Finding Rentals Online vs. Hiring an Agent/Broker

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.

Nonsense ottowa. The fact is it is hard to do on your own. And yes, brokers have listings the public doesnt. Online is maybe 60 percent of the picture. Op, try first without, you'll see.

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.

These are probably the best threads about renting in a Pan Am or BLDG building:
http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/20879-help-looking-to-rent-in-pan-am-building
http://streeteasy.com/nyc/talk/discussion/20907-help-how-can-i-be-a-candidate-for-manocherian-bldg

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.

brooklyn is even tougher than manhattan. get a broker.

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

you idiot.

he's huntersburg.

hoc84
about 9 hours ago
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What about Brooklyn? Any good sites other than SE? Crauglist seems to be too much of a mess to find anything decent.

Brooklyn is a real mess. Definitely get a broker.

hey how about finding a place in downtown bagdad?

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...

Brokers have listings that aren't advertised.

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

>columbiacounty
10 days ago
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>you idiot.

>he's huntersburg.

Who?
And why is being huntersburg a bad thing. I'm pretty sure I am huntersburg, and I think it's a good thing.

I am currently renting three Sponsor no-board-approval no fees of any sort
Coops I own, two in Brooklyn.

What are you looking for, in what neighborhhod(s), and at what price. All my
apts take mega-dogs and give my tenants an automatic right to renew for life.

I recently rented an apartment in a great hood and a great price. With no broker. I did try the broker route most all show the same listing, listings i found on my own. Most all try the bait and switch tactics. I found most rental brokers extremely unethical. Avoid them.

Ues10021 and thatsrite are right on

Landlords love it when brokers don't advertise. Actually they don't advertised either, they love it when the apartment sits vacant. All listings are advertised.

Congratulations Brooks on your new apartment and hoodie. Be careful Zimmerman isn't around.

>I did try the broker route most all show the same listing, listings i found on my own. Most all try the bait and switch tactics.

Sounds like you worked with a lot of brokers before moving yourself, why did you bother?

Zimmerman? ok you got me.

"Sounds like you worked with a lot of brokers before moving yourself, why did you bother?"

live and learn... rental brokers are completely useless. save yourself a step.. time, and frustration... don't use one

UES10021,
"***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.***"

color me impressed!!! Most New Yorkers have some compromise, but you found a great place, great neighborhood, great price, paid no broker fee. Impressive!!! And you did that in competition with multiple brokers who were all useless and unethical!!!

do you read my post? since when does most mean all?

"found most rental brokers extremely unethical."

"you found a great place, great neighborhood, great price, paid no broker fee. Impressive!!!"

and this is true.

looks like thatsrite had a similar experience

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.

>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".

What about all of the other brokers you worked with? You referenced "most" showing you listings you found on your own, and "most" being unethical - so I'm assuming there were several others in addition to the one you referenced immediately above, right?

U know what happens when u assume, don't u?

Tell me, I love riddles, just like I like convenient fairy tales.

Convenient indeed hunterburg.

I suppose none of you realize that a good agent knows about upcoming vacancies months in advance, either through relationships with owners, outgoing tenants, (someone i moved before and am moving again) and through current clients who are looking with me for the first time (when they move it will create a vacancy, but people like brooks dont realize a good agent can make that connection because he cant). So, yes, everything gets advertised, provided it ever actually hits the market, but many apartments never do.

Admittedly, most of my competition sucks.

What didn't you understand when I said that most retal brokers are useless? And avoid them? That is my experience, sine I have not met every rental broker out there, I can not say they are all unethical or useless, but that is my experience when I attempted to use them. It seems to be the experience of many others too. Now, HB, you seem like a smart person, what is it you don't understand or are you just trying to make an ass out of yourself?

Go fuck yourself brooks, since assuredly no one else ever would.

Good tenets are hard to find. Brokers search for you. If you are well qualified you will have no problem finding a place to rent. If you work with a rental broker there is a high probability you will work with a unethical asdhole like j hones.

You indicated you worked with several brokers, then your fairy tail-like story changed.

As for good tenants being hard to find, I disagree, I suspect that most renters in NYC are absolutely fine honest people who pay on time and live in their rentals without problems. I wonder why you think that good tenants are hard to find and most brokers are useless and dishonest. Why such a negative outlook on everything?

or fairy tale

Unethical? How presumptuous. I may be a tough negotiator, and i know where my best interests are served (most always by taking good care of the owners first), but never unethical. I always make sure prospective tenants know what side i represent, i show them inventory they cant otherwise rent, i presnt the terms (including fee), and let them make an informed decision.
Actually i have seen the worst ethical behavior from tenants.

so you and Brooks agree on bad tenants?

