Week One of the New Normal

A week into the Post-NAR Settlement Rules, based on what we are seeing in the local marketplace the transition is going well, both within our office and amongst the other agents we’ve been in contact with.  

As an early instance of this, the listing agent on a multiple offer situation called me regarding an offer I had submitted, with a reminder to send over the new SPBB form that is now necessary to ensure I would be paid the cooperating broker commission which had been removed from the MLS midway through the negotiations. 

A few days later, I had the dubious distinction of being the one to break the news to an old-school agent who had written an offer on one of my listings, but hadn’t even heard about the new rules, let alone the history of the $900 Million class-action litigation and settlement behind them. Since he was a one-man office without access to the online libraries, I set him up with the necessary forms to help get him up to speed before submitting his clients’ offer.

And in order to keep all of our current listings in compliance, we had sent each of our Sellers a detailed explanation of the new rules disallowing mention of commissions in the MLS and the option of doing away with offering any cooperating broker fee. After considering the options, every one of them opted to keep their commission structure with us exactly as it had been, recognizing the need to encourage cooperation with other brokers in a competitive marketplace. 

The only tangible changes being seen is that agents now have a more cumbersome process of communicating cooperating broker fees, with a lot more paperwork to document and establish Buyer Agency as a required step. And a big part of our focus has become how to streamline the process to minimally disrupt the workflow as we continue to execute our duties.

The main takeaway has been that these regulations signal a shift from buyer agent commission being treated as a promise to pay to a concession that the Seller will consider.  However, it appears that while the new protocols have increased the visibility of the negotiability of commissions, the negotiations are ending up with similar commissions being agreed upon.

If anything, the general report is that the vast majority of clients and their agents are taking the transition in stride. In comparing notes with my fellow Masterminds during our bi-weekly meeting this morning, only 1 out of 12 in our group of top producing agents has encountered a Seller unwilling to pay the amount of Buyer Agent Commission requested among the offers that had been submitted and reviewed in the 10 days since the new rules were initiated. 

It occurs to me that if the fear was that the new rules would create divisiveness and undermine the existence of Buyer Agency, the way things are playing out in real time has been quite the opposite, as fellow agents and clients alike have reaffirmed the connection of goodwill that exists between the vast majority of us, both as professionals and as everyday people who buy and sell real estate.