Hundreds of real estate brokers were spilling off the sidewalk and into the street around New York City Hall. “There will be more,” broker Graig Linn assured me, venti iced Starbucks coffee in hand. “It’s 9 a.m. That’s tough for brokers.”

Even that early, all the big real estate agencies were represented. Sotheby’s brokers were there in matching shirts. Douglas Elliman brokers were there in matching shirts. Bond brokers were there in matching hats. Corcoran brokers were there in matching hats and matching shirts. Everyone in attendance was gathered to object to a New York City Council bill that would save tenants from having to pay fees to real estate brokers who were hired by landlords—i.e., brokers that tenants did not hire. In other words, it was a rally for keeping the fees on the backs of tenants.

New York City is one of only two cities in America that allow this practice, and during a time of skyrocketing housing costs, it has become an increasingly loathed, hard-to-explain payment—one that usually falls between 10 to 15 percent of the annual lease amount to the broker who shows the apartment. For example, if you rent a two-bedroom apartment in Brooklyn for $3,800 a month, you can expect to pay a $7,000 fee to someone who maybe only let you in to see the place and then handed you a lease to sign. The New York City Council bill, called Intro 360 and spearheaded by Bedford–Stuyvesant Councilman Chi Ossé, would force landlords, not tenants, to pay the brokers those landlords hire.

This has infuriated brokers—who, not incidentally, share a muscled-up lobbying group with landlords.

The Real Estate Board of New York and the New York State Association of Realtors issued a call to arms, and the industry folk came in crowds, young and handsome and coiffed, wearing their fair share of gingham. There were lots of high heels for a street protest, and suspiciously few forehead wrinkles. There were signs. “This bill will kill my livelihood!” read one, the lettering in all caps. “Agents are tenants too,” read another.

They wore threatening apparel: “Broker fee bill? Tenants will pay the price,” warned one T-shirt, underwritten by the Corcoran logo. They chanted: “Hey hey, ho ho, Intro 360 has got to go.” They also chanted the word no, a lot. “Landlords cannot pay fees. It’s not in their budgets and they won’t do it,” yelled one speaker-broker, sans microphone, to the crowd. “No!” the crowd yelled back. “No! No!” A truck honked—did he know he was honking for broker fees?—and everyone cheered. There was much talk of........

© Slate