5.0 across 710+ Google reviews
Get your units leased. Not just listed.
Pear NYC is a New York City rental brokerage that renters actually want to deal with — which is why your showings fill and applications move, not just why our reviews look good. We lease brownstones, walk-ups and portfolios across Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, and our systems answer inquiries the minute they land, build the listing, run the marketing and keep the compliance file straight.
This site is for building owners and managers. Looking to rent an apartment?
Who we work with
Four kinds of owner, four different problems
A landlord with one vacant floor-through and a developer with 120 units to absorb are not doing the same job. Pick the one that sounds like you.
1–10 units
Individual owners
Brownstones, small walk-ups and condo investors. One vacant unit is real money, and the FARE Act paperwork is now personally yours.
See what we do for you10–100 units
Portfolio owners
You think in annualized vacancy loss across a rent roll. You need turns to happen on schedule and units marketed before they are empty.
See what we do for youThird-party managers
Management companies
You're the hiring party under the FARE Act, which means you carry the exposure. You need overflow leasing that never becomes your problem.
See what we do for youLease-ups
New development
Absorption against a lender's stabilization date. Units per week is the only metric, and the schedule is unforgiving.
See what we do for youThe work
What should your brokerage actually do?
We take on the entire rental process. That means setting the asking rent, producing the listing, distributing it, running showings, screening applicants, executing the lease, and — since June 2025 — handling the FARE Act disclosures the owner is legally responsible for.
Pricing that reflects the actual comp set
We price off what has signed in your immediate area in the last 60 days, not what is asking. Overpricing by $150 to test the market routinely costs more in carry than it ever recovers in rent.
Presentation that survives the thumbnail
Professional photography, floor plans, and virtual staging where a unit shows empty. On StreetEasy an owner gets roughly one second in a grid of thumbnails — the photo is the entire funnel.
Distribution beyond the obvious
StreetEasy and the REBNY RLS, plus our own site, our agent network, and an Instagram audience of 9,600+ renters who already follow us for NYC listings.
Showings that actually happen
Evenings and weekends, when renters are free. A showing request that waits until Monday is a renter who signed somewhere else on Saturday.
Screening you can defend
Income verification, credit and background within the $20 statutory cap, employment and prior-landlord references, and a documented, consistent standard applied to every applicant.
FARE Act compliance, handled
Compliant listing disclosures, the itemized written fee disclosure signed before lease signing, and the three-year retention file. You are presumptively liable for what your agent does — so we do it right.
Compliance
If your broker breaks the FARE Act, are you on the hook?
Yes — presumptively. Under NYC Administrative Code § 20-699.21(b), when an agent unlawfully charges a tenant a fee, there is a rebuttable presumption that the listing was published with the landlord's authorization. The owner is liable unless they rebut it. In practice that means turning up at an OATH hearing.
This is the part most owners have not internalized. You can do everything right and still be exposed by a leasing agent who does a bait-and-switch on a caller. Choosing a brokerage is now a compliance decision, not just a marketing one.
FARE Act complaints filed with DCWP in the first year
NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, June 1, 2026
The market you're leasing into
Rents are at records and vacancy is near zero. That does not mean a unit leases itself.
It means the cost of being slow has gone up. At a Brooklyn median of $4,350 a month, five weeks of avoidable vacancy is roughly $5,000 of rent you will never bill for — and rent-stabilized owners cannot raise the rent to make it back.
Rent Guidelines Board increase on stabilized renewals, Oct 2026 – Sep 2027
NYC Rent Guidelines Board, Adopted June 25, 2026
Work out what a vacant month is costing you
Our calculator uses live NYC medians and StreetEasy's published listing rates. Most owners are surprised by the weekly number.
How it works
From walkthrough to signed lease
01
We walk the unit
In person, usually within 48 hours. We tell you what it will actually rent for, what is worth fixing before it lists, and what is not.
02
We build the listing
Photography, floor plan, copy, and a compliant fee disclosure. Live on StreetEasy, the RLS, our site and our channels — typically within three business days of the walkthrough.
03
We run the demand
Every inquiry answered same-day. Showings seven days a week. You get a weekly read on traffic, showings, applications and where the price is landing.
04
We close and document
Screening, application, lease signing, itemized disclosure signed and retained, keys handed over. You get the file, not a shoebox of PDFs.
Why owners pick us
The reviews are from the other side of the table
Pear NYC holds a 5.0 rating across 710+ Google reviews — and almost all of them are written by renters. That is an unusual thing for a brokerage to point at on an owner page, and it is the most useful signal we have.
