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How to rent without paying a broker fee?

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How to rent without paying a broker fee?

Postby JayRob » Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:20 pm

Wanted to tap into the collective wisdom of this forum. My lease expires on Jul 1 at my current apartment and I am trying, hoping to find a no broker fee apartment for my next place to live (looking for 1-BR in UWS). I did not have much time to look at the websites of the property management companies and so far I had a look at the "by owner"/ "no fee" sections of websites like craigslist, streeteasy, etc. In most of the cases (more so for craigslist and less so for streeteasy) I still ended up either (a) talking to brokers, (b) finding out that there is a fee on the listing or (c) discovering that the listing is not valid any more, apartment has been rented, classic bait-and-switch.

That being said, I wonder whether it is only me being unlucky with my search or am I missing something? Is there any smart and efficient way to find an apartment without a fee in the City?

Thank you!
Jay
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Re: How to rent without paying a broker fee?

Postby TenantNet » Wed Jun 18, 2014 3:45 pm

In the old days we would knock on doors, get to know the super, make friends in the building, follow the obits notices (seriously), or become roommates knowing that the tenant on the lease was planning on moving. And before the net, there were certain newsstands where you could get the NYT Sunday classifieds as early as Thursday (when they were printed) or the Village Voice classifieds on Wednesdays (the Voice came out on Thursdays).
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Re: How to rent without paying a broker fee?

Postby rentstubq » Thu Jun 19, 2014 7:06 am

The best way is to walk around the area you want to live and look for the phone numbers on specific buildings of the management companies and/or landlords and call them directly. But using a broker actually has some advantages. You can say something like "I want to see a dozen 1br apartments that have doormen within 2 blocks of the park and between 70th and 90th street" and they will bring you to them without you doing any work. If you know how to use a broker, you can definitely get your money's worth on the fee...
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Re: How to rent without paying a broker fee?

Postby KimChi » Fri Jun 20, 2014 4:52 pm

I have rented twice in NYC. It all comes down to the amount of legwork you want to do. Your best bet is to look at websites and make phonecalls. In case you reach a broker do not accept to be pushed around and just finish off the conversation ... that being said some sites that you might want to check out are:
- nakedapartments.com - streeteasy copycat, lots of apartments from brokers. use their “no fee” filter - beware, lots of results are still brokers
- renterst.com - they claim all is no-broker fee. they scrub the results before you see them, by calling landlords or managers to make sure they apts are indeed avail and without a fee.
- apartable.com - like naked and street, almost all brokers. use their “verified landlords” filter - the only one that produces clean no-broker fee results. the “no-fee listings” filter takes you to a lot of brokers
- renthop.com - go to the bottom of the site to “no fee apartments in nyc” - same as naked and apartable, lots of brokers but you may find something
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Re: How to rent without paying a broker fee?

Postby TenantNet » Fri Jun 20, 2014 6:23 pm

Or you could go to our advertiser - http://www.nofeerentdirect.com/
and tell them you saw the ad on TenantNet
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