Here in Chicago we used an Apartment Finding agency and we found exactly the right apartment for us, in our price range, and located almost exactly where we wanted it -- without paying a cent to the agency. It was so easy and the people were all very friendly even with our fairly limited budget and "demands".

This is actually the PERFECT time for me to see this post. My boyfriend and I just relocated to New York and are looking for an apartment in Brooklyn. The combination of our meager budget ($1500/month is nothing around here) and contradictory schedules (he works nights and I work a 9-5) is causing us quite a bit of trouble even going out to look at places. I think we have accepted that we need a broker to help us wade through the mess of getting a place. The trick is finding one that wants you to be as safe and happy as you want to be.

Granted, our apartment story is far from over, but I have gathered that finding the right neighborhood and combing through it will dictate whether you need a broker. We're looking in lower income areas where you can't tell which complexes are recently renovated and which are falling apart, and having a guide for this process is the goal. Maybe after we've lived here a year we can strike it out on our own for our second place, but there is just too much I don't know right now. You just have to work the fee into your budget, for better or worse.

NYC specific - My wife and I looked at a whole bunch of apartments in NYC (about 30) with brokers but we ended up getting one without a fee. You would need a broker for the smaller landlord owned buildings. Most of them are shitty and not work paying that fee. The larger complexes do not charge a fee even in Manhattan. If you decide to use a broker, always negotiate. They would bring the fee down if you a seriously interested. All but one broker that we dealt with just showed us apartments from listings. They would ask you what are your preferences but do not pay heed to them. Most of the times they don't even know the condition of the apartment or have never been there. I believe that if they are charging you 1 -1.8 monthly rent as fee they need to do some footwork for you.

LA - we combed Craigslist and found nothing. We were looking in west LA and finally found one through Westside Rentals. I've heard good and bad things, but as renters, we weren't required to pay anything: it was the landlords who paid for listings. There was a $60 fee for searching their listings, but that was good for 2 months.

Again, I've heard they're awful if your building is managed by them, but it worked for us.

I'm a student in New York. I always hear stories from my friends of going in with gusto, trying to find places with no broker, and usually having to drag their feet, sadly, into their office. It depends on the neighborhood you're looking in and how tight your timeline is. If you're a month from your current lease ending, it might be best to skip the hassle and just get the broker. For larger building though (like some in East Harlem, and the fancy places my student friends can't afford), you just go looking for the management office though.

Also, searching by Craigslist is a pain because brokers (at least in NYC Craigslist) are always posting in the by-owner section. Bummer to see a great place, scroll to the bottom and see "Fee Disclosure: Broker's fee."

NYC here - you don't need a broker. Just some leg-work (not even that much) and a good BS filter (that's key). I found 2 great apartments - one on a limited budget when I first arrived and another on a more generous budget a few years later - and this coming from another country (i.e. no US credit history, etc) and with 2 big dogs no less. One reason for not bothering with a broker is that there are very few 'deals' to be found - you're pretty much going to get what you pay for.

In general, I dislike brokers. In Houston and Chicago I was able to find great apartments without brokers, just by driving around the neighborhood to see "for rent" signs or by combing through craigslist. In NYC (Manhattan and the popular parts of Brooklyn, at least), the vacancy rate is so low that it's really hard to find a place without a broker unless you are physically fit (for tons of walking) and have a super flexible schedule (to view a place at the last minute).

For those who have worked with a broker in NYC: how did you pick your broker? I would love to have one person do the grunt work of finding an apartment within my constraints, and would be happy to pay them to do so, but given the speed at which apartments rent here it seems like its easier to find out the listing agent of any given listing and then contact them directly rather than using any one broker exclusively. Any advice? Or broker recommendations?

Finding an apartment in any slightly desirable NYC neighborhood is a punishment I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. There are so many deceptive listings... you call for an apartment 5 minutes after it has been listed and it's already been rented but the broker has some great other places for you to see. Right. And so many people clamoring for any remotely decent apartment, clawing each other to be first in line with an application. And then there are the rents. Etc.

Boston- Here it's nearly impossible to work without one especially if you're on the dreaded Sep 1 lease cycle. It's usually one month's rent. When my husband and I relocated back to Boston from San Diego a few years ago, we managed to find a great place on Craigslist- after four apartments in as many years in my previous stint in Boston, this was no less than a miracle!!!

It completely depends where you live. Rental markets have cultures specific to their cities. In Chicago, you can get around not paying a fee, sometimes you can get around paying last month's rent even! However, in a place like Boston, the standard is 1 month's fee, 1st month's rent, last month's rent AND a full month's security deposit.

NYC here too, and I hate brokers with a passion. I understand maybe if you're new to the area and don't even know where to start, but when I look for apartments I do all the legwork online, and then I end up having to pay thousands of dollars to someone who does nothing but open the door.
I have found a few no-fee apartments but to search only no-fee really cuts down on the number of options.

NYC-specific - It's true that you can find a place in a larger building with its own management office (most of the new waterfront rentals, StuyTown, etc.) Asking doormen (and tipping if they help!) is also apparently a good way to find vacancies, if you are looking for a doorman building. But if you dislike/can't afford those kinds of buildings, no-fee apartments are hard to find and incredibly competitive--much more so than broker fee apartments. I've been to open houses for mediocre, market-priced apartments that were crawling with people, even when the landlord had already weeded a bunch of interested people out. If you're going to live in an apartment for more than a year, suck it up and use a broker.

