Streeteasy raises rental listing fees to $7 per day

Streeteasy is bumping its fee to a new height in the new year.  

The Zillow-owned platform is raising its daily listing fee for rentals from $6 to $7, the company told agents on Tuesday. The new charges will take effect on Jan. 1, 2024. 

In an email announcing the change, the company cited “record engagement from renters,” including nearly doubling the average number of renter inquiries on the site.  Since the last rate increase in 2020, time on the market for rentals is down 19 percent and asking rents are up 30 percent.

Streeteasy started charging agents for listings in 2017. After starting at $3, Streeteasy upped the daily fee to $4.50 in 2019 and $6 in 2020. The platform cut the fee in half during the pandemic but raised it back to $6 in September 2021, citing a recovery in the rental market. 

Agents and brokerage heads have pushed back against the platform’s fees since their inception. After the initial fee hike, brokers argued that the charges were already unaffordable for many agents, with some paying up to $40,000 a year to advertise rental listings. 

“They were getting greedy at $4.50 a day,” Compass agent Jed Wilder told The Real Deal in 2019. “This is getting excessive… I don’t think people will list at this price.”

Brokers previously attempted and failed to organize a boycott against the platform as it raised prices, introduced paid advertising programs and required agents to manually upload listings. Instead, some took to email blasts to tout listings not posted to Streeteasy, TRD reported in 2020.

Others have called for an alternative platform to Streeteasy, but a competitor has yet to topple the company’s stronghold on listings in the city. 

Last year, the Real Estate Board of New York partnered with CoStar to launch CitySnap, a public listing portal that doesn’t charge agents for rental listings. 

At the time, brokerage heads rallied behind the initiative, but several agents expressed frustration with REBNY for its failure to introduce a listing platform sooner and concern over CitySnap’s ability to meaningfully capture market share. 

In February, Streeteasy launched a trio of products for sellers also aimed at generating leads to pass on to brokers. The tools include a real-time data platform, concierge service to connect with agents and a dashboard with estimated home value, nearby sales and closing costs. 

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