Question
A friend asks you to find a tenant for their rental house and offers $500 once a lease is signed; you are unsure whether this activity needs a license. How does New York define a real estate broker?
Tap card to flipAnswer
Under RPL 440, a broker is anyone who, for another and for a fee, commission or other valuable consideration, lists, sells, exchanges, buys or rents real estate, collects rent, or negotiates a loan secured by real estate (other than a residential mortgage loan under the Banking Law). Tenant relocators are included too. Finding a tenant for pay is therefore licensed activity. The statute defines the activity broadly because the state wants anyone who works for pay in these transactions to be licensed, which protects the public from unqualified or untrustworthy intermediaries.
Tap card to flip back