(Caveat - sometimes you can find a sublet on Craigslist from a person who's moving out early. Landlords like continuity, so if you sublet until the end of that person's lease, they'll sometimes let you stay on. But I also know a few people who have counted on this happening, only to find the landlord showing the apartment to other people and thus ultimately having to use a broker anyway.)

I've had great luck in Brooklyn with and without a broker. My advice is to go ahead and work with one, but do your own legwork on the side and see what comes up first!

I paid for a broker's services with my first NYC apartment, and the guy was actually great -- he took me and my roommate to 6 places in one day (on a Saturday when we were both free) and they were all within the range of what we were looking for. The hard part was picking one! I felt like he "earned" his fee and had no qualms about paying it.

But with my current apartment, I saw the ad on Craigslist, called the broker, and he showed me the place. I had to pay him a fee even though he did no research, did basically nothing for me except physically open the door. The listing was in the "broker fee" section, so I knew I would have to pay him, but it still felt a little ridiculous!

And now a possibly silly/naive question: I'm moving to the Bay Area in a month, and my understanding is that in other parts of the country, usually a broker will be paid by a landlord for a particular apartment, and the burden is not on the tenants in the same way as it is in NYC. Is that true?? (Please say yes!)

Wow, had no idea there were places in the world where you had to pay the broker. When it comes to NYC, I'm not all that surprised. Here in Chicago I met a wonderful broker who helped me get an insane deal on my apartment, and she got an awesome bonus for it, but from the landlord, not me! I think it helped that she saw me as a person, and I really appreciated the hard work she put into a difficult situation for someone she barely knew.

The apartment I live in now was found through a broker. It was worth it to me since I was older and looking for a place of my own. I've lived there for about 6 or 7 years now. The way I figure it is the longer I stay the more the fee was worth it. Also, he wanted to charge me 12% but when he found it I told him I'd only pay 1 month. And he took it. Of course he found me an apartment with a no pets policy and I had a cat. The landlords let me have her so long as I paid my last month up front.

For NYC: nybits.com and urban sherpa. Also, do some research and find the websites of management companies that manage the buildings you want to be in. I used a broker once and it was a total waste of money. I've done it on my own since, gotten better spaces and saved myself the broker's fee.

I lived in about 6 rentals before buying my own place. The only one I had a problem with was the apartment we found through an agent (we're in London). The agents were supposed to be managing the property (and landlords pay dearly for the service), but they would never get things done, saying they couldn't get hold of the landlord. When we left, they used every excuse not to refund our deposit (1 months rent). Never had any problems when dealing directly with landlords.

Munich: it's standard practice for agents here to charge 2.38 months of rent for their "services", which usually amounts to showing you, and quite literally about 20- 40 other people (yes, that's all at the same time), the apartment they are representing. They will not look for a place on your behalf, they will not follow up on questions that you didn't think to ask during the showing, in fact they often seem to go out of their way to make finding a place MORE difficult.

The market here is pretty tight though, so they can get away with it. I personally lucked out and found my apartment by word of mouth but you need to have time and patience to find a place here, with or without an agent. If I move again, I would personally do everything possible to avoid dealing with a "Makler" in Munich!

OMG, back in 2003, we spent the summer in Manhattan. I was trying to convince my husband to move there. We couldn't find much online in our price range, but did see one place listed by a broker that looked good. He said he had other places to show us. We spent a hot afternoon looking at total shitbox apartments on the Upper West Side and at the last place, he said he lived across the street, had air conditioning and would we like to come in for a beer? Sure. So what did the beer entail? An Amway presentation. We finally got out of there by agreeing to take the promotional materials and saying that we'd consider selling Amway. "Supernatural growth" he promised us. Then he followed up on the Amway materials so relentlessly that we both changed his name on our caller ID to "do not answer." So there's my broker experience!

Hong Kong is such a competitive market, it's an unnecessary evil to use agents. Here we have to pay 1/2 of the first month's rent to the agent.

However, I've been extremely lucky avoiding this. Found a great flat via gumtree.

I used a broker in Chicago since we only have one weekend to find a place (job transfer) and we didn't have to pay for it at all! I think it's pretty standard among many brokers here that you pay your security deposit and first month's rent to the landlord/management company, and then they pay the broker the first month's rent as a "finders fee" for finding them a tenant. For more expensive apartments, we've also found that you only have to pay a small deposit (around 10% of our monthly rent) rather than a full month's rent for the security deposit, which is much more affordable.

In New York, don't use a broker to see large complexes with a rental office. Go straight to the office. For harder-to-find places with "character,” use a broker. When showing you an apartment, if she says, "Let me show you a couple other places in the neighborhood," tell her what you have already seen or have plans to see in the area. I've had brokers claim I owed them a fee because they just mentioned an apartment I was already scheduled to visit on my own. Don't cave to this kind of pressure. Also, be aware that some brokers do a bait-and-switch as a matter of course, telling you to meet them at the location, and then when you get there, telling you the apartment has been rented but they have another one "just around the corner." You can choose to look at the apartment, which is likely to be either a lot worse than the one advertised or a lot more expensive, but don't use that broker again. In my first Manhattan apartment, I paid a huge broker fee just to have the broker send me to the landlord's office to pick up the key and look at the apartment myself. The landlord and broker hid all kinds of problems with the apartment until after I paid the fee. They were discovered only after I moved in—nightmare. For my second NYC apartment, I gave up on wanting "character" and went for a big, established complex—Normandie Court—and ended up loving it. You can always add your own character.