Is it worthwhile to hire a broker? Do brokers have access to more listings than what's available online? For the do-it-yourself route, which websites, aside from SE, nybits, and craigslist would you recommend?

No, you don't need one, but they are hard to avoid and extremely annoying. If you choose not to get ready for every one you encouter offering to take you around. But easy to do on your own, if you have some time. Also quickly narrow your search to one or two neighborhoods.

yes good brokers have access to broker protected listings, pan am, BLDG, solid ect.

you do not need a broker to rent in manhattan, but if you get a good one it makes the process much quicker. it also depends on budget, if you can spend money just to into a related building or arch stone, equity on site leasing but prices are a bit high with them.

What about Brooklyn? Any good sites other than SE? Crauglist seems to be too much of a mess to find anything decent.

I think all Craigslist listings should come with a disclaimer

***This apartment does not exist but if you call, I can show you an apartment that is slightly smaller, with fewer amenities, in a slightly less desirable location, for just a little bit more money.***

A broker will save you time because online only shows about 50% of what is really out there. The rental market moves too quickly for anything to be up to date online. So if you want to find something quick and be on top of everything you need a broker who specializes in that given area. I had a broker find me a rental and they were totally worth it, but i have no time to go preview 100 apartments and to look online for hours endlessly to only hope what i am seeing is correct. I did that in that past and this time i learned my lesson, cut my stress in half and i found an apartment twice as quick.

UES10021...that was funny, much funnier than Siri's joke to John Malkovich in the new iPhone add...

Am I the only one that finds that add genuinely annoying?

hoc84, if you have time on your own, you can sort through By-Owner on craigslist and typically tell which ones are legit (obviously real photos and written by someone who sounds like they either occupy or own the place)

i recently rented an apt that was never listed.

JButton - I have a friend who will be relocating to NY. Just wondering, which broker did you use?

I want to believe in the power of the broker but after having found our last three places on our own, by obsessive online checking and dropping everything if we had the chance to go look at a new place smack dab in the middle of a work-day, I have to say I am no longer a believer. You end up paying the broker fee once you find a place you like anyway most of the time but we found the brokers we worked with, including a few recommended to us on Streeteasy were kind of useless-
We found our place right here on Streeteasy two weeks ago, then a broker we were working with wrote to us a week later to tell us about "this brand new apartment that just hit the market". It was the same unit we had found on our own.
I've heard about these elusive brokers who have access to amazing listings, but we haven't met them. And we';ve met ALOT of brokers.
Check out Brownstoner.com (for Brooklyn), trulia and the NY Times site. Check individual realty sites if you have the time and Good Luck!

"A broker will save you time because online only shows about 50% of what is really out there. The rental market moves too quickly for anything to be up to date online. So if you want to find something quick and be on top of everything you need a broker who specializes in that given area. I had a broker find me a rental and they were totally worth it, but i have no time to go preview 100 apartments and to look online for hours endlessly to only hope what i am seeing is correct. I did that in that past and this time i learned my lesson, cut my stress in half and i found an apartment twice as quick."

There are over 200,000 licensed real estate "professionals" in NYS. 50,000 are active.
10,000 transactions per year in NYC...

Coming from a broker, the good ones are few and far between...
It's like college, find someone who is at least a senior (4years in), aim for a Graduate or PHD (if they will give you a slice of their time) and anything online is dated. Both for the consumer and for the agents.

A good broker has a mental database and a personal rolodex of what you are looking for...

So they say, but EVERTHING EVERY broker has EVER shown me WAS listed.

Thanks all for your responses. I have decided not to get a broker.

It seems that online search is getting easier, and these middlemen are getting less and less relevant. I just don't understand why don't more owners and management companies list online with no fees. They can clearly ask for a higher rent if no fees are involved. You can literally hire a monkey to schedule an appointment and open the apartment door for a showing.

Part of the issue is that the old school landlords are not of the generation, headset or technical proficiency and lack the basic know-how of how to even work a camera, or write a good description with all the buzz words for their property, let alone, where to post it online. This (and the next) generation of tech savvy on-liners like ourselves will determine the true "value" of agents and brokers. But at the end of the day it comes down to whether or not you want to invest the time in sifting and sorting through a lot of the trash that is out there to find a decent apartment. If you are flush with cash, respect the service and value of a TRUE professional, or simply have better things to do with your time; hire at least one good agent and hedge your bets by working with 1-2 agents from different firms. Realize that in the end, after all of the tf conerstone, rockrose and Avalon, no fee cookie cutter conglomerates, often the smaller more unique properties are owned by old school landlords that work often exclusively with brokers and you will have to pay a fee.

Clearly, the broker can help compress your timeframe for looking, and that alone can be worth it. So, I’m starting from the premise that you have either the lead time or the free time to look at a lot of places. I’m also assuming that you’ve already used the internet to get some rough idea of the price you’re willing to pay for what you need.

That being said, the better you know the neighborhood, the more mainstream your needs are, and the clearer you are on your trade-offs (e.g., price vs size vs location vs layout etc), the less you need a broker.

