Adding onto the complaints of economic inefficiency here: one of the worst things I found living in Boston (not sure how many other major cities this applies to

Adding onto the complaints of economic inefficiency here: one of the worst things I found living in Boston (not sure how many other major cities this applies to) is that it's completely standard for the renter of a property to pay a broker's fee, generally equivalent to one month's rent, to the landlord's agent. In most (healthy, cheaper) rental markets, the landlord will pay a real estate agent a fee (one month's rent, again) to find a renter. This intuitively makes sense, as the landlord requires some number of hours of effort from the agent to list the home, show the apartment to a ton of people, and find one willing to rent it. It seems economically so incorrect that the renter should bear the cost of the fee the rental agent charges for showing the home to like 10 potential renters— they spend maybe 10 minutes of their time showing the individual renter, and they're late more often than not! Edit: below commenter rightly pointed out that this is economically perfectly correct— unjust from a value perspective would be better phrasing