A landlord has a choice to do the work themselves, have a staff, or hire experts (brokers, electricians, plumbers, etc). If the law forbids a landlord to charge for brokers (as it does for electricians and plumbers), it just increases the rent. As we see in NYC as they outlawed charging broker fees, rents went up to compensate. I'd be smiling ear to ear as a NY landlord, getting to raise the rent and keeping the excess each year the tenant stays.

The best part for consumers is if they want to pay the broker fee, they can, and it results them paying less over time. If they don't want to pay a broker fee, they can find someplace else, may end up paying more over time. It's a personal decision. Luckily for landlords, people are willing to pay extra to have the landlord pay the broker or their staff, or themselves.

Economist is a 9 letter word meaning cheap. If there is a way to get something cheap, I'll tell you; the law forcibly passing the broker fees to landlords isn't the way to do it.

Literally said I'm not a broker nor a landlord. I just understand economics. Cheaper now doesn't mean cheaper later.

Those mom and pops are usually a great deal here. We rented a house (garage, 3 bed 2 full bath, living room, family room, dining room, backyard) for $500 less than we could get a 2 bedroom for in a building further from the T station. Who cares if I had to pay a broker fee if I was saving $6k a year; was there 2 years, saved $12k, not to mention had a way bigger place, better parking situation, outdoor space, etc. Just no gym, but I could walk to a gym, but also had plenty of space so I bought an elliptical and rack.

If a landlord is a large company, they don't need a realtor, they have staff. Sounds like something similar to where you live when you mention a "building". If a landlord is the 90 year old man or the 60 year old woman who owns one or two two-families (the two people I rented from), they hire experts to do everything as needed rather than having a staff, such as an electrician, plumber or realtor. You can chose to rent from those people and pay the fee, or large companies with staff, depending on what you want. You can go to an overpriced grocery store with personal attention where you get a cashier or the big Walmarts who have eliminated cashiers except for the handicapped register. We have options, but getting rid of realtors would probably just incentivize that 90 year old man to sell his properties to a large corporation who have staff to deal with vacancies.

You are right, they could not use a real estate agent and get away with not paying the fee. There will always be some tenant acquisition cost, either a broker, advertisement listings, a management company, a vacancy allowance, or some combination.

NY law recently shifted broker fees onto the landlord rather than the tenant. Rents in NYC increased at a faster pace (33%) in the last 2 years (when the law was passed) than Boston (25%), despite NY losing a higher population than Boston. That 8% difference on a $2500 a month apartment is $2400, basically that broker fee, and that person in NY now has to pay that $2400 every single year rather than just when they moved in. Getting rid of broker fees in NYC didn't save the tenant, it actually costs them more now.

Yes. Well, I haven't seen a $5,000 fee; it's been 4 years since I looked at apartments, I don't know maybe they are going that high now, maybe those are just bigger than my budget. But let's take something in the middle, $3600. If you were a landlord signing a one year lease, and you had to pay that $3600 in fees, how would u do it? You'd add $300 a month to the rent, right? Maybe you'd pay $1200 of it yourself and add $200 a month to the rent. If I rented that apartment from you for 3 years, I'd have paid $7200 extra in rent rather than paying $3600 right to the broker. It's paying for free shipping, people don't want to see that shipping cost, they'd pay more for an item to avoid it.

(Not a broker myself nor a landlord, just an economist) The broker fee actually lowers the total cost of renting for those who stay in a place a while. A landlord covering the brokers fee, has to add it to the rent, and you pay it to the landlord every year. If it's not included in the rent, you only pay it when you move. So you may pay $1200 up front but starting year two you save that $100 a month every month going forward. If you stay in one place 4 years, that broker fee saved you close to $4k.

I had an economics class where we studied that people will pay more for an item if it has free shipping, even if the item+shipping is cheaper elsewhere. Kind of the same principle with brokers fees.

Make sure it doesn't have resistance heat if you pay utilities. That can cost more than a used car to operate.

That was my first thought, but really just the American cars are 1950s. They did get some Soviet cars and those friendly with the government have some Mercedes. But the rest of the country is just run down old buildings or Soviet era buildings, some newer ones going in too. It's not at all 1950s living.

I'd be curious to see if there is a difference between on time payments and late payments between paper or online billing. I know I've paid my utility bill late due to plain old forgot about it. Perhaps they account for that a bit.

I had a fantastic dentist when I lived in NY up until 4 years ago. $49 for a cleaning only, no exam, it was awesome, I would go every 4 months and get just one exam per year. Now in MA, the cheapest I could find for a cleaning was $125.

I had oil which is much costlier than natural gas, my heat pump was $28k before rebate (2400sqft house). With solar panels and all the math in the world, I'll get my money back by year 27. If you get a heat pump, get it for the comfort and whatever being green is worth for you; don't get it to save money.

Just note in the savings... depending on where you live, where I live I believe the gas rate is $2.17 a therm, electricity with a good contract from a third party is 28¢, if you are getting a heat pump with a 4 COP, you will save only about 15% of your natural gas costs. If you have National Grid's rack rate, you are paying substantially more to run geothermal than gas, with the breakeven at around 32¢. Not saying you shouldn't get one or anything, but don't factor in savings on Natural Gas into the equation, as electricity has the potential to be more costly than your current gas.

>If you are having trouble now just wait until we actually get some snow.

Ah, flashbacks of 2014, the year of 3 ft storms every week without melting in the middle, thankful we had one roommate without a car we could pile snow 8ft high in their space.

I have a Mitsubishi Hyperheat, a floor unit and wall unit on the 1st floor and ducted in the second floor. I already had the ducts on the second floor from A/C, which it is nice to have the ducts, providing direct heating in the bathrooms, walk-in closets, and hallway, that I wouldn't have gotten in an all ductless system.

