Owners with 1–10 units
One vacant unit, one shot at getting it right, and a compliance file that is now yours.
Almost every apartment in this city leases through a broker, so if you own one to ten units the question is which brokerage — and at your scale it matters more than at forty, because one slow turn is your whole year. Pear NYC leases brownstones, walk-ups, two-families and condo units off real comps, and keeps the FARE Act file that is legally yours.
What's actually at stake
A small owner carries the same obligations as a forty-unit portfolio
A portfolio owner spreads a bad turn across forty units and a leasing team that does this every week. You have one unit, one turn, and a day job. The math of an empty month is simply harsher at your scale.
The part most owners have not internalized is the paperwork. Under § 20-699.22, every listing must disclose all tenant fees clearly and conspicuously, and before the lease is signed you must hand the tenant an itemized written disclosure of each fee with a short description, get it signed, give them a copy, and retain it for three years. Miss it and the penalty starts at $375 and climbs to $1,000 for a third violation.
And under § 20-699.21(b), if the agent who listed your unit charges a tenant an unlawful fee, there is a rebuttable presumption that you authorized it. Rebutting it means showing up at an OATH hearing to explain yourself.
None of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to care who lists your apartment. The full guide is here.
What we do for you
Specifically, for owners with 1–10 units
An honest price before you list, not after it stalls
We walk the unit and tell you what has actually signed nearby in the last 60 days. If your number is $200 high we will say so, because three weeks of chasing an asking price costs more than the $200 ever earns.
Photography that does not look like a phone
Professional shoot, floor plan, and virtual staging if the unit is empty. This is the single highest-leverage spend on a small listing and the one owners most often skip.
You are not answering StreetEasy inquiries at 9pm
Every inquiry gets a same-day reply and showings run evenings and weekends, which is when renters are actually free. For an owner with a day job this is usually the real reason to hire someone.
Screening with a documented, consistent standard
Income verification, credit and background within the $20 statutory cap, employment and prior-landlord references. Applied identically to every applicant, which is both better tenant selection and your fair-housing protection.
The compliance file, built as we go
Compliant listing language, the itemized fee disclosure signed before lease signing, a copy to the tenant, and the retention file handed to you at closing. Not a folder of loose PDFs.
A straight answer on whether you need us
If your unit is in a hot pocket, priced right and shows well, you may do fine listing it yourself. We will tell you that. We would rather lose one deal than take a listing we cannot improve.
Straight answers
Questions we get from owners with 1–10 units
Is it cheaper to list my apartment myself on StreetEasy?
Not usually, once you price the vacancy. StreetEasy charges owners $249–$299 per two weeks for a For-Rent-By-Owner listing, non-refundable, in two-week blocks. At the current 36–37 days median time to lease, that is roughly $750 in listing fees before anyone signs.
Meanwhile a vacant unit at the Brooklyn median of $4,350 is losing about $1,000 a week in rent you will never bill. The listing fee is the small number. The vacancy is the big one.
In practice very few New York owners go this route, which is why the more useful comparison is not self-listing against a brokerage but one brokerage against another. Compare them on how fast comparable units actually leased, not on what appears in the listing fee.
How do I know if my current broker is doing a good job?
Ask how long your last unit took from listing to signed lease, and compare it against the 36–37 days median for Manhattan and Brooklyn (Douglas Elliman / Miller Samuel, June 2026). Materially longer than that is not bad luck, it is a number that should come with an explanation. For our part, across the apartments we leased the median from first inquiry to signed lease is 14 days (Pear NYC internal leasing data, Most recent lease per apartment, January 2025 – August 2026).
Three other things worth checking: how many inquiries the listing generated in its first week, whether the photographs were taken by a photographer, and who is holding your FARE Act disclosure and retention file. If nobody can answer the last one, the exposure is still yours.
What is my apartment actually worth right now?
The June 2026 medians were $4,350 in Brooklyn and $5,295 in Manhattan on signed leases — but a citywide median is close to useless for a single unit. What matters is what has signed within a few blocks of you, in your line, in the last sixty days.
That is the first thing we do on a walkthrough, and we will give you the number whether or not you list with us. Asking rents on StreetEasy are a poor guide, because you are looking at what did not rent yet.
What happens if my listing agent charges the tenant a fee anyway?
You are presumptively liable. NYC Administrative Code § 20-699.21(b) creates a rebuttable presumption that a listing was published with the landlord's authorization, so the fine can land on you as well as the agent. Penalties run $750 / $1,800 / $2,000 for first, second and third violations, and each subdivision charged counts separately. Tenants also have a private right of action, which carries attorneys' fees exposure.
How long will my apartment take to rent?
The Manhattan and Brooklyn medians were 36–37 days as of June 2026, down about 30% year over year. A correctly priced, well-photographed unit should be in application inside two to three weeks. If a unit has been sitting six weeks, it is nearly always price or photography, and both can be fixed within a week.
Do you work with two-family and owner-occupied buildings?
Yes, and they are a good fit for us. Owner-occupied buildings need tenant screening to be right the first time, because you are going to share a hallway with the outcome. We spend more time on references for these than the deal size strictly justifies.
How involved do I have to be?
Very little after the walkthrough. We need you to sign off on the asking rent and the listing copy, approve or decline the applicant against the screening standard we agree up front, and countersign the lease. Everything in between — inquiries, showings, references, disclosures — is ours. For an owner with a day job, that is usually the whole point.
Next step
Tell us about the unit
Send us the address and we will come back within one business day with a realistic rent, what we would fix before listing, and how long we think it takes.