Democracy Dies in Darkness
Personal Finance

How buyers, sellers and agents are navigating the real estate shake-up

New rules on agent commissions formally kicked in last month but have already been having an effect on the ground.

8 min
Temi Akojie, 40, stages a property for sale. (Allison Robbert for The Washington Post)
By

The real estate industry got its biggest jolt in years last month, when new rules kicked in for the 1.5 million members of the National Association of Realtors, giving consumers more flexibility to set agent commission fees under a historic $418 million settlement.

Now these changes are affecting the real estate market on the ground, as Michael Rodriguez recently found out. When the first-time home buyer started his search in Northern Virginia early this year, the settlement hadn’t yet been announced — and he didn’t even know then how agents got paid.

“My agent explained that the industry was in the middle of a lawsuit but that I would be covered by the old rules even if things changed by the time I bought a house,” he explained.

It turns out the settlement, announced in March, upended many of the old ways of doing business, as Rodriguez discovered.

Skip to end of carousel