MIDLAND, Texas — The real estate industry has seen some changes coming as a result of a $418 million settlement from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) earlier this year.
One of the main policy changes comes to how realtors receive financial compensation.
“Normally to the consumer, usually what would happen is that whenever a seller would sell their house, the seller normally was responsible for the listing agents compensation and the buyer's agent's compensation," said Jacobe Kendrick, the lead real estate agent with the Bolt Real Estate Group. "They just recently had that lawsuit that happened in March, and it decoupled those commissions.”
Essentially, the commissions have been made separate.
Those who are buying a house are in charge of the buying agent's compensation and the sellers are responsible for the selling agent's compensation.
Kendrick went a little more in depth when explaining it.
“Whenever an agent goes to sell a house, there was what we called a co-broker fee. What that means is, is the agent who's selling the house, they charge a fee to sell the house," Kendrick said. "Then if another brokerage, the co-broker of the brokerage comes in. They share that fee with the other broker that actually brought the buyer.”
When the settlement was reached, Kendrick said there was some initial panic as to how this would affect the industry and how housing prices would respond.
So far...everything has remained relatively steady.
“There's a lot of speculation as to what's going to happen. Inside the industry here, a lot of agents said there was a lot of uproar on what was going to happen and how things were going to go," Kendrick said. "As things have started to kind of level out, it seems as though things are just business as usual.”
As for how it has affected a homeowner's impulses to buy or sell a home, Kendrick said those impulses are still dictated by the state of the housing market.