StreetEasy Listings Fell This Week. The Portal Says FARE Isn't The Issue

The Zillow-owned portal appeared to shed listings Wednesday after the Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses Act became law, but a spokesperson insisted daily fluctuations are common.

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In the hours after the enforcement of New York City’s broker fee bill, the Fairness in Apartment Rental Expenses (FARE) Act, StreetEasy lost more than 1,000 rental listings.

The Real Deal began tracking StreetEasy’s NYC rental listing count at 3 p.m. EST on Tuesday. That afternoon, the Zillow-owned site boasted 13,383 listings, 9,136 of which were already no-fee. By 1:30 p.m. EST on Wednesday, when FARE, which requires property owners to cover broker fees for the agents they hire to list a unit, went into effect, the rental listing count had dropped to 12,160.

A StreetEasy spokesperson told TRD the listing drop shouldn’t be attributed to FARE, as this type of fluctuation is typical in New York City, where thousands of renters are signing leases in a given day.

In a conversation with Inman, the spokesperson added additional insight, saying that a day — or even a few weeks — of rental listing declines wouldn’t signal a FARE-induced market collapse, especially since most NYC rentals are already no-fee and renters are becoming more active in the summer. Some of the drop may also be attributed to property owners and brokers temporarily pulling listings to get in compliance with FARE, the spokesperson added.

The portal said it will continue to carefully track rental trends, and said early data shows that FARE hasn’t led to an extreme rise in rents.

“The average annual growth in asking rents of the properties that dropped a broker fee was 5.3 percent in April, only slightly above the 4.6 percent growth for the rest of the market in which broker fees remained in place,” a StreetEasy report read. “The FARE Act is unlikely to alter how property managers set asking rents based on market demand. Asking rents are primarily driven by market conditions, rather than solely by property managers’ costs.”

As of Thursday at 12 pm ET, the NYC rental listing count on the site has remained steady, with 12,175 listings.

Due to FARE, StreetEasy has removed the filter for no-fee apartments and added an alert that reads, “Under NYC law, you can’t be charged a broker fee if you didn’t hire a broker.”

Although FARE is officially NYC law, the fight over the controversial bill is far from over.

The Real Estate Board of New York’s (REBNY) lawsuit against the City to stop FARE’s enforcement is still in play, despite Southern District of New York judge Ronnie Abrams denying the association’s preliminary injunction request on Wednesday.

REBNY’s suit argues that FARE is “constitutionally defective” and preempted by New York state laws that protect commercial free speech and already regulate compensation for real estate brokers and salespeople. The lawsuit also claims the FARE Act violates the Contracts Clause of the U.S. Constitution since brokers and landlords can’t execute existing listing agreements that require brokers to negotiate and receive compensation from tenants.

“New Yorkers will soon realize the negative impacts of the FARE Act when listings become scarce and rents rise,” REBNY President Jim Whelan said on Wednesday. “We will continue to litigate this case as well as explore our avenues for appeal.”

As REBNY revs up for the next stage of its suit, Councilmember Chi Ossé, who authored FARE, used his X and Instagram accounts to remind renters about the bill’s enforcement and urge them to report any property owners who are violating FARE by recasting broker fees as “management fees” to the City’s Consumer Protection Law team.