Unethical does not mean unqualified financially to rent, dummy.

What is negative about finding a great apartment in a great hood at a great price without using a rental broker? If you are a rental broker you may take that ad the glass is half empty, but if you advertiser rise on line you can take that as the glass is half full. Your choice,

>Unethical does not mean unqualified financially to rent, dummy.

How silly of me.

>What is negative about finding a great apartment in a great hood at a great price without using a rental broker?

Nothing. Though your story about multiple brokers seemed to change.

>but if you advertiser rise on line you can take that as the glass is half full. Your choice,

?
English please.

Typing on an I-phone is difficult. I sure a smart guy like u can decipher my typos.

No, I have no idea what you wrote.

Dumb and dummerer

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.

they are and they will.

remember that many times the a portion of the fee to be broker gets kicked back under the table to either the owner or someone in the management company. excellent way to pick up some tax free dollars as well as cheat non operating partners.

So you'd rather pay a higher rent rate, which will mean a higher renewal rate, then pay a fee one time for a better priced apartment? Who's a monkey in that case?

the only monkey here is you.

Cunty, how would you know this?

And how does it account for the 9 out of 10 condo or coop owners who chose to use a broker? Is money changing hands in those cases too?

hmmn. lets see, why would an owner of a single unit choose to use a broker rather than do it themselves?

and why would an unscrupulous owner not want to get undeclared income, i.e. kickback on the fee?

if you really are anything close to what you claim you are, you know perfectly well what goes on.

The ironic thing is that there is a high probability that the op will end up paying a fee to a broker represented property anyway.

So most unit owners are unscrupulous?

What do you suppose is the standard kickback?

How come i have never seen this referenced anywhere else? Never in the news, the paper, anywhere? How long and with how many involved parties in this?

In the case of open listing accounts, do multiple brokerage firms pay off certain parties for the rights to show their properties?

Does this also happen on the sales side?

the only one suggesting that most owners are unscrupulous is you.

kickbacks by the very nature are not standard....only stupid brokers say that anything is standard

how can i explain why you claim to have never heard of this?

perhaps you should consider the difference between the word many and the word most.

When did i say unit owners were unscrupulous? YOU are claiming a huge conspiracy.

Ive bought many a liquid lunch, paid for nights out, ball games, holiday gifts, etc. This is simply good business practice. I havent ever bribed anyone to get them to give me a listing.

So, down to the semantics. You say many, not most. What percentage would you say? You seem to know alot about tbis.

i made no claims of a conspiracy much less a huge one.

you distort and lie here and supposedly for a living.

good luck.

I think you are so fucking dumb you actually forgot what you wrote about an hour ago:

"remember that many times a portion of the brokers fee gets kicked back under the table....."

Did you write that, or your imaginary friend?

where is the part about the huge conspiracy?

where is the part about most unit owners are unscrupulous?

have you figured out the difference between most and many?

Cunty:. "and why would an unscrupulous unit owner not want to get undeclared income....."

Most and many:. Semantics used by retards trying to win an arguement.

so....in the deluded world of jimboner. most and many mean the same thing.

is english a second language for you?

this is a fruitful discussion. Its devolved into the difference between most and many. Congrats you two.

>excellent way to pick up some tax free dollars as well as cheat non operating partners.

Columbiacounty, you seem to know a lot about fraud and unethical behavior.

Most and many.......explain in your best english, cunty, the huge discrepancy. Use websters as needed.

no doubt you've spotted another major conspiracy. way to go boner.

In today's economy landlords dont need to use monkeys to open doors
when they can hire recent college or law school graduates for less.

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.

If those old time landlords could just learn from Jim how to repeatedly hit the shift key and press 1 at the same time.

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.

another website-- http://www.urbansherpany.com/Home

I just rented two No Fee rentals on Craigslist, and have two more up now, with
possibly an additional two to follow. I strive to be completely accurate in my
ads, and answer all questions from prospects truthfully.

There are many other owners of building managing agents posting there who do the
same.

"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.

Anyone used the "Shop for a Broker" link up top?

"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.

NBalzac:

I agree. Your posting was very thoughtful and contained a lot of useful
and helpful facts.

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.