No Fee Apartments NYC – Ultimate Guide
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No-fee apartments in New York City used to be a small slice of the market. Since June 11, 2025, they are the default: the FARE Act bars a landlord’s broker from charging a tenant, so most NYC rentals now carry no broker fee at all. You can still owe a fee, but only in a few specific cases.
We run a rental desk in the city, and we have watched the “no-fee” label go from a selling point to a legal baseline in one summer.
The useful question isn’t how to find a no-fee apartment. It’s how to stop a fee from reattaching itself before you sign.
| The old world (before June 2025) | The new world |
|---|---|
| “No-fee” meant the landlord had absorbed the broker fee | The landlord’s broker fee is banned outright |
| Roughly a third of listings advertised “no fee” | The fee is illegal on a listing you answered |
| You checked the “no fee” filter to screen out the rest | StreetEasy removed the “no fee” filter as moot |
| A broker fee ran from one month’s rent to 15% of the year’s rent | You owe a broker only if you hired one yourself |
Are there no-fee apartments in NYC?
Yes, and the honest answer is now almost all of them. If you reply to a rental listing and a broker shows you the unit, that broker works for the landlord. Under the FARE Act, the landlord pays that broker.
That flips the old math. “No-fee” isn’t a feature landlords choose to offer anymore. It’s what the law requires for any apartment you find through a listing.
The exceptions are narrow, and we cover them below.
What “no-fee” means now
Before the FARE Act, “no-fee” meant a landlord had agreed to pay the broker instead of passing the bill to you. It was a marketing term. It was worth real money, often a month’s rent or more.
Now the word survived the thing it described. The landlord-paid broker fee is banned, so the “no-fee” tag refers to the standard case rather than a discount. StreetEasy made the point on the law’s first day by deleting its “no fee” filter button.
Rents did not spike to offset it. StreetEasy’s own data, reported by Gothamist, showed that rents on formerly fee-charging apartments rose by about 1.1%, while affected tenants saved an average of $5,862 up front.
How to find a no-fee apartment in NYC
Search the way you always would, then verify. The filter you want is the one the internet quietly retired, so you check by hand instead.
- Read the listing for a fee line. The law requires any tenant-paid fee to be disclosed “in a clear and conspicuous manner.” If a listing you answered names a broker fee, that is a red flag, not a term.
- Go directly to management companies. Large owners and their in-house leasing offices never charged a fee to begin with. Our guide to NYC commissions and rebates covers how brokers actually get paid, and the broker fee law itself has the sections and penalties.
- Ask one question in writing. “Who hired the broker, and who is paying the broker’s fee?” Get the answer before you view the apartment.
NestApple’s own listings feed is filtered to fee-free inventory. If you’re weighing renting against buying, what NestApple returns to buyers is the sale-side version of the same idea, and our ways to save money buying a house cover the rest. Our closing cost calculators let you estimate the cost of a purchase.
When you might still pay a broker fee in NYC
Three cases. The main one is the exception you sign yourself: you hire your own tenant’s broker, agree on a fee in writing first, and pay it. That is legal because you were the one who hired them.
The second is a fee you signed up for before June 11, 2025. Depending on the contract, that one may still stand.
The third is not really a fee. Landlords can still charge for a background or credit check, but state law caps the total at $20.
How to keep a broker from re-attaching a fee
This is where the real work is. Some brokers now present the old fee as a charge for their “assistance,” even on a unit you found and they list for the owner. It is the fee that shows up at signing like an uninvited plus-one.
The defense is documentation. Confirm in writing, before any showing, who the broker represents and who pays them.
If a fee appears at the lease table anyway, you can refuse it and still take the apartment. Or file a complaint with the city. Keep every text and email.
What we see on our rental desk
A year in, some brokers are treating the law as a strong suggestion. We still see “broker fee” in the listing copy. We still hear it reframed at the showing as a fee the renter owes for help they didn’t ask for.
What works is unglamorous. Put the who-pays question in an email, not a phone call, so there’s a record. If the answer is “you,” and you didn’t hire that broker, that’s your cue to negotiate it to zero or walk.
Common questions
Are all NYC apartments no-fee now? Effectively, if you found the listing yourself. The FARE Act bans a landlord’s broker from charging a tenant. You only owe a fee if you separately hired your own tenant’s broker.
Can a listing still say “broker fee”? It can appear, but on a listing you answered, charging that fee is illegal, and the listing may break the disclosure rules. Ask the agent in writing who hired the broker.
What if a fee appears at lease signing? You can decline the fee and still sign the lease, or file a complaint with the DCWP through 311. Save the listing screenshot and all messages with the agent.
Did rents go up to replace the fee? Not by much. StreetEasy data reported by Gothamist showed about a 1.1% rise in formerly fee-charging units, against an average upfront saving of $5,862.
Nicole Fishman Benoliel co-founded NestApple in 2017. She's a lawyer admitted to the New York bar - her law degree is from La Escuela Libre de Derecho in Costa Rica, with further study at IE Business School in Madrid and an LLM from Fordham in New York. She does not act in a legal capacity at NestApple; every client is referred to an attorney who handles real estate deals full time.
