of new listings. Clients would receive a pager after they signed up for the service, and when a new listing came on the market that fit into their specifications, Rent Tech would send them a page about it. Within two months, the two began to look at how to distribute rental listings on the web, which is where all the company's business now takes place. "

[1] http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/stories/1999/09/20/s...

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cloverich 3589 days ago
I'm not familiar but to hazard a guess, I know how hard finding an apartment in New York can be (a couple of friends living there presently). Outside of other notables (like SF), it doesn't seem as big an issue. In Austin the market is really hot right now, but finding an apartment is still very easy. We were using an agent (also house hunting) but she wasn't adding any value; that may not be the case somewhere like NY, especially if you're unfamiliar with the market there.
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