Richard "RJ" Freedkin, Realtor - SECRETS OF SOPHISTICATED HOME BUYERS

Now things have changed. Because of a recent national class action lawsuit towards the end of 2023, sellers in some states sued because they felt they were forced to pay buyer agent fees or were not made aware of how this worked, and so now the entire industry is being forced to change. As a result of this, some sellers may no longer want to or agree to offer some or any commission to a buyer's agent for bringing them a buyer. So, what happens if that is the case? Well to begin with, this may hurt many buyers, especially first time home buyers. Buyers who have low down payments or don't have the extra money to pay their agent directly, as they wanted to use all their on-hand cash to go to the down payment, may no longer be able to buy a home as easily as they did before and may have to go at it alone without proper representation by an experience "buyer agent". They may have to wait to purchase a home until they save up more money. This, in my opinion, may not only affect buyers ( especially first time homebuyers) who don't have the extra cash to pay their agent directly but also will negatively affect home sellers who are not willing to offer a "co-op" buyer commission because it will greatly reduce the number of buyers in the market who can afford to purchase that home and pay their buyer's agent as well. Fortunately we have not seen a lot of sellers moving in this direction but this could change. For those listings where the seller is offering less or even no buyer agent commission, there are still many viable options for buyers to try and mitigate the amount they may have to come up with such as negotiating with the seller by getting a closing cost credit or increasing the price to cover it (which is how it was done originally but it was already as part of the listing where now it may be able to be negotiated on the back end). There are also other tactics and there may even be legislative relief which will allow lenders to allow buyers to finance the agent commission back into the home price as legislators will