The City Council approved a bill on Wednesday that would curb a loathed New York City real estate practice: making renters pay thousands of dollars in broker fees.

The City Council overwhelmingly passed a measure to shift the burden of broker fees to landlords. Here’s what that means for renters.

New York City landlords will be required to pay costly broker fees for tenants under a plan approved by the City Council that real estate groups argue will drive up rents and make it harder to find housing in the city.

Mandatory broker fees, an unusual feature of New York City apartment hunting long reviled by renters, will be banned under legislation that passed Wednesday after overcoming fierce backlash from the city's real estate lobby.

The broker fee, long a bane of New York City renters, just got voted out. The New York City Council passed a bill Wednesday requiring landlords to pay fees for brokers they hire to list and show apartments.

During Wednesday’s rally, Ossé credited the Council’s progressive leadership with getting the FARE Act over the finish line. Council member Sandy Nurse, co-chair of the Council’s Progressive Caucus, told the crowd not to listen to “the bullshit that is being said about the progressive movement.”

The New York City Council passed a bill Wednesday to make renting an apartment a little easier. The bill, known as the FARE Act, requires landlords to pay the fee when they hire a real estate broker to market their properties.

Boston is the last major U.S. city to maintain the practice of renter-paid broker fees. Is it time to ban broker fees?

In a City Council hearing on a bill introduced to ban New York’s broker fee structure, Councilmember Chi Ossé described the fee structure as “an exploitative system that exists virtually nowhere else.” In Boston, legislation that would’ve banned the practice failed to advance earlier this year in the Massachusetts State Senate.