Just getting the key to a new apartment can cost five figures.
That’s considering the costs of the first and last month’s rent, a security deposit, and potentially a broker’s fee.
This year a new ordinance goes into effect in New York City which will change how brokers are paid.
Now there’s a growing push to make the same change in Massachusetts.
A locally produced video has gone viral and has been viewed tens of thousands of times. The first line is “If you’ve ever rented in Boston, Somerville, or Cambridge, you probably paid for a broker, even though you didn’t hire them.”
The system of tenants paying for a broker they didn’t even hire is frustrating to renters we spoke with in Jamaica Plain.
“The broker fees are a great joke,” said one renter on Centre Street.
The producer of the video is Bonnie Jin, a union organizer based in Cambridge.
It one clip she says, “Forcing the tenants to pay for the broker’s fee hired by landlords is not the norm for most of the country.”
While Boston, Cambridge, and Somerville have changes proposed on the local level, there’s a push to reform the broker system statewide.