26 February 2020
The following article has been provided by Thomas Walker from Mirador Real Estate.
If you live in New York City or are planning to move here you probably saw headlines like “NYS Bans Rental Commissions” on February 4th when the Department of State issued a guidance concerning real estate broker fees. The guidance was widely misinterpreted as banning all rental commission fees charged by brokers. A few days later on February 10th a New York Judge granted a temporary stay halting the guidance and allowing all brokers to collect commission fees. In fact brokers were allowed to collect fees under the guidance but it was split into two sections.
1) Listing brokers who were the exclusive broker for that apartment had to collect their fee from the landlord not the tenant.
2) Tenant brokers could collect their fee from the tenant.
Although this no longer applies due to the stay it is important to know you could have legally been charged a broker fee. To understand who the broker is representing every broker is required by the State of New York to have you sign a Landlord Tenant Disclosure form. This form will show you if the broker is representing the tenant or landlord in that transaction. If the guidance comes back pay attention to this form. Until then it’s business as usual for the real estate broker community in New York State.
Thomas Walker has specialized for the last 15 years in assisting his clients find apartments in NYC, especially those from the international community with no US credit history. He is a tenant focused real estate broker, you can email him at Thomas.Walker@MiradorNY.com.