Cambridge City Hall. Photo by Andrew Cosand | Flickr | CC BY 2.0

Cambridge politicians are the first out of the gate in trying to follow their New York City peers’ lead in banning apartment broker fees.

The catch: They’re not quite sure if they can do it.

The Cambridge City Council voted unanimously Monday to hold a hearing on how they might go about making it illegal for a landlord to make a tenant pay the apartment broker’s fee. A date for the hearing has not yet been set.

The New York City Council’s vote two weeks ago to make landlords responsible for paying brokers has inspired politicians in the Boston area’s biggest cities to find ways to get rid of a practice that’s widely seen by the general public as unfair to tenants, and a serious financial burden when rents are already quite high and headed higher.

The hearing order’s sponsor, Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler, said he and his partner had to come up with a $3,000 broker fee payment when they moved into their current unit.

“On top of that, tenants often have to pay a security deposit, first month’s rent and last month’s rent, so with the broker’s fee a renter can have to pay easily more than $10,000 to move into an apartment,” he said, adding that the prospect of such an outlay can force people with abusive romantic partners or simply who have developed fraught relationships with current roommates from relocating.

Broker fees could also pose a substantial obstacle to tenants with federal Section 8 rental vouchers or state-provided rental vouchers as they search for apartments, Councilor Ayesha Wilson said in explaining her support for the idea.

Councilor Paul Toner defended the city’s landlords saying that while “it’s not a problem to have a hearing and ask questions,” he claimed “most people aren’t charging security deposits, first and last [month’s rent], all together, because they recognize it’s a burden,” citing his conversations with several Cambridge brokers and landlords over the weekend.

Eliminating tenant-paid brokers’ fees, Toner said, likely requires a change in state law.

Are Fees Really Negotiable?

During that city’s battle, New York City Realtors warned landlords would likely just pass on the cost of a broker’s fee on to tenants. But several councilors Monday sought to preempt that argument.

Councilor Patty Nolan expressed doubts whether, even as tight as the Cambridge rental market is, it would bear an 8 percent per-month increase in a unit’s rent – roughly equivalent to the common broker’s fee of one month’s rent – particularly since more than a few landlords don’t use independent brokers, instead handling the leasing themselves.

Sobrinho-Wheeler argued that even if the full cost of a broker’s fee was passed on to a tenant via higher rents, it would be more bearable for the majority of tenants instead of facing a lump-sum payment.

State law bans landlords from charging a tenant more than first month’s rent, last month’s rent and a security deposit before move-in, and it requires landlords to be up-front if the tenant has to pay the broker’s fee. But who pays the fee is theoretically negotiable.

But Wilson disputed that many renters are aware of that fact, and pointed out that many renters don’t believe they get any value from the services an apartment broker provides.

“My meeting with a broker might have been twice — to see the apartment and then to get the keys,” she said. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to know that [broker fees] are negotiable.”

Boston, Somerville Could Join Effort

After New York City passed its ban on tenant-paid rental broker fees, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu said in response to a question from WCVB-TV that she hadn’t taken a position on the matter, but that “everything should be on the table” in trying to make renting more affordable in the city.

Boston City Councilor Enrique Pepén, who represents Hyde Park, Readville and parts of Roslindale and Mattapan, told the Politico Massachusetts Playbook that he was planning to file a hearing order that could spur broker-fee elimination in his city.

Somerville officials are also looking into the idea, Sobrinho-Wheeler told his colleagues Monday.

Gov. Maura Healey had included a provision eliminating tenant-paid broker fees in her major housing policy and finance bill, but the measure was stripped from the bill before it was passed this summer. The state Legislature’s Joint Committee on Consumer Protection and Professional Licensure Committee approved a broadly similar piece of legislation in 2022, but the bill failed to pass.