We previously discussed why brokers are necessary in the New York City apartment rental scene – they make deals happen and save everyone a lot of time. Unfortunately, some bad brokers give everyone in the business a negative reputation. Over the past few months, we have significantly stepped up our enforcement efforts and actively suspend or permanent ban agents who intentionally post misleading or false advertisements.
With over a million active rental and sales listings across RentHop and RealtyHop, our small team obviously relies a lot on systematic algorithms to uncover bad actors. We also manually review the most egregious cases to determine whether to permanently bad an agent. Below is one particularly bad example:
*An actual conversation excerpt between an agent (“You”), and a renter, name changed
We can not tolerate agents who purposefully lie or mislead renters. It harms not only the agent’s reputation, but that of their brokerage firm, RentHop, and all hard-working, honest licensed real estate agents in our community.
On top of that, once outed, the agent was rude and unprofessional to our renter, who obviously did not continue to schedule an appointment. Once our support team uncovered the conversation, we suspended the account immediately.
Editor’s Note: We updated this article to enhance readability.