Renters who are treated well tour more units, apply faster and turn up to lease signings. A brokerage that renters avoid is a brokerage that shows your apartment to fewer people. Our review profile is, functionally, a demand asset for your building.
- Google rating
- 5.0 / 5.0
- Reviews
- 710+
- Renters following us
- 9,600+
- Boroughs covered
- 4
Rating as of August 2026. Instagram following at @pear_nyc.
Choosing a brokerage
What should you ask before you hire a brokerage?
Every brokerage in this city offers the same list — price, market, show, screen, lease. The list is not the difference. These are the five questions that separate firms, and they work just as well on the brokerage you already use as on us.
| Ask them | Why it matters | Our answer |
|---|---|---|
| What do renters say about you? | Renters are the demand side of your vacancy. A brokerage renters avoid is a brokerage that shows your apartment to fewer people. | 5.0 across 710+ Google reviews, almost all written by renters, as of August 2026. |
| Where will my listing appear, and to whom? | Syndication to the major portals is table stakes. An audience the brokerage owns is not. | StreetEasy and the RLS, plus 9,600+ renters following @pear_nyc who see the unit the day it lists. |
| Who checks your agents' messages for FARE Act compliance? | Under § 20-699.21(b) the exposure for an agent's mistake lands on you, not them. DCWP assessed $27,125 against 33 brokers in year one. | Our software flags a non-compliant message before it reaches a tenant, and we keep the three-year retention file for you. |
| How long did your last comparable unit take to lease? | Ask for a number, not an adjective. Every extra week is unearned rent that never appears on an invoice. | For apartments we lease, a median of 14 days from first inquiry to signed lease. The Manhattan and Brooklyn market median is 36–37 days. |
| Who will actually be handling my building? | Owners are routinely sold by a principal and then handed to whoever is free. | You deal with our leasing desk in Brooklyn, under Richard Garland, chief executive officer & principal broker. |
Our figure: Pear NYC internal leasing data. Most recent lease per apartment, January 2025 – August 2026. Measured from first inquiry rather than listing date, across apartments we leased. Market median: Douglas Elliman / Miller Samuel, June 2026, measured from listing date across signed leases. Penalty figures: NYC DCWP, June 1, 2026.
Straight answers
Owner questions, answered directly
Who pays the broker fee on a NYC rental in 2026?
Whoever hires the broker pays. Since the FARE Act took effect on 11 June 2025, a broker who was hired by the landlord — or who published the listing with the landlord's permission — cannot collect a fee from the tenant. A tenant who independently hires their own broker still pays that broker. This is settled law: the Second Circuit rejected REBNY's appeal in July 2026.
Do I need a broker to rent out my apartment in New York City?
Practically, yes. Unlike most American cities, almost every New York City apartment leases through a broker, so the decision most owners are actually making is which brokerage — and how quickly that brokerage gets the unit filled. You can list a unit yourself on StreetEasy for $249–$299 per two weeks, but you would then carry the FARE Act disclosure and three-year retention obligations personally, along with every showing and every screening decision.
If you already have a broker, the question worth asking is how long your last unit sat. At the current Brooklyn median a single extra month of vacancy costs about $4,350, which is the real price of a listing that goes up and then goes quiet.
What changes if my building is rent-stabilized?
Your margin for error narrows considerably. The Rent Guidelines Board adopted a 0% increase on renewal leases commencing between October 2026 and September 2027, so there is no rent headroom next year on roughly 41% of the city's occupied rentals.
That leaves two levers: keep good tenants so the unit never turns, and when it does turn, lease it fast — because on a stabilized unit an empty week is gone for good. We work those units differently from free-market stock for exactly that reason.
How long does it take to lease a unit in NYC right now?
The median in Manhattan and Brooklyn was 36–37 days as of June 2026, down roughly 30% year over year. A well-priced, well-photographed unit in a decent neighborhood should be in application within two to three weeks. If yours has been sitting for six, the problem is almost always price or photography — and both are fixable in a week.
Do I have to sign an exclusive listing agreement?
We would rather earn it. An exclusive gives us a reason to spend real money on photography and paid placement for your unit, and it stops the same apartment appearing five times at three different prices, which is the fastest way to look distressed on StreetEasy. But we will talk to you before you commit to anything, and we will tell you honestly if your unit does not need us.
Which neighborhoods does Pear NYC cover?
We lease across Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx, and we are strongest in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Crown Heights, Bushwick, Williamsburg, Clinton Hill, Fort Greene and Prospect Heights, where our office is and where most of our renter audience is looking.
Next step
Let's talk about your units
Whether the listing is already live or you are three weeks out from a turnover, we will give you a straight read on pricing, presentation and timing. No obligation.