What Changed for Real Estate Commission in 2024 (and What Didn't)
July 10, 2026
If you sold a house before 2024 and you're selling again now, you might expect commission to work differently. It does, a little, but maybe not in the way headlines suggested at the time.
The settlement itself
In March 2024, the National Association of Realtors agreed to pay $418 million to settle a set of antitrust lawsuits that alleged its rules artificially inflated agent commissions. New rules from that settlement took effect on August 17, 2024.
What the rules actually require
Three concrete changes came out of it:
- Listing agents can no longer advertise buyer-agent compensation on the MLS, not in public fields, not in private remarks.
- Buyers must sign a written agreement with their agent, spelling out services and pay, before touring homes.
- Any compensation offered to a buyer's agent is negotiated off the MLS instead, by phone, email, or in the purchase contract.
What that meant in practice
The headline expectation was that commissions would drop as buyers and sellers negotiated harder. That's mostly not what happened. Research tracking closed transactions found no meaningful drop in average commissions after the rule change, and buyer-agent rates have actually ticked up slightly, from 2.67% in March 2025 to 2.82% in February 2026.
| Period | Average buyer-agent rate |
|---|---|
| March 2025 | 2.67% |
| February 2026 | 2.82% |
What changed is more about process than price: compensation is now a separate, disclosed conversation instead of one number baked into the MLS listing. Sellers still mostly pay it, but it's no longer automatic or invisible to the buyer.
What this means for you
If you're selling, don't assume you'll pay less just because the rules changed; budget using current averages, not pre-2024 assumptions. If you're buying, ask your agent directly what they're proposing to charge and who's expected to pay it, since it's spelled out in your agreement now instead of buried in an MLS field.
For the fuller picture on who actually pays and how the split works today, see how real estate commission works and who pays realtor fees.