Boston Broker-Fee Index — No-Fee Rate by Neighborhood
How many Boston listings charge no broker fee — and which neighborhoods give renters the most choice? We track the share of Spot Easy listings with a stated fee that carry no broker fee, updated monthly from verified active listings.
↻ Updated monthly · data as of July 2026
As of August 1, 2025, Massachusetts law bars landlords from passing their broker's fee to tenants — making no-fee-to-the-renter increasingly the norm. This index tracks how that shift is showing up in listings advertised across Greater Boston.
When a fee is charged, it's typically about one month's rent — the metro median one-bedroom is $2,750.
Right now about six in ten listings don't specify a fee. We leave those out rather than guess — every figure here is based only on listings that state one, 40% of active Spot Easy listings. Coverage varies a lot by neighborhood, so we show it on every row below. Note the scope: 96% of that stated-fee data comes from listings agents enter directly on Spot Easy, because syndicated feeds almost never carry the field.
What the data shows
- No-fee listings are most common — among Spot Easy listings with a stated fee — in Oak Square (91.0%), Boston Downtown (90.2%), Riverside (88.7%).
- Broker fees are most prevalent in East Boston (49.2%) and Coolidge Corner (53.5%), where a smaller share of stated-fee listings carry no fee.
- Greater Boston overall: 79.4% of stated-fee Spot Easy listings have no broker fee, across the 40% of listings that disclose their fee status.
"Boston's shift toward no-fee rentals is one of the clearest market signals we track. Neighborhood-level data helps renters know exactly where to focus their search."
— Joel Mundele, CEO, Spot Easy · [email protected]No-fee share by neighborhood
Among listings with a stated fee. Sorted by no-fee share. We publish a neighborhood only when at least 50 listings state a fee across at least 8 buildings, so no single building drives the rate. The "share that stated a fee" column shows what portion of each neighborhood's listings the rate is based on — highlighted where that's under 25%. Cambridge, Somerville and Brookline are reported at city level, and their sub-neighborhoods are listed separately as well — those rows overlap their city's row rather than adding to it.
| Neighborhood | City | Share of stated-fee listings with no broker fee | Share that stated a fee | Median 1BR rent |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Oak Square | Boston | 91.0% | 96% | — |
| Boston Downtown | Boston | 90.2% | 51% | $3,263 |
| Riverside | Cambridge | 88.7% | 47% | — |
| Brighton | Boston | 88.7% | 60% | $2,400 |
| Allston | Boston | 87.6% | 56% | $2,380 |
| Jamaica Plain | Boston | 87.1% | 28% | $2,500 |
| Spring Hill | Somerville | 85.7% | 46% | — |
| Aspinwall Hill | Brookline | 84.5% | 98% | — |
| North Brookline | Brookline | 83.4% | 99% | — |
| South Boston | Boston | 82.9% | 25% | $3,000 |
| Dorchester | Boston | 81.4% | 19% | $2,500 |
| Boston | — | 81.3% | 45% | $2,700 |
| Longwood | Brookline | 80.3% | 76% | — |
| Fenway | Boston | 80.1% | 44% | $2,800 |
| Neighborhood Nine | Cambridge | 79.0% | 53% | — |
| Beacon Hill | Boston | 78.5% | 47% | $2,870 |
| Mid Cambridge | Cambridge | 77.5% | 36% | — |
| Roxbury | Boston | 76.8% | 55% | $2,550 |
| Cambridge | — | 76.7% | 28% | $2,900 |
| Somerville | — | 75.3% | 33% | $2,600 |
| Back Bay | Boston | 72.7% | 46% | $3,150 |
| Brookline | — | 72.5% | 35% | $2,995 |
| North End | Boston | 72.2% | 39% | $3,013 |
| Chestnut Hill | Brookline | 71.4% | 22% | — |
| South End | Boston | 70.4% | 23% | $3,025 |
| Corey Hill | Brookline | 69.6% | 99% | — |
| Mission Hill | Boston | 65.1% | 57% | $2,575 |
| East Cambridge | Cambridge | 63.0% | 19% | — |
| Coolidge Corner | Brookline | 53.5% | 10% | $3,000 |
| East Boston | Boston | 49.2% | 42% | $2,525 |
⤓ Download this data (CSV) — free to republish with attribution.
Methodology
Each listing's broker-fee field is set by the listing agent. This month about six in ten active listings leave it blank or marked "unknown." That gap is almost entirely a data-plumbing artifact, not agents declining to answer: only 2.8% of listings arriving through third-party syndication feeds carry a fee value at all, against 93.3% of listings agents enter directly on Spot Easy. We exclude the blanks entirely — we don't assume they do or don't charge a fee — so the Index reflects only the 40% of listings that state a fee structure. In practice that makes this a measure of Spot Easy's agent-entered listings, which supply 96% of the stated-fee data. We think that is the honest way to describe it: a well-covered read on the inventory agents list with us — 93.3% of it discloses a fee — rather than a census of every apartment in Greater Boston. Disclosure coverage varies by neighborhood, so we publish it on every row. The correlation between a neighborhood's coverage and its no-fee rate is currently moderate (r = +0.36) — neighborhoods where more listings disclose a fee tend to show slightly higher no-fee rates — so the neighborhood-to-neighborhood comparison holds, but rows with low coverage deserve more caution. The headline share should be read as "of listings that disclose a fee," not "of all apartments." As with any self-reported marketplace data, we can't verify every agent entered the field correctly — treat these figures as directional, not exact.
Since August 1, 2025, Massachusetts law prohibits landlords from requiring tenants to pay the landlord's broker fee — a renter pays a fee only if they separately hire their own agent. These figures reflect fee structures as advertised on listings, not a judgment about any individual listing's compliance.
We also exclude drafts, admin-removed listings, and asking rents below $500 or above $20,000, and publish a neighborhood only when at least 50 listings state a fee across at least 8 distinct buildings — so a single building's inventory can't drive a neighborhood's rate. Greater Boston = Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Medford, Newton, Everett, Quincy, Watertown, Malden. Updated monthly.
Press or custom data: [email protected].
These figures are free to republish with attribution to Spot Easy, under a CC BY 4.0 license.