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Check it before you sign it.

Landed reads your lease, listing or renewal offer, checks it against New York law, and shows the rule behind every flag.

Check a lease or listingSee how big the problem is
$4,000to see a hidden listing, reported in Aug 2026
2,000+complaints under the FARE Act in year one
14 daysto return your deposit, or lose the right to keep it
Rider, unit 4C, 214 E 11th StChecked by Landed

Monthly rent: $3,400

Security deposit: $6,800 (two months)

+$3,400A deposit is capped at one month · GOL §7-108

Broker fee: 15% of annual rent, paid by tenant

+$6,120A landlord's broker cannot bill you · FARE Act

Application fee: $150

+$130Screening fee is capped at $20 · RPL §238-a
Overcharged at signing, if you had paid this$9,650

You are not the only one paying.

In June 2025 New York made landlords pay for their own brokers. A year later renters still face fees nobody can explain, and the people who enforce the law are badly outnumbered. Every figure below links to its source.

$4,000

to see a listing, charged by brokers a year after the ban.Bloomberg Law, August 12, 2026. Reported for hidden listings; one renter found a Brooklyn two-bedroom priced 60% below market after paying.

Complaints tripled in a year. Summonses barely moved.

NYC DCWP complaint counts as reported by Brooklyn Downtown Star (Jul 2025), Hoodline (Mar 2026) and The Real Deal (Jun 2026). Each outlet counts slightly differently.

2,000 complaints, 74 summonses.

Complaints and inquiries
2,000+
Summonses issued
74

City penalties total about $27,000 and tenants got back about $15,000. One renter's illegal broker fee can be more than that.

The Real Deal, June 10, 2026. 74 summonses allege 100 violations. The bars are to scale.

Where the law has teeth, it works.

26%of renewals rose over 10%, Apr 2022 to Apr 2024
9%after Good Cause took effect

Openigloo analysis, April 2026. Sample size not published.

Manhattan rent hit a record, and there is nothing to choose from.

$5,395

median rent in September 2026, up 9% in a year

Vacancy
1.54%
Active listings
5,015 (−16%)

6sqft reporting Corcoran's September 2026 report. Vacancy bar is drawn against a 10% scale.

137,799 people in New York State rent with no US credit.

IIE Open Doors 2025, international students in New York State, 2024/25. They are one group; newcomers who work are not counted.

Brooklyn leads the broker-fee complaints.

Since the FARE Act took effect in June 2025, 311 has logged 186 complaints about illegal broker fees. Three boroughs are itemised in the report: Brooklyn 67, Queens 46, Manhattan 41. That is 154, so 32 sit in the Bronx, Staten Island or elsewhere, and the report does not say where.

Hoodline, March 18, 2026, reporting 311 data. Square area is proportional to the count. Dashed squares are not itemised. This is a schematic of the five boroughs, not a street map.

One Manhattan median apartment at signing.

Legal side: first month and a one-month deposit at the $5,395 median, plus a $20 background check (GOL §7-108, RPL §238-a). Illegal side: a 15% broker fee on annual rent (a rate seen in reported cases), the $4,000 listing-access fee, and $1,140 of junk fees from one reported Brooklyn listing ($500 lease fee, $575 processing, $65 digital submission). Illustrative sum, not an average. Average upfront saving when no broker fee is collected: $5,454 (StreetEasy, via Hoodline).

The press has said it for a year.

Before you sign

For newcomers, students and international renters.

  • Lease and listing checkerLivePaste or upload a lease, rider or agent's message. Every fee and clause is checked and cited.
  • Vet the landlord and brokerLiveTurn the HPD record into a plain-English read, with the questions to ask.
  • True move-in costLiveIncome, guarantor or prepaid rent: what each path really costs with no US credit.
  • Renter passportLiveBuild the paper package landlords can say yes to.
  • Is it rent-stabilized?LiveScreen the building, then draft the rent-history request to HCR.
  • Move-in condition logLiveRoom by room, dated, ready to email to your landlord.
Open the checker

After you've signed

For tenants renewing, paying fees or waiting on a deposit.

  • Renewal checkLiveGood Cause cap or rent freeze, with the exact overcharge.
  • Fee auditLiveScan your lease and bills for fees New York does not allow, then draft the complaint.
  • Deposit clockLiveFourteen days to return it. After that, a demand letter writes itself.
  • Heat and hot waterLiveEnter the temperature and the hour. See what the law requires and draft the 311 complaint.
  • Landlord recordLiveOpen violations and litigation for your building, in one read.
Check a renewal

Rules decide. AI explains.

Flags come from fixed, auditable rules. AI only reads messy text and writes your reply.

Every flag cites its source.

A statute or an agency page, one tap away.

Say it in your language.

Replies and complaints drafted in the language you are most comfortable with.

Try it on a real message.

Pick a sample or paste your own. Everything runs in your browser and nothing is stored.

Before you sign

After you've signed

Lease and listing checker

Paste text, or upload a lease PDF, a text file or a photo of a page.

PDFs with selectable text and text files are read in your browser. Photos are read by Claude.

Your report appears hereChoose a sample to see what Landed catches in under a second.

Who it is for, and how it pays.

Newcomers get hit hardest: students and workers arriving from abroad have no US credit history, no local guarantor and no way to tell a legal fee from an illegal one. 137,799 international students rent in New York State alone.

Why it is different

Listing sites show apartments and legal clinics help after a dispute. As far as we can tell, nothing checks your paperwork against the law before you pay, with a source on every flag, for renters who have no US credit.

  1. Free first, to earn trustEvery renter can use it free at the start. Later the core checks stay free and a few services cost a very small amount. These are hypotheses to test, not live revenue.
  2. Universities and relocation programsArriving international students need housing help from day one.
  3. Employers hiring interns and new hiresFirms that bring in many people can offer them a trusted way to sort out housing.
  4. Landlords and brokers who complyA check that shows their listing follows the FARE Act.
  5. A paid renter pack, at a minimal priceFilings and documents. One caught fee outweighs any price: with no broker fee the average upfront saving is $5,454 (StreetEasy, via Hoodline).
  6. Government partnershipThe longer-term goal: a trusted site the city can promote and work with.

Rules decide. AI explains.

A $6,800 deposit on $3,400 rent breaks the one-month cap or it does not. That is a statute and arithmetic, so Landed computes it the same way every time and links the source.

Where the rules are the verdict

Fees, caps, deadlines and notice periods are fixed code anyone can read in the open-source repo.

Where AI earns its place

Real documents are messy. AI reads photos, helps with extraction, and writes the polite, firm reply in your language. It never decides what is legal.

  1. Paste or uploadA lease, rider, listing, renewal offer or a message from an agent.
  2. ExtractThe text is split into clauses and the amounts, months and parties are pulled out.
  3. CheckFixed rules compare each term with the statute. No guessing, no invented law.
  4. ActYou get a cited report, the dollars at risk, and a reply or complaint ready to send.

Open source, so you can check us.

Landed's code is public on GitHub. Every rule lives in one file with its citation next to it, so a tenant lawyer can review it and a developer can check it.

  • Before you sign: checker, vet with live HPD and licence lookups, move-in cost, passport
  • After you've signed: renewal check, fee audit, deposit clock
  • github.com/jeet-totla/landed-nyc