Of course, the one thing to watch out for currently is that you get a good electric rate locked in. If you have the standard National Grid rate (and even some deregulated suppliers), of 48¢, that's more expensive than oil to operate! I have a good rate, 12.69¢ supply, which I'll break even around year 17, as long as it makes it that far!

I have to say, having taken an Uber in many states and countries, in MA, having a plate on the front and back is much easier to find the car! I hate in one plate states, a white RAV4... Oh goodie there are three in a row! Lol.

Inspections... The places without inspections you see more cars missing a brake light than the ones with all 3 lights. I don't love a nanny state but I do like knowing when the person in front of me is stopping so I can too.

Electric heat, that's about right. I used 1200kwh of heat alone last month, bigger house though, using a heat pump (which would have used about 1/3 of what an electric baseboard used), and my thermostat set to 64° the 11 days I was home and 55° the rest of the time.

Plus the rate is not 33¢, that's just supply, with delivery and MassSave it's almost 48¢.

Most people with baseboard keep their heat in the low 60s or even high 50s.

Get a heat pump for next year. Get Inspire as your electric provider, if you sign today it may start in February for your March bill.

January is looking to be a little colder and less sunny than it was in December, so if you don't change your thermostat, your bill will be about 15%-20% higher.

"Oil companies" are just energy companies. They will provide whatever energy we want. I have Shell as my electricity supplier, supplying 100% solar energy (of course with offsets since we don't have 24 hr sunshine in MA).

Texas failed from not having enough natural gas capacity to meet the high electric heating use on a cold day, not that the natural gas itself failed. It's the same issue we can run into in MA if we don't start approving these peaker plants. If we have more heat pumps, we need more natural gas power plants as a backup to heat homes when the sun isnt shining (night time, snowy days, cloudy days like we've had this week) and when the wind isn't blowing (we won't have the issues of windmills freezing like Texas did because we have heated windmills unlike warmer climates that have cheaper windmills without heaters). The only way green energy works is with natural gas peaker plants; anyone who is against peaker plants, is against green energy.

I have a heat pump and an ev. Last month, I was only in town about 11 days, so I had my heat turned way down and didn't charge my car very much - in fact, I drove my gas car mostly those days since gasoline is cheaper than electric right now, and there was some time I used my oil boilers just to keep the pipes from freezing.

I used 1594 kWh and generated 520kWh from my solar, which annually produces 80% of my needs. If I were home and had the heat higher, and charged my car a little more I would have used nearly 2000kWh, producing only 25% of what I used in December. By the way, before my heat pump and EV, my home used an average of 354kWh in December, so my solar panels would have covered my use, and still had some left over for my EV.

In July, I on average would use 1192 kWh, and produce 1825kWh.

Having an EV doesn't "balance" the year, it actually makes winter electricity more expensive, when they need fossil fuels to generate the electricity that my solar panels aren't making in the winter, but my heat pump needs. More expensive winter electricity means less people getting heat pumps and EVs.

The hard part is Net Metering. In our northern state, you make most of your solar in summer, but with a heat pump, most of your use is in Winter. This will continue to raise winter electric rates. When you net meter, you gain the dollar value of the electricity in summer, but then have to pay the actual cost in Winter. Currently, with National Grid, The summer rate (minus the MassSave, since MassSave won't give you credits), was 22¢, and the winter is near 48¢, meaning you pay the grid (plus MassSave) 26¢ for power in winter, plus your cost of solar, depending on financing and such anywhere from 10-20¢, we'll use my personal 13¢ for my panels over 25 years, and you've paid 39¢ for electricity in winter, which is still higher than nearly any state. If you look at another comment I made above, pellets cost the equivalent of 21¢ of electricity, so 39¢ per kwh to run a heat pump is just crazy.

High efficiency wood stoves don't put the smoke inside the house, they have heat exchangers that put the heat into household air and blows it back in.

On the price, a bag of pellets is $6.40, providing 264,000btu in an 80% efficient pellet stove - that's 41,250 btus per dollar. With my Mitsubishi heat pump, the seasonal average is 8940 btu per kwh, which means I need electric to be under 21.7¢ to be cheaper than pellets. Standard rate from national grid is a hair shy of 48¢, even my super cheap supply rate that I locked in the day national grid announced their increases, my rate is 26.5¢, and I don't think that will be available next year.

I have a heat pump, I love my heat pump. I also have multiple backup options for electricity and heat. I'm not under any false impression that more electric use in the winter in MA won't continue to raise costs and destabilize the grid; it certainly will. Analyzing solar production in our northern state in the winter time, seeing our anti-peaker plant mentality, regular folk are headed for rough times in an all-heat pump and green energy environment. As a two-income-no-kid and heavy saver couple, we can afford whatever challenges these policies bring... The average person can't and that's who I feel bad for.

I grew up with M&Fee bank, also known as Muggers & Thieves.

Capital One has been awesome for 7 years.

That's how they sell their plans, I didn't buy from a rep, but I wouldn't hesitate to. They were very easy to cancel, and I got them at 9.5¢ when national grid was 14.5¢ last year. Your energy company still delivers the energy, just at the rate established by the supplier. They have a regular plan or a cool one for people with electric heat that has half priced electricity during 4 winter months.

I had Ambit last year, with no issues changing when their rate was expiring, now I have Inspire. Both have no termination fees. You aren't losing anything, but you do need to stay on top of it. They usually have longer contracts with termination fees so you get a rate that's lower in the winter than national grid but higher in the summer. Most of these rates are abnormally low to get you to join then when your rate expires, you get a higher market rate. As long as you pay attention, watch when National Grid posts their new rate on their website, and know what kind of contract you are signing up for, you'll be good and saving money.