In Brazil, the rental broker’s fee is owed by whoever hired the broker. The agency showing you the apartment was hired by the owner, not by you, and the tenancy law puts both the intermediation fee and the agency’s management fee on the landlord — including the cost of screening you and your guarantor. It becomes your bill in one situation only: when you are the one who hired a broker.
Everything below follows from that one question: who hired this broker?
Why English-language guides tell you to budget a broker fee in Brazil
Who hired the broker is not the question English-language advice tends to answer. If you searched this in English, you were probably told to set aside an agent’s fee of roughly one month’s rent. That advice is imported, not Brazilian.
Hold the dates side by side. New York City moved to “whoever hires the broker pays” only with the FARE Act, which took effect on 11 June 2025; Massachusetts followed on 1 August 2025; England banned letting-agent fees charged to tenants in 2019. Brazil wrote the rule into Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato, its tenancy law, in 1991 — thirty-four years before New York City got there. The imported expectation is what makes the charge stick: a newcomer who has budgeted for it pays without asking.
What a tenant in Brazil does pay, by law
Even with the corretagem — the broker’s commission — off your side of the bill, renting in Brazil still costs money up front. The rent is yours, and so are the condomínio charges — the building’s monthly running costs. The property tax (IPTU) and the fire-insurance premium can be yours as well, because Article 22, VIII of the Lei do Inquilinato carries a rider that lets a contract shift them to the tenant, if it says so expressly — a permission that item VII, the one covering the broker’s fee, was written without. If your guarantee is rent insurance, the premium is yours under Article 23, XI; if it is a cash deposit, Article 38, §2 caps it at three months’ rent, and that money comes back to you. Those are real, lawful costs — unlike a commission for a broker you never hired.
What Brazil’s tenancy law puts on the landlord: Article 22, VII
Long-term residential rentals in Brazil run on Lei 8.245/1991, the Lei do Inquilinato — the statute behind every article named so far. Article 22 lists the landlord’s obligations, and item VII is the one that decides this bill:
“Art. 22. O locador é obrigado a: [...] VII - pagar as taxas de administração imobiliária, se houver, e de intermediações, nestas compreendidas as despesas necessárias à aferição da idoneidade do pretendente ou de seu fiador.”
In plain English: the landlord pays the property-management fee, if there is one, and the intermediation fees — and inside “intermediation” the statute expressly includes the cost of checking that the tenant and their guarantor are good for the rent.
The next item, VIII, puts the property taxes and the fire-insurance premium on the landlord as well — and then ends with the rider item VII lacks: “salvo disposição expressa em contrário no contrato”, unless the contract expressly says otherwise. The drafters knew how to let a contract move a cost onto the tenant; they wrote that permission into item VIII, one line down, and did not write it into item VII.
Article 43, I then makes it a contravenção penal — a minor offence, a step below a crime in Brazilian law — to demand “quantia ou valor além do aluguel e encargos permitidos” from the tenant in connection with the lease, punishable by a fine of three to twelve months’ rent payable to the tenant. Whether it applies depends on the case, so nothing here is automatic — but questioning the charge is not asking a favour.
Corretagem, taxa de administração, taxa de cadastro: three Brazilian rental charges people confuse
Three separate charges land on a Brazilian rental cost sheet, and Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato answers all three in one line.
| Charge | What it pays for | Whose cost, by law |
|---|---|---|
| Corretagem (intermediação) | Bringing owner and tenant together and closing the lease | Landlord — Art. 22, VII |
| Taxa de administração | Running the property month to month while the lease lasts | Landlord — Art. 22, VII |
| Taxa de cadastro | Checking your documents, income and guarantor before approval | Landlord — named inside Art. 22, VII |
Corretagem and intermediação are not two charges: intermediação is the statute’s own word for the commission. Every service in that table is performed for the owner, who wanted the apartment let and who now collects the rent.
Rental brokerage in Brazil is a regulated profession, and CRECI is the register
The intermediary behind a Brazilian rental fee is no informal middleman. Real-estate brokerage is a regulated profession under Lei 6.530/1978 and Decreto 81.871/1978, both of which name locação — renting — explicitly. To broker a rental lawfully, you have to be on the register of your state’s regional council, the CRECI. Brokering one without that registration is a contravenção penal under Article 47 of Decreto-Lei 3.688/1941 — again a minor offence, not a crime.
So an agency billing you the corretagem is a registered professional invoicing you for a mandate you never gave. Owners sit outside all of this: letting out a property you own needs no registration, and there is no commission to owe.
When the broker’s fee on a Brazilian rental really is yours
The rule — whoever hired the broker pays — contains its own exception. Go to a broker, ask them to find you a home on your terms, and rent one of the places they bring you: the commission is yours. That is a brokerage contract under the Civil Code, Articles 722 to 725, and it has nothing to do with Article 22. The price is whatever you agree in advance. CRECI-PB, the regional council in Paraíba, publishes a reference fee table that covers a tenant-side mandate too — a guide, not a tariff.
A second carve-out is structural: apart-hotels and hotéis-residência sit outside the Lei do Inquilinato altogether, under Article 1, sole paragraph, point (a), item 4. Short stays under a temporada contract do not sit outside it, though they are often described that way — those rules govern rent paid in advance and the guarantee, and say nothing about the intermediation fee.
