The one really great thing about renting in Philly, according to a Boston transplant

The Philadelphia Superiority Complex is an occasional series of highly opinionated takes about why Philadelphia is better than other cities.

As I began in earnest my search for a Philadelphia apartment recently, I steeled myself for a tradition I assumed to be as East Coast as unnecessary honking and an unhealthy animosity toward outsiders.

I’m speaking, of course, about the broker fee.

As a native Midwesterner and perpetual renter who has spent the past decade living in Boston, I’d come to view broker fees as an inescapable part of big-city life.

For the uninitiated, broker fees are a lot like extortion payments. Here’s how it would go in Boston: A so-called apartment broker — to this day I couldn’t tell you what a broker actually is — meets you at an available apartment, unlocks the door, and stands there while you give yourself a brief tour of the unit. In exchange for this white-glove service, and the privilege of renting the apartment, you pay the broker a one-time, non-refundable fee typically equal to one month’s rent. In Boston, where the average rent for a one-bedroom apartments sits at around $3,500, this is no small thing.

Making matters worse, the Boston brokers always seem to be finance-bros-in-training, arriving to these brief showings in Lexuses or BMWs, hair meticulously styled and dressed head to toe in Brooks Brothers.

How refreshing it has been, then, to discover that broker fees just ... don’t actually exist here?

Not once since I began responding to online apartment postings have I been asked to hand a stranger a $3,500 check in exchange for arranging a two-minute tour. I haven’t yet received a torrent of unwanted text messages from guys named Brock or Beau, demanding to know the earliest possible moment I can schedule a viewing.

And from what I can gather, I’m not going to.

As one longtime Philadelphian explained it to me recently, “There is a beauty in Philadelphia that no matter how cool it’s trying to be, it is never desirable enough to warrant something like brokers fees.”

It’s been a true revelation.

(In Boston’s defense, Massachusetts legislators recently passed a measure mandating that landlords can no longer require tenants to pay a broker fee. Of course, that doesn’t give me back the thousands of dollars I would’ve otherwise put into my retirement fund or, more likely, Uber Eats and Nerf machine guns.)

Which is not to say, certainly, that things here are perfect. An increasing number of Philly renters are cost-burdened. And the city recently ranked among the nation’s least affordable for apartment renters, according to one online real estate brokerage firm.

And as someone who is at the very beginning of the process, I’m sure there will be more disappointment in store.

I’m preparing for an upcoming weekend of apartment tours in Philly, and I have no illusions about how it’s likely to go. I’m imagining a couple days of drab leasing offices and hidden-fee horrors, one-sided rental agreements and a good ol’-fashioned scam or two.

Fine.

If it means not handing a half-month’s salary over to a smug 25-year-old in wingtips, well, then, I’m OK with all of it.

Good on ya, Philadelphia.