What Would Randy Cohen Do?

I wonder if he’d consider the practice of ripping off brokers a form of civil disobedience:

For some renters, the temptation is just too great.

With a broker’s help, they have found a perfectly suitable apartment. Then, depending on their moral compass, tolerance for risk and financial standing, they may be tempted to double back and try to close the deal alone — thereby saving 15 percent of a year’s rent, the fee typically charged by rental brokers in Manhattan.

With the median rent for a one-bedroom in a doorman building now at $2,450 a month, according to Citi Habitats, that $4,410 fee could buy a fine flat-screen television set.

An informal survey of Manhattan rental agencies confirms that while backdoor maneuvers remain rare, they are growing in what is the tightest rental market in more than a decade. Vacancy rates stand at a microcosmic 0.56 percent, and the number of apartments for which the owner pays the broker’s fee has dwindled. Surging rents are commensurately swelling the dollars-and-cents translation of 15 percent and the incentive to avoid paying a fee.

The risk of cheating the broker — who I suppose is not entirely a parasitic drain on the economy — can be severe if you’re dealing with one of the thuggier ones:

So if you are a renter with the stomach of a street fighter and the situational ethics of a reality-show contestant, what, exactly, are the risks of cheating on your broker?

They run the gamut from tribal to litigious.

“A broker can make a person’s life very miserable if they want to,” said David Francis Calderazzo, the director of leasing for William B. May Real Estate. “All you have to do is spread the word that these people are no good in the building, that they’re deadbeats. No one likes the cold shoulder.”

“A couple of years back,” said Mr. Calderazzo, a former actor, bartender and bouncer, “I showed an apartment to someone who was from one of my corporate accounts but had to pay his own fee. It was a $3,800 one-bedroom on the Upper West Side for him and his dog.”

The client dropped out of sight after looking at the apartment. But two months later, during a routine 411 check on vanished clients, Mr. Calderazzo discovered he had been double-crossed.

“I confronted him, and he basically hung up on me,” Mr. Calderazzo recalled. “Then, he calls me up two or three weeks later. He said he had to get his locks changed three times because someone put Krazy Glue in them. That the super and the doorman paid him no mind.

“It wasn’t me. I didn’t do anything. I believe in karma. But I know people in the building. He figured out maybe it’s because he didn’t pay me my fee. He mailed me a check for 15 percent ASAP.”