Records Show How NYC Brokers Broke the FARE Act Fee Ban

What happened

The City reported on 10/29/2026 on records showing how some brokers broke, or skirted, New York City's broker fee ban in its first months. The FARE Act took effect in 2025. In almost all cases it bans brokers from charging fees to tenants. If a broker publishes a listing for a rental, the landlord pays that broker.

The City obtained hundreds of pages of summonses and evidence through a Freedom of Information Law request. The records come from the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP), the agency that enforces the law, and cover the period from the law's start into 2026. They include listings that asked for broker fees directly. They also show fees renamed as "management fees," listings for apartments that were already rented, and "off-market" apartments offered to applicants for a fee. DCWP alleges all of these practices violate the law.

From the law's start until shortly before the report, New Yorkers filed more than 2,500 broker fee complaints and questions with DCWP. The agency said most lacked enough information to act on. DCWP issued 91 summonses alleging 130 violations. Fifty-five of those violations resulted in $60,000 in penalties. The agency also got more than $24,000 in fees paid back to tenants. The Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings (OATH) decides FARE Act cases.

In one case, a summons says broker Diana Belorusets told two applicants for a Crown Heights apartment that paying a broker fee would raise their chances. DCWP charged that kind of conduct as "conditioning" a rental on hiring an agent, which the law bans. DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine said complaints have declined in recent months, that more landlords appear to be complying, and that the agency has, for the first time, hired staff focused on landlord-tenant issues.