New Yorkers filed more than 2,000 complaints and queries about the FARE Act in the law’s first year, and the city has clawed back about $15,000 in broker fees for tenants, according to figures from the City Reporter published in Hell Gate’s Morning Spew newsletter.
The FARE Act is the law that flipped who pays the broker. Instead of a renter getting hit with a fee worth a month or more of rent to a broker they never hired, the party that actually hires the broker, in most cases the landlord, has to cover it. It took effect a year ago, and the early enforcement numbers are now in.
The Department of Consumer and Worker Protection took in the 2,000-plus complaints and queries and issued 74 summonses alleging 100 violations of the law, officials told the City Reporter. Of those, 46 violations resulted in roughly $27,000 in total penalties.
The cases moved two ways. DCWP settled eight before they ever reached a hearing, and 12 went to hearing appearances before the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings, the city’s administrative court. OATH awarded about $15,000 in refunded broker fees to tenants.
DCWP did not specify how many renters actually got money back, according to the City Reporter.
A year in, the law is being enforced, summonses are going out, penalties are landing, and some renters are getting their broker fees back. How much the FARE Act has changed the broader rental market, and how the $15,000 in refunds breaks down across tenants, remain unclear.
Featured image: Bushwick Daily
