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In cities like NYC is common for a landlord to own 8-9 buildings with multiple units, they tend to be older and don’t want to deal with tenants, so they hire pr
by naticio 4y ago
In cities like NYC is common for a landlord to own 8-9 buildings with multiple units, they tend to be older and don’t want to deal with tenants, so they hire property management offices, their work is simply to rent the place and maintain the place. To maintain the place they hire a super and to rent the place they get brokers that “volunteer” to bring them quality leads. They get paid by the tenants an unofficial broker fee that amounts to 10-15% the total annual rent. It has worked so far for the landlords and the demand mostly pay the price
- geoffjentry 4y agoIn Boston we have brokers but it's not this reason (EDIT: See end). The realtors are really only there as the front door to get the lease signed. The landlord does the rest of the landlording. The claim is that the value add the brokers provide is vetting potential tenants - credit checks, etc as well as the time investment of showing the unit. The standard fee is 1 months rent and this is almost always paid by the tenant. The arguments here tend to cluster into two groups: 1) Laws should be passed that the landlord needs to pay the realtor's fee and not the tenant. 2) It doesn't matter if #1 happens as the landlord would just bake it into the rent anyways. EDIT: I should say it's not just this reason as what you cite does happen. But it's just de rigueur here regardless of if you're renting the upstairs unit of a homeowner or going through a property management company.
- heliodor 4y agoThe difference is that if it's baked into the rent you would be free to move around more often. Instead, every move costs one month's rent.