NYC rent: Who should pay cost of broker fees? City Council hearing scheduled

NEW YORK - NYC is one of the only cities in the U.S. where tenants are slammed with broker fees regardless of whether they hired one.

City Councilmember Chi Ossé, who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant and north Crown Heights, is trying, for a second year, to change the way these fees work.

The FARE ACT, or the Fairness in Apartment Rental Act, sponsored by Ossé, aims to help tenants.

New York and Boston are the only major American cities where rental broker fees, (8-15% of the annual rent), are passed to the tenant, regardless of whether they hired the broker themselves.

The bill doesn't eliminate broker fees entirely though.

Instead, it would require any broker fee associated with a residential real estate transaction for a rental property to be paid by the individual who hired the broker to facilitate the transaction.

After more than a year, the proposal will be debated at a committee hearing on Wednesday.

The committee will hear from tenants and real estate agents and brokers about how the bill would affect them, as well as other services they provide.

Currently, most landlords who bring a broker in make the incoming tenant pay, and renters say that's unfair.

Ossé's bill has 31 cosponsors in the Council and support from several local labor unions.