Cambridge City Council Considers Home Rule Petition To End Broker Fees

Cambridge city councilors will consider formal action to encourage the state-level elimination of broker fees, after legal experts saiad in a meeting on Tuesday that the city is constrained in its ability to end the fees on its own.

The hearing comes almost three months after the City Council unanimously passed a policy order to direct the Neighborhood and Long-Term Planning Committee to explore the feasibility of eliminating forced broker fees in Cambridge to combat the city’s housing affordability crisis.

Broker fees are paid to a real estate professional for functioning as the middleman between a landlord and a renter. These professionals are frequently hired by the landlord but are often paid by the renter, which many consider unfair.

A legal expert at the meeting said that based on legal precedent, a court would likely find that Cambridge alone does not have the authority to regulate the relationship between landlords and tenants without permission from the Massachusetts state legislature.

“The city can’t enact laws that govern civil relationships, and the cases that have interpreted what that means have said that the ordinary landlord-tenant relationship is a civil relationship” Acting City Solicitor Megan Bayer said.

“What the city can do is seek special legislation,” she added. “So submit a home rule petition to the legislature looking for special legislation.”

Despite the general support from councilors for the proposal, Councilor Catherine “Cathie” Zusy pointed out that the hearing lacked testimony from landlords or brokers, who will be directly affected by the policy change.

The City of Cambridge will consider filing a policy order requesting that the city manager direct the city solicitor — who represents the city in legal matters — “to file a home rule petition with respect to elimination of broker fees,” an action that Boston and Somerville have already taken, Councilor Sumbul Siddiqui said in an interview.

In the time since, Massachusetts Governor Maura T. Healey ’92 has signaled her intention to include the policy in her initial proposal for the FY-2026 budget.

Though it is not yet certain if eliminating broker fees would clear the state legislature, Susan Hegel, a housing attorney at Greater Boston Legal Services, said it was likely to ultimately pass. She cited support from the governor, housing advocates, and some favorable reception in the House.

Other councilors present acknowledged the statewide effort to eliminate the fees, and called their home rule petition a means of registering and building support for the measure.

“I’m planning to introduce a home rule petition to allow Cambridge to end forced broker’s fees and resolutions in support of the state legislation on that topic and around housing junk fees,” Councilor Jivan Sobrinho-Wheeler wrote in an emailed statement.

“While we think there will be an elimination of broker fees, it’s important to do the home rule in the meantime, so that there's support for that,” Siddiqui said.

Other city staff members also said that the proposal was likely to pass at the state level — but that final passage could still take more than a year. The Massachusetts legislature is notorious for passing its state budget well after the start of the fiscal year, having done so for 14 consecutive years as of 2024.

Both filing a home rule petition and formally supporting the legislation would help codify support for the broker fee legislation, councilors noted.

—Staff writer Diego García Moreno can be reached at diego.garciamoreno@thecrimson.com.

—Staff Writer Summer E. Rose can be reached at summer.rose@thecrimson.com.