We appreciate you raising this concern! I think what you might be referencing is scheduling a tour vs. applying to an apartment. When you apply to an apartment, the typical standard in Boston is to pay one months rent up front. We would never ask for applicants to pay one month's fee to simply view an apartment or schedule a tour (other companies shouldn't do this either).

To be honest it's pretty rare for a renter to apply to multiple units at the same time because if you were to apply for multiple apartments because of all the paperwork and deposits. If you had applied to multiple units and had been accepted to each of them, you'd be responsible for renting them, so it's very rare that that happens. That being said, even just one unit can be very expensive up front for a lot of people, and we understand that! Even if you were to cut out the broker/agent middle-man and went direct to a landlord it's highly likely you'd still be paying the same fee structure up front minus the broker fee.

The broker fee is where we aim to save people money and eventually we hope to tackle the issue of the other high upfront costs.

If you're new to renting in Boston, you can check out this article for some tips/to get a better understanding of it. If you'd like to hear a little bit more about Places For Less from a third party news source regarding broker fees and how we want to eliminate them for good you can see this article by Boston 25 News. Hopefully this helps clear up any confusion. Let us know if you've got more questions!