Illustration: Emma Erickson
Welcome to “Apartment Department,” Curbed’s new advice column by Clio Chang. Join us every other Wednesday for questions about making peace with noisy-sex neighbors, the nuances of roommate fridge etiquette, and whatever else you might need to know about renting, buying, or crying in the New York City housing market.
Got a problem? Email clio.chang@nymag.com.
Dear Apartment Department,
I know that since the FARE Act passed, brokers aren’t supposed to charge me, the prospective tenant, a fee — so what do I do if the broker insists on charging one anyway? For example, I was looking at the perfect rent-stabilized two-bedroom for $1,400 (somehow these still exist), but the broker was charging a fee. If I say no, they’ll just move on to the next sucker who is willing to pay. If I say yes, I’m perpetuating a broken system. How can I enforce this when I’m the one who desperately needs an apartment?
Sincerely,
Conflicted Sucker
The FARE Act went into effect in June, but we know that brokers are still trying to charge tenants fees; so far, the city has received 1,250 consumer complaints about exactly this. Being on the receiving end of an illegal fee request is tricky — refusing to pay feels like shooting yourself in the foot, while paying feels like shooting everyone else in the foot. That, of course, makes this the perfect question.
There’s a few paths here: Stay ethically pure (but kind of stupid) by not paying the fee, pay the fee and chalk it up to living in a fallen world, or cheat a little by paying the fee and then trying to make up for it somehow. If you can’t afford the fee or if paying it harms your soul or something, your options are limited. You should start by reporting the broker to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, either by filling out an online form or calling 311. Make sure you have as much documentation as possible: screenshots of the listing, texts, basically anything that shows the broker demanded payment.
If you’re successful in lodging the complaint, you’ll have at least done your part. But investigating the complaint will take a while and certainly won’t solve your immediate problem of finding a place to live. If you still want to shoot your shot for the apartment, Chi Ossé, the lawmaker behind the FARE Act, suggests contacting your councilmember’s office as well. “See if they can intervene on a quicker basis. The broker could get scared and just drop the fee,” Ossé said. You can also push back on the broker directly, which probably won’t work, but if you have nothing to lose, then why not? (“I know someone who held firm and they were able to do it without a fee,” Anna Klenkar, a broker who supported the bill, said. “But this was a very high-priced stabilized unit.”)
But let’s be real: There’s no way a $1,400 rent-stabilized two-bedroom will sit around. Such a bargain is rare; the average rent in the city right now is $4,550. So this brings us to the morally gray corner of the column. (Fun.) You could pay the fee to secure the lease and then report the broker afterward. This is kind of cool because it gets one over on someone who thought they were getting one over on you. That is personally satisfying, and you can tell people at parties, and they’ll be like, Oooh. Plus, if your complaint is successful — keep the paper trail here, as mentioned above — you could get the fee returned to you eventually. You might eat the cost, but the reward potential here is high. Even Ossé approves of this method! “I’d say pay the fee and get it refunded because I know what a time crunch it is in New York City,” he said.
But none of this quite answers your question of how to not be a sucker in a sucker’s market. If you’re someone who can afford to pay the fee, you’re likely better off than a lot of other apartment seekers, who would be a “no” from the get-go because they simply can’t afford it. So let’s think of this next step as something like a renter’s penance. If you paid the fee and got the apartment and reported your sneaky broker, I would say you should spend a day finding listings online with improper fees and reporting them. It’s often hard to see how any one individual action can change a system, but here, it’s a little more straightforward: If more brokers are fined for this kind of thing, it could mean fewer brokers even bother. “We are kind of doing community policing,” Ossé said of efforts to report what’s happening in the rental market. (His office is also trying to work with the state on docking points from brokers’ licenses for those who abuse the law.) So far, DCWP says it’s issued 42 summons to brokers, landlords, and property managers.
But what about your spiritual well-being? Moral injury is no small thing. (It’s even in the DSM now, ok?) For this, I needed an expert’s advice, so I turned to Micah Bucey, senior minister at Judson Memorial Church. First, he advises not paying the fee to begin with. But if that ship has sailed, he offered the following: “For our congregation, it’s less about fear and condemnation from some invisible God and more about how you’re going to behave differently in the future and making an intention there,” Bucey said. It could be getting involved in your local tenants union or getting into your community board — bettering not just the individual self, but also the communal self. “The system actually thrives on people making unethical decisions and then not doing anything to better the system.”
Unrelated to the matter of your soul, can you let us know what happened? Dying to know if you got the place.
Have a question for the Apartment Department? You can send it to clio.chang@nymag.com.