Coldwell Banker Realty associate broker and realtor Christopher Matos-Rogers explains the two central changes in the NAR settlement: buyer-broker compensation disappearing from MLS listings, and buyers now having to sign a buyer brokerage agreement before touring homes.
00:00:01:26 - 00:00:34:13
Christopher Matos-Rogers: First buyer. Brokerage compensation in many cases has been tied to the listing agent. Right. So they they get a payment from the seller for total commission and have many times offered a portion of that to the buyer broker to bring a buyer to the listing. So right now, like if you go to Zillow, Realtor.com, any of the websites, individual brokerage websites, when you scroll down and look at the listing information, there is a field, like all the other fields that populate from the MLS to those public sites.
00:00:34:14 - 00:00:55:00
Christopher Matos-Rogers: There's one for a buyer broker co-op fee. You know, the language kind of might be different by market, but it's essentially usually a percentage or a total dollar amount that the listing agent and the seller are offering to a buyer broker to bring a buyer to the house that will no longer be allowed to be in the MLS, so that MLS field will go away.
00:00:55:03 - 00:01:20:08
Christopher Matos-Rogers: So agents will not see it in the MLS. And of course, that field will not exist in the MLS, therefore cannot be populated up to a public site. A lot of these details are still working out. So there may be, you know, there could be something that comes out in the next couple of months where maybe individual sites start inputting this field, but for now, it will not be publicly promoted through the MLS and therefore the channels that it would normally go through.
00:01:20:10 - 00:01:38:15
Christopher Matos-Rogers: Incorrect information, at least at this time, is that it is not going away. It will not necessarily be impossible, but it's just not going to be listed in MLS. The second part, and this will probably be new to a lot of buyers. So I'm in Georgia. We have had a buyer brokerage agreement for for several decades at this point.
00:01:38:21 - 00:02:02:08
Christopher Matos-Rogers: So it's not unusual for buyers in our state to understand signing a buyer brokerage agreement with an agent before they go look at houses. But there are over 20 states where they have not used by our brokerage agreements. So that's the other part of this agreement. So now buyers, when you go and you start to work with an agent, you will have to sign a buyer brokerage agreement before seeing any homes.
00:02:02:08 - 00:02:16:23
Christopher Matos-Rogers: So it'll be great for transparency. You know, many agents already have these discussions around compensation and how how they're compensated what the fee is. But in cases where this wasn't happening now, it will be happening first.