"Off the Market" and good faith deposit question (apartment, tenants)

[canyontothesky]

We just put a good faith deposit down on an apartment that we love. Had a long talk with the landlord today and everything seems to be going well. But there are multiple people who have to approve our application and one of them is away until Wednesday, so the one landlord said I won't have an official answer until after then. Usually in NYC you get an answer the day you apply or the next, and this is a long time to wait.

The good faith deposit I put down is "supposed" to take the apartment off the market, but the deposit is coming out of the BROKER fee and not the rent, and to boot, the broker tells me that he's not going to show anyone the apartment but that should be left just between us, just "because, trust me." Which means this is all bogus.

I'm very qualified financially (nearly perfect credit) and we think we ought to get it, but we have dogs and it seemed like they felt they were doing us a favor by letting us and that because of it, despite our financials, we aren't the "ideal" tenants. I wanted to know if I have any rights as far as that I was the first person to put an application in. I was once told that a landlord cannot look at other applications before he has officially rejected the ones before, is this true? Do I have any protection to prevent them from trying to get other applicants and retroactively telling me they've decided to go with someone else, who submitted their app well after (days after) mine?

Just wondering. I hope this will all be sorted out before I even get responses on here, but I am a little worried.

[Babytarheelz]

NYC has very different laws compared to the rest of the country, so I'm not familiar with them. But in my state, once someone pays a deposit, it takes the unit off the market. The landlord can still collect "back up" applications should the first one fall through, but can't collect another deposit, only application fees. Criteria is very clear cut and as long as someone qualifies based on the pre-established rental criteria, they can't be turned down. That could create a Fair Housing nightmare.