FARE Act enforcement: 2,500 complaints, 91 summonses. How the numbers have moved since DCWP last briefed the Council
Brokers are still finding ways to charge tenants, records show. In May, the agency told the Council it had 1,400 complaints and 73 summonses.
The city's ban on making tenants pay broker fees they didn't agree to has been law for 16 months. Some brokers are still charging them, under new names or through "off-market" listings, according to enforcement records obtained by The City Reporter.
Why it matters to residents: a broker fee can equal a month's rent or more. Under the FARE Act, the Council's 2024 law sponsored by Council Member Chi Ossé, the person who hires the broker pays. Usually that is the landlord.
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The latest numbers
Through mid-October, the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (DCWP) had received more than 2,500 broker-fee complaints and questions, The City Reporter found. It had issued 91 summonses alleging 130 violations. Hearing officers had ordered $60,000 in penalties on 55 violations, and tenants had gotten back more than $24,000 in fees.
The cases include fees relabeled as "finders," "real estate" or "management" fees, apartments offered only to renters who agree to pay a broker, and bait-and-switch "off-market" listings. In more than half of the cases with outcomes that the outlet reviewed, brokers lost after they did not show up to their hearings.
DCWP Commissioner Sam Levine told the outlet that "more landlords are complying with the law." He called off-market listings "shenanigans" and said the state should consider pulling licenses from brokers who keep breaking the law. He also backed a state bill, S10274, that would require all rental listings to be posted publicly.
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What our records add
The agency has been asked about this before. At a Finance Committee budget hearing on May 29, a Council member said DCWP had received more than 1,400 broker-fee complaints but filed only about 50 summonses, roughly 3.5%. Officials answered that they were up to 73 summonses, with about $27,000 in penalties and $15,000 returned to tenants (transcript). They said many complaints don't have enough detail to act on. In some cases, they said, the person who complained had not actually been charged a fee.
What changed since May: complaints are up from about 1,400 to more than 2,500. Summonses rose from 73 to 91, and penalties more than doubled, from about $27,000 to $60,000. Restitution grew from $15,000 to more than $24,000. By that measure, the share of complaints that lead to a summons is still under 4%.
More staff is coming. At the May hearing, a DCWP official said new positions funded by the Mamdani administration would go partly toward FARE Act and other rental cases (transcript). In March, DCWP told the Consumer and Worker Protection Committee that it had put Ossé's "historic" law into effect over the past year.
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The rules on listings are Albany's. The fixes Levine described, such as public listings and limits on brokers representing both sides, are mostly up to the state. Our records show no City Council bill this term to change the FARE Act. The Consumer and Worker Protection Committee has 105 items pending, 72 of them for more than 180 days.
What's next
Several cases are still pending before the city's administrative trials office. Tenants who think they were charged an illegal fee can file a complaint with DCWP through 311. The agency's next public check-in with the Council is likely the preliminary budget hearings in the spring.