No-fee vs Broker apartments

Oddly I just published a post about this yesterday
https://revaluate.com/blog/nyc-broker-fees-explained/

I have lived a few no fee apartments as well as a few that I found through an agent. A am pretty sure there is no difference in quality. Usually no fee buildings are just the ones that are large enough to have their own rental office. So they tend to be the newer high-rise buildings, which are not usually the cheapest apartments around.

If you would prefer to save money on rent by going with an older walk-up building, that will be harder to find without a fee. Or if you are looking for something unusual / unique, that will also be harder to find as a no fee.

When I speak of "no fee" above, I am referring to cases where there is no agent involved at all. Though no fee can also refer to those where the broker fee is paid by the owner. In those cases, I would have to say yes, some of the fee does get passed on. Many people do not agree with this, but there is a lot of research out there showing it to be true. For example, http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~hbar-isa/brokerRES.pdf

If you are willing to put in the time and can deal with some frustration, you should be able to find a good no fee building.