On August 3, 2024, Yahoo Finance quoted Jill Rowe on new legal changes in the residential real-estate industry impacting homebuyers and sellers.
According to the article, the power to negotiate realtor commissions will shift away from agents in favor of buyers and sellers later this month. Beginning August 17, those who list homes for sellers' realtor databases won't be able to use those databases to offer payments to buyers' agents. It also means sellers will no longer be on the hook to fund commissions for all realtors involved in the transaction. Instead, buyers will be entitled to negotiate their agent's pay separately and get a signed contract formalizing the terms before touring any properties.
"Under the old system, if you were a buyer and you had an agent, you didn't get any say in what your agent got paid, unless your agent agreed to credit some of that to your purchase price," said Rowe.
"If I were a buyer or seller of a residential property right now, what I would say to my broker is: What kind of commission am I paying?" Rowe said. "What am I getting for that? And what would I get if I had a 1% lower commission, or a 2% lower commission?"
According to Yahoo Finance, the database platforms had already been disrupting the residential real estate industry by allowing sellers and buyers to efficiently search for information that only realtors using MLSs once provided.
"You can just go online, and you can see everything that is available ... what its price is, all of the different terms, look at the neighborhood, and see pictures of what it looks like," Rowe said.
"Quite often, the buyers are finding something online and saying, 'I want to take a look at that,' and either going by themselves to the open house, or having their agents call the seller's agent and arrange a look," she explained.
"So it's just a different value proposition," said Rowe.
Click here to access the article.