Here's my take on some of the factors:

- Apartments that are priced exactly correct with the market will get rented pretty easily.
- Apartments where the landlord wants a bit more than the prevailing market price will need to be shown a lot, over and over. They're looking for that elusive tenant who slightly overvalues the unit's positive(s) and is indifferent to its negative(s).
- Straight rentals (as opposed to rented co-ops and condos) are generally more expensive for what you get. Condos and co-ops are a bit cheaper, to overcome the paperwork burden and the high application fees. As such, straight rentals need a lot of traffic to get filled. These are the apartments that'll get widely advertised online to drum up traffic.
- In my experience, it takes a lot of looking to get what you want in the straight rentals market and not overpay. If you're looking at mid- or high-rises, turnover is much higher in the less-desirable "lines" (floor plans) in a building. So at any given time, the inventory of less-desirable floor plans available is high, with people tending to renew leases over and over in the better ones. As a result, you wind up with more of the mediocre units available at any given time, and you can feel like you're beating your head against the wall over and over, building after building, trying to encounter a unit that doesn't make you go "meh."
- Where a broker comes in with the straight rentals is that they may (buy only MAY) have a set of buildings they watch closely where they will figure out more quickly that a desirable unit is on the market. In that sense, they can save you a lot of time, compared to chasing out to see everything that's vacant on your own.
- In renting condos or co-ops, a broker can add some value in helping you keep from getting snagged on any tricky requirements or paperwork. In my experience, the obstacle here is the management company that runs the building and blesses the paperwork on behalf of the building's board. They have zero incentive to deal with you directly, and would just as soon keep you more at arm's length via a broker. Makes life easier for the mgt co if they turn you down, too (because you haven't met them directly).
- Now, there are some straight rental mgt cos (someone mentioned Pan Am above, I think) that only work through brokers. I’ve never rented from one of those, so I don’t know if they’re desirable and/or accurately priced, vs. buildings that will rent to you directly. It stands to reason that a building needs a smaller in-house staff if it outsources showings mostly to brokers. In theory, that could make prices a tiny bit lower, but that’s just a guess.
- The townhouse/walkup and small-landlord markets are their own little ecosystem, it seems, making it tougher to generalize. In these buildings, it seems that the super plays a bigger role, and the landlord can decide how available they want to make him/her for showings. Policies seem to run the gamut of a super showing the unit to anyone who buzzes him, to having set times daily where the unit is left unlocked and you can just come look, to where you have to aggressively chase the super down to get him to show you the unit. In the latter case, turnover of apartments slows down significantly. And, the market has less information available about exactly what’s going on in those buildings (compared to a staffed rental office where everybody can call anytime to get updates). I think there are brokers who carve out these sorts of buildings as their niche, and your ability to use shoe-leather to overcome their info advantage is probably a lot slimmer.
- The most talented brokers who handle both sales and rentals may vary a lot as to how helpful they are, even from week to week. Some just love doing deals, and on a slow week will happily work on rentals. Others will save their energy to do everything they can think of to move a sales transaction, which is rarer but a lot more lucrative. They might only grudgingly handle the rental of past sales client’s condo as a favor. So, it’s hard to know whether a given broker is motivated to work hard to meet your needs, especially since they know they’ll be competing with the internet at the same time.

Hope this helps.

I've never paid a brokers fee. Wouldn't minded paying one for a great deal, but never had a broker find me anything I cared about. At the high end, I find the better rental buildings have their own offices, and it is very easy to find them.

On the low end, thinking like walkups, I find that the best deals come through the midsize concerns that own/manage 20 buildings, and have a lot of similar inventory, and generally maintain them. I have friends that worked with 2-3 of these on the UES, got pretty good deals, and didn't have to look crazy hard (they just followed their listing updates on the web site).

In the middle (older doorman elevator buildings, in my head), lots of no free complexes as well. Similar program to above, just with lesser apartments. I think of all the Regency buildings on the lower upper east side.

The names escape me, but generally you find 20 of the same small sign walking around the UES.

Try the Glenwood buildings. They are very well-maintained with great lobbies and amenities.

"FOr rent by owner" on C-L is mostly legit. No-fee by broker are mostly B-S listings.

You should have a standard introductory email that says, politely, words to the effect that you are ONLY interested in the exact unit advertised, and if its not available, you won't come see the place. Even slime brokers get the memo.

And Jim Jones admitting that the vast majority of brokers are no good only helps the argument AGAINST them for rentals. Unless you have an iron clad reference about a broker, don't bother. There are no Zagats or Citysearch ratings for random brokers, even if the work for the big agencies.

"they are hard to avoid and extremely annoying"

That's so true! And if you see one, you know there are others hiding in places you can't see. New York seems to have a particular problem with them; other places i've lived in weren't as infested. I mostly see them later in the day and at night, never in the morning. Are they lazy and just want to sleep late? And if you live above a restaurant, forget it - there's no way to avoid them.

Oh, sorry - you were talking about BROKERS. I thought you said roaches...

NBalzac, thank you for you thoughtful response. I think many people will find your post useful.

I would amend NBalzac as follows: renting coops is generally MUCH more a hassle than renting condos. I would divide that para into two. Most condos require a lot less paperwork and hassle than coops, and also don't have the 2-year maximum that coops do.