First rental coming and I've been reading everything, which means I've read about forty articles saying the NAR settlement was going to end the 6% commission. Then I looked at what people in my area are actually signing and it's 2.5% on the buyer side, same as my neighbor paid three years ago.
So did anything change or was it all noise? I feel like I'm missing the actual mechanism.
Answer
The mechanism that changed is where the money is arranged, not how much it is. Before August 17, 2024, a listing agent published an offer of compensation to buyer's agents right on the Multiple Listing Service, the shared database agents use. Every buyer's agent could see, before showing a house, exactly what they'd be paid. That offer is now banned from the MLS, and buyers have to sign a written representation agreement stating their agent's fee before touring.
The price didn't move much because the underlying pressure didn't change. Redfin's analysis found average buyer-agent commissions sitting near 2.4 percent in early 2025, essentially where they were before. A Federal Reserve note observed commissions may have slipped a little while staying at high levels, partly because listing agents found other ways to communicate what they'd share, phone calls, brokerage websites, a line in the showing instructions. And sellers keep paying because buyers mostly can't. Someone who just emptied their savings for a down payment doesn't have another $8,000 for their agent, so a seller who offers nothing gets fewer showings.
What you're seeing in your area, 2.5 percent, is normal. What's different is that it's yours to negotiate now, and you'll see it in writing before anyone drives you anywhere.
One thing to watch as a landlord rather than a buyer: this applies to residential sale transactions through the MLS. Commercial deals, new construction sold directly by a builder, and rentals all run on their own conventions, and the settlement rules don't reach them the same way.
Something changed, it just wasn't the price. The paperwork changed. I now sign a representation agreement before I see anything, which I never used to do, and the number is a blank someone fills in rather than a thing already sitting on the listing.
The $418 million settlement figure is what got quoted in every headline and it's the least interesting part. The rule changes were the substance.
There's a forecast floating around about commissions falling up to 30% over time and 1.6 million agents affected. Hasn't happened. But it's a long-run number and one year of data doesn't kill it, so I wouldn't file it as debunked.
@wren I'm coming at this from the other side, thinking about getting licensed, and the thing that actually looks different is that I'd have to explain my fee out loud to a stranger before they'd let me drive them anywhere. Nobody had to do that before. One survey even had combined commissions ticking up through 2025, which is not what I expected to find while researching whether the job still exists.
Wait, so if the fee isn't on the listing anymore, how does a buyer's agent find out what a seller will pay before they take someone to see it? They just call and ask?