Rental platform “service fees” in Brazil: not corretagem, and not a closed argument
Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato governs the intermediation fee, not every charge a Brazilian rental platform can invent — and one large platform has built its model on that distinction. QuintoAndar’s published terms say the owner pays the brokerage commission and the administration fee. The tenant pays a separate monthly Taxa de Serviço for digital services rendered, in the document’s own wording, exclusively to the tenant. Those same terms say that fee does not pay for the property administration the owner already covers. The company’s help centre adds, in the present tense, that the fee need not appear in the contract.
Whether that fee survives is being litigated. Rio de Janeiro’s prosecutors filed a public civil action over these fees in September 2022, and a first-instance ruling in April 2024 barred them and ordered refunds. The state court granted suspensive effect days later, and as of 24 June 2026 that ruling was still on hold, with the fee being charged in the meantime. Anyone telling you these fees have been ruled illegal in Brazil is describing a suspended decision. Whatever the charge is called, ask who the service was rendered to.
How to tell, from a Brazilian rental ad, who hired the broker
Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato puts the intermediation fee on the landlord, so your bill turns on whether the broker in front of you was working for the property or working for you. One question about the ad settles it: was this listing already published before you made contact? If it was, the broker was engaged to let that property, the mandate came from the owner’s side, and item VII sends the corretagem there with it. You become a broker’s own client only by hiring one — a separate contract, on terms agreed in advance — and replying to an advertisement is not that.
The markers are on the page. An agency ad is published under a company name, usually alongside other properties from the same office, and a CRECI number in it is the state registration a rental intermediary has to hold — proof that a registered professional is involved, not proof of who engaged them. An owner’s ad is published by an individual and carries no such number. Which of the two you meet depends on where you look: when we counted who publishes long-term rentals, almost every ad on a large agency-fed portal came from a company and most carried a CRECI number, while on a general classifieds portal — one that says outright whether an ad comes from an owner or an agency — ads posted directly by owners were a small share of the total (the portal-by-portal breakdown is in a separate article). Either way the fee follows the mandate, not the viewing.
What to do when the corretagem is on your Brazilian cost sheet
All the leverage is before you sign, and most of it is a matter of writing things down.
- Ask for an itemised cost sheet before you agree to a signing date. Every line needs a name and a number; a rounded “entry fee” is where a passed-through corretagem hides.
- Ask the question that decides the bill: who hired this broker? Get that answer in writing — by message, not over the phone.
- Point to the article. Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato places intermediation, property management and tenant screening on the landlord, so ask for the line to be dropped or absorbed. An applicant who has already produced the documents the agency asked for is negotiating from strength.
If you have already paid, keep the receipt, the cost sheet and the messages, and put them in front of a qualified Brazilian professional; nothing here is automatic. None of this is about going around the agency, which is a registered professional doing real work for whoever engaged it — the only question is whose invoice it is.
Frequently asked questions
Who pays the broker fee when renting an apartment in Brazil?
The landlord, in the ordinary case. Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato puts intermediation, property management and the screening of the tenant and their guarantor on the person letting the property — who also hired the agency.
What is a taxa de cadastro, and whose cost is it?
The fee for checking your documents, income and guarantor before approval — exactly the cost Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato names inside the intermediation the landlord pays. Billed to you, it is that same cost under another name.
Can a Brazilian rental platform charge the tenant a monthly service fee?
Some do, structuring it as a different product from the corretagem that Article 22, VII of the Lei do Inquilinato puts on the landlord. On that model the owner pays the brokerage and management fees, while the tenant pays for digital services the platform describes as rendered to them alone. It is contested rather than settled — a 2024 ruling against such fees in Rio was suspended on appeal, and as of 24 June 2026 the fee was still being charged.
When does a tenant in Brazil actually owe a broker a commission?
When the tenant is the one who hired them. Engage a broker on your own terms, rent something they find, and that is a brokerage contract under Articles 722 to 725 of the Civil Code: the fee is yours.
Do you need a CRECI registration to rent out a property in Brazil?
To do it as an intermediary, yes: Lei 6.530/1978 and Decreto 81.871/1978 make real-estate brokerage a regulated profession and name locação explicitly. An owner letting their own property needs no registration.
Is the broker fee different on a short-term temporada rental in Brazil?
No. The temporada rules let the landlord ask for rent in advance and for a guarantee, but say nothing about the intermediation fee. The real carve-out is different: apart-hotels and hotéis-residência fall outside the Lei do Inquilinato entirely.
This guide is informational and is not legal advice: every contract has its own clauses, so take your situation to a qualified Brazilian professional. RemRent is an aggregator that brings together rental listings already published on other portals. We are not an agency and we are not brokers: we do not act as intermediaries in any rental, and we take no commission on any deal — which is why we have no fee of our own to defend here. Updated August 2026.
Knowing whose bill the corretagem is matters only if you can see the market it came from. That is what we are building: rentals from Brazil’s major portals in one search, the same home collapsed into a single card instead of three. That way you can compare what a listing really costs before anyone hands you a cost sheet. Leave your email below to hear when it opens.