Prospective homebuyers will have to grapple with some changes starting this weekend that could make one of life’s most stressful experiences even more complicated.
Buyers now will have to shoulder the cost of hiring a real estate agent due to a settlement the National Association of Realtors (NAR) agreed to earlier this year.
No longer can buyers depend on sellers footing compensation that goes to the buyer’s agent. They must shell it out on their own. They also must sign detailed contracts with their real estate agent before they can even begin their house hunt with them — a new hurdle for most buyers.
The goal of the changes is to provide more transparency around real estate agent compensation to empower homebuyers. But with any new changes comes an adjustment period and challenges are cropping up in areas where the new rules have been enacted early.
“These are probably just like growing pains,” said Avi Sinai, a real estate attorney in California. “And hopefully in 12 months, in 16 months, 18 months, things will just kind of settle down.”
‘Seems like a tall order’
Beginning Saturday, real estate agents who list homes for sale on a widely used database for agents can’t advertise any compensation to homebuyers’ agents on that database.
That means sellers will no longer have to pay commissions to real estate agents on both sides of the transaction, which typically totaled between 5% and 6% of the sales price. The buyer’s and seller’s agents typically split that commission between them.
Now, the buyer must negotiate what they will pay their own agent in a contract they sign before they begin touring potential homes to buy. This is an added cost that many buyers — especially first-timers — may not be able to afford.
“How many typical American buyers do you know that just have 3% of the sales price sitting around in cash to give to their buyer’s agent?” said Wayne Hassay, provider attorney at LegalShield, which provides legal services and documents online.
“That seems like a tall order.”
‘The buyer’s problem’
The new NAR rules don’t prohibit sellers from paying some or all of the commission to the buyer’s agent. They just can’t advertise that on the Realtor database of property listings.
In fact, a concession to pay for some of that commission could be a stipulation made in an offer the buyer puts up or negotiated between buyer and seller during the contract phase. But there are no guarantees that will work out in the buyer’s favor.
“What if as a seller I will pay 2% to the buyer’s agent, but the buyer agreed in a contract with their agent to 3%. What happens to that extra 1%?” Hassay said.
“That’s the buyer’s problem.”
And an offer that asks the seller to help pay the buyer’s agent commission could be a deal breaker in a multiple-bid situation. That’s exactly what one mortgage broker detailed on X, formerly Twitter, in a deal he was working on with a buyer.
The seller did not want to pay any commission and made it known. Six offers came in; two asked for commission for the buyer’s agent. The winning bid ended up $55,000 over the asking price with no contingencies including no commission.
“If you are a buyer who has to ask for commissions, you are going to have a very hard time being the winning bidder,” said Melissa Savenko, a real estate agent in Richmond, Va.
“And I think that is something that realistically is going to happen.”
‘An exclusive relationship’
Other troubles are emerging when it comes to buyers contracting with real estate agents.
For instance, a client that Sinai represents found themselves owing a real estate agent a buyer’s commission on their home purchase even though the client thought they had severed the relationship with that agent months before.
That’s because they had unwittingly signed an exclusive buyer’s representation agreement with that agent months ago when they wanted to put an offer on a house they found online.
To do that, the buyers used an agent to help them through the offer process. The agent sent over a host of documents for the buyers to sign, so the agent could shepherd the offer process for them. Among the documents was a contract that stipulated if the buyers found a home to buy in the next six months — with or without that agent’s help — they owed the agent a commission.
Their offer on that first home was rejected. The buyers thought they moved on from that agent and used another one to find a home they ultimately planned to purchase.
“Now that [agent’s] brokerage firm demands a commission even though they were not involved in the transaction,” Sinai said.
“But there was no sitting down or phone or email conversation about an exclusive relationship,” he said. “People don’t realize that they have to look at these documents and does this trap me in an exclusive relationship?”
‘We almost are going too far’
A big reason why homebuyers may not know what to look for in a buyer’s representation agreement is that many of them never had to before.
Only 41% of buyers in the US had a written agreement with their real estate agent, according to the NAR’s most recent report on buyers and sellers. For first-time buyers, that percentage was just 34%.
Before July, only 18 states required a buyer’s representation agreement. Now the NAR settlement demands it.
That means buyers will need to do more due diligence before signing on with a real estate agent. They may even run into other situations where they may need to sign a document just to tour an open house without an agent.
“According to the California Association of Realtors, if you’re just a buyer that walks in, they recommend the seller’s agent to have you sign on a legal document saying you’re unrepresented,” Sinai said.
“And so we almost are going too far, right?”
‘The most valuable asset they will ever own’
Still, Sinai believes the NAR settlement is “a first good step in the right direction.”
“It puts the incentive of all the parties in the right place,” he said.
Buyers, too, have more agency when drawing up contracts with their real estate agents. Novice buyers may want more hand-holding and are more amenable to the compensation system that mimics the old one — 2.5% to 3% commission. But more sophisticated buyers may conjure up a better compensation agreement for their needs.
A la carte services may also become more common, Savenko said. Some agents may be willing to just show houses, and others may offer to draw up offers or negotiate contracts with buyers for a set price. Other agents may provide services for an hourly wage or a flat fee.
Buyers may end up with more choices than ever before.
And all three experts agree that the new way may weed out the bad actors. If a buyer must contract exclusively with an agent, that agent needs to prove their worth more than they used to. The better agents will get more business. The others will leave.
“This should be like the relationship you have with your attorney or financial adviser or a doctor or a dentist,” Savenko said.
“These people are helping buy what is, for most people, the most valuable asset they will ever own in their life.”
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Janna Herron is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on X @JannaHerron.