It was a state law that capped application fees at $20 or something, and some authority interpreted that as broker's could no longer charge fees to tenants, but then the real estate brokers association was granted a stay + the court eventually decided in their favor.

It's good that there's no surprise fees, but they're still being paid. It's like anything, the value is just hidden in the price of the product now, rent in this case.

The landlord can decide if it's worth paying them then

That's not how anything works. The money doesn't just come from nowhere, or from the landlord's profits. It is accounted for as an increase to rent. That's what I meant by "surprise fees", you're still paying them, they're just not a surprise anymore. Maybe the increased transparency in the market will push out brokers that aren't adding value, but that's more of a hope.

It's not a hope, it's reality in other countries, like the UK.

We banned letting agent fees charged to the tenant. Miraculously, landlords didn't find paying £250 for a contract renewal value for money.

Rents continue to go up and down, but now tenants know they are spending money on their flat or house, rather than paying inflated fees to a letting agent/broker.

If the landlord pays a fee equal to a percentage of the rent you will be paying them if you rent there. If they are pervasively popular in your market you wont have much choice but to pay them as well.

That is not how economics work...

All fees are passed on to the consumer in some way, it is either a line item or hidden

Not quite; some of this is about moving wealth around, changing the captured value to favor the buyer instead of the seller.

But that’s just the “efficient market” part of this. A fee like this could very well be an inefficient rent-capture that has managed to make its removal more expensive in the short-term than the short-term cost of allowing it to remain. Said less charitably, it’s a racket.

I would have thought that on HN of all places, where so many folks are attempting “disruption” (ie finding these unnecessary market inefficiencies and stepping around their cultural/legal/systemic barriers in order to reap some of the otherwise captured value), this would be better understood.

lol - one way or another the buyer is paying for it. If sellers operate at a loss for too long, they won't have that thing to sell any more :p

Overhead is overhead. Trying to pretty it up with fancy language like "moving wealth around" and "changing captured value" doesn't alter the fundamental economics.

No, they are not.

The consumer price depends only on supply and demand. Fees don't influence none of it, only the cost of the selling party and thus his profit.

This is correct in almost all cases (outside of highly commoditized goods) and it's crazy how people don't understand it. It's why the price of McDonalds doesn't increase when minimum wage does. McDonalds is already charging as much as they can for a Big Mac (where stores averages a 40% margin). Increasing minimum wage means that margin goes down a bit, not that prices increase. If they could increase prices they already would have.

McDonalds is a bit of an outlier here; they have incredibly predictable food costs due to high levels of standardization and a worldwide inventory network. The franchisees have a certain amount of leeway on pricing, some of which is dictated at the corporate level down, but it's based on bona fide expenses.

If local regulatory conditions cause your labor cost to go up, they are absolutely allowed to (and will) raise prices to compensate.

> This is correct in almost all cases (outside of highly commoditized goods) and it's crazy how people don't understand it.

What are you on about? Of course McD will change prices relative to input expenditure. You can even see this across all the countries they serve. If there were to be a significant impact on margin, they can increase prices.

All fees are passed onto customers, that’s how you calculate profit margins.

You're not really right at all. The percentage of fees that are passed on is completely dependent on elasticity.

>All fees are passed onto customers

is not even close to correct.

Most business only absorb the minimum amount of margin loss they can, and for very short terms. No business aims to operate at a loss unless propped up by outside investments.

All businesses will increase prices to maintain the profits they need, up until what the market will bear - which is why taxes will also not end up pushing it too far, the gov isn’t stupid.

Again, it depends on elasticities. Businesses can't just raise prices and expect demand to remain at old levels. People quickly substitute goods and services in the face of price changes. In the case of mcdonalds price increases cause people to cook or eat food that doesn't need to be prepared. In the case of rent, supply is fixed, so landlords are already charging monopoly prices. There is very close to zero wiggle room for landlords to raise prices.

> There is very close to zero wiggle room for landlords to raise prices.

This is disproved very easily by reality - most places have increasing rent YoY. Same goes for house prices.

Because of low supply and large demand, like you say, landlords can charge monopoly prices. Not sure why you claim they don’t go up?

Rental demand in desirable areas keeps going up as wealth inequality increases and yuppies continue to want to live in urban areas.

> This is disproved very easily by reality - most places have increasing rent YoY. Same goes for house prices.

All this proves is that evolving market conditions lead to changes in price. Try charging 2030's market-rate rent in 2021, and see how many offers you get.

Except is does.. and no they do not charge "as much as they can" for the big mac. Prices go up all the time, just in the last year the price of the Big Mac has increased a lot due to input costs, including labor, going up

you are simply wrong

Fast food prices have increased greater than inflation for some time: https://www.delish.com/food/news/a39265/fast-food-menu-price...

Thinking that labor costs do not impact product costs is grossly ignorant.

> Thinking that labor costs do not impact product costs is grossly ignorant.

No one is arguing that labor cost doesn't impact product cost, but the fact is that in general it doesn't impact product price.

Or to put it the other way: can you imagine a business not increasing product price as much as they can, regardless of the product cost, as long as the supply is matched?

If they can increase the price, why would they wait for cost to rise before doing so?

The outcome is that business/landlord already charge as much as they can, and increased cost doesn't change the product price, since they already chareg as much as they can.

You seem to be missing the fundmental problem here

Sure not all prices are infinitely elastic, but if Labor costs out strip the ability to prices to absorb them that do not mean the business simply magically makes them go away, no that business goes bankrupt and wages go to $0.

Owners / Investors demand a return on investment, if the market average is 8%, and business x is only returning 4% why would an investor continue to keep their capital there?

Worse still if inflation is 3% and the business is only returning 2% the investor is LOSING MONEY by keeping their capital in the business, better to cut their losses and move on

This mythical position where by businesses just "absorb the cost" because the prices are not elastic is pure fantasy

So you just reject the field of economics entirely?

Like, lets say that the government adds a 20$ tax/fee on fast food, per burger sold. Clearly McDonalds would no longer be able to sell burgers for 4 dollars.

Thus price would increase. Or supply of burgers would go down (thereby only leaving higher priced burgers in the market).

True, except in this case NY is one of the few places in the world that requires such nonsense.