After years of personally experiencing the hardships of renting an apartment in NYC, the founder of SkipBrokers.com spent a great deal of time and money developing a way for New Yorkers to avoid apartment brokers’ expensive fees when looking for apartments to rent in N.Y.

Initially, SkipBrokers.com provided New Yorkers with their list of various landlords around Manhattan who did not charge a broker’s fee. Rather than paying a broker thousands of dollars, NYC apartment hunters were paying SkipBrokers.com a one-time fee of $30 and contacting landlords directly. This was how SkipBrokers.com was created and later referred to by many as the “Zagat of Manhattan management companies”. The concept was simple and effective as it helped thousands of New Yorkers find apartments without having to pay a broker by contacting landlords directly. However, although SkipBrokers.com’s list proved to be effective, it was also labor intensive since many calls along with visiting many websites were needed in order to determine apartment availabilities. After soliciting for and listening to customer feedback, SkipBrokers.com transformed their manual intensive list into a robust and automated application allowing apartment hunters to search for the most up-to-date, no fee apartments in NY. In addition to SkipBrokers.com increasing its capabilities, customers also saw an increase in its fee as it peaked to $120. While other websites claiming to provide similar services were charging upwards of $300, SkipBrokers.com decided to make a turn in the opposite direction by not charging apartment hunters at all to use their service.

As of 2008, Skipbrokers.com made its services free of charge to all users looking to find apartments without having to deal with expensive brokers. SkipBrokers.com is now a free online community that continues to staff people keeping their listings updated. SkipBrokers now allows every apartment hunter to contact no-fee landlords for free and has everyone helping one another. “It was real easy to get caught up in the industry trend and continue to charge more for our service. We had to remember our initial vision of making it easier and less expensive to find no broker fee apartments in New York”, said SkipBrokers.com CEO, Paul Salamanca. “The only way to realistically accomplish our goal is to build a community where everyone chips in without putting a price tag on helpful information.”