Salem City Councilor Pushes To End Forced Broker's Fees In Witch City

SALEM, MA — Salem would join Boston, Cambridge and Somerville in the push to restrict or end forced broker's fees for renters under a home-rule petition that City Councilor Kyle Davis said he intends to introduce at the next Council meeting.

The petition would allow the city to regulate the fees that many renters face even if they do not hire a broker — which further adds to the challenge of finding affordable housing.

Davis told Patch that the purpose of the home-rule petition — which must then be approved at the State House level — is to pressure the state legislation to enact the policy change statewide or provide a backup means of enacting it in Salem if it does not happen on a wider scale.

"As a renter, I can attest that having to pay first, last, security, and a broker's fee — typically amounting to four month's rent is financially painful," he said. "Although we can't prevent these fees from being passed on to renters in other ways, we can help to ease these enormous up-front costs that prospective tenants are being faced with.

"Putting these fees back in the hands of landlords where they belong could also lead to increased negotiation of these fees and bring them down rather than being blindly passed on to another party to pay in full."

Davis said MLS data shows that about half of Salem's available rental stock comes with a broker's fee.

The petition, as Davis intends to introduce it on March 27, would require that broker fees in the city must be paid for by the party who solicits a licensed broker, and not automatically enforced on the renter.

(Scott Souza is a Patch field editor covering Beverly, Danvers, Marblehead, Peabody, Salem and Swampscott. He can be reached at Scott.Souza@Patch.com. X/Twitter: @Scott_Souza.)