Buying or Selling a Home? The Rules Are Changing.

Sweeping changes to the real estate industry are going into effect this week, five months after the National Association of Realtors agreed to a landmark settlement over the way agents are paid commissions.

On Saturday, real estate agents across the country must begin following new practices that will require buyers to sign a form before an agent can show them a home, and may radically lower the commission they ask sellers to pay during a home sale.

For years, the standard commission has been 5% to 6%, shouldered by home sellers and then split between real estate agents for the seller and the buyer. That fee, while technically negotiable, was at the heart of a lawsuit brought against NAR by a group of home sellers in Missouri, who said the fee was inflated. The home sellers argued that NAR, and brokerages that required their agents to be members of NAR, had violated antitrust laws by mandating that the seller’s agent make an offer of payment to the buyer’s agent, and setting rules that led to an industrywide standard commission.

Those rules are gone.

Agents will no longer be allowed to make offers of commissions on the online databases used to buy and sell homes, called Multiple Listing Services, severing access to the backdoor channel agents have long used to communicate payments. So what do the changes mean for you? Here’s what to expect.

What do I need to know if I’m buying a home?

Homebuyers will now need to sign a written agreement with an agent before they tour a home. These agreements, meant to stipulate exactly how much buyers are expected to pay to their agents, are required by the settlement, and are not entirely new — 18 states required them before NAR lost in court.

But now the forms are everywhere, with little uniformity in the fine print.

“Everyone is calling their forms different things. There’s no industry continuity yet. We’ll get there, but right now it’s going to be rough and tumble as this rolls out,” said Ryan Tucholski, CEO of the West Volusia Association of Realtors, a local association in Central Florida.

He said he has been fielding a steady stream of questions from Realtors in his association, many of whom will be in the middle of transactions when the rule changes take effect. “It’s like changing the oil of the car while it’s running,” he said.

Many agents say they plan to ask buyers to now cover a commission of 2.5% or 3% to make up for the portion previously covered by the sellers. Steve Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, an advocacy group, said he is advising buyers to consider offering a flat fee, or paying their agent by the hour, instead.

“The broker’s fee should be clearly stated, always as a dollar figure or as an hourly rate,” he advised in a report. “The dollar value of today’s percentage commissions is often underestimated by buyers. Moreover, buyer agents should not have a financial incentive to be paid more the higher the sale price.”

Those straightforward conversations, he said, will eventually drive commissions down, even if headwinds drag out the process. Laura Ellis, a broker in Chicago who serves as chief strategy officer and president of residential sales at the brokerage Baird and Warner, agrees.

“Agents are going to have more direct conversations with buyers about how they’re going to be compensated. For 100 years or so many agents were able to tell buyers, ‘Don’t worry, I’m free, we’ll go have a lovely sunny afternoon of looking at houses and go from there.’ And that whole conversation is different now,” she said.

What do I need to know if I’m selling a home?

Home sellers are now due for some immediate relief.

Because the settlement eliminates rules that require sellers’ agents to make an offer of commission to buyers’ agents, most sellers’ agents are expected to ask their clients to pay only for one side of the commission pie — a number that averages 2.5% to 3% now, and may be pushed downward by competitive pressure as the settlement changes continue to roll out.

Richard Hopen, a former broker who has worked with Compass and Redfin and now runs a business focused on educating homebuyers, said that come Saturday, sellers should be informed about the changes, and make sure they understand what they’re being asked to pay.

“Sellers and agents should talk openly about reducing or even eliminating the buyer agent fee and how that could impact the seller,” he said.

How does the settlement apply to people who just sold their home?

The March 15 settlement was a nationwide class-action settlement that applies to nearly every American homeowner who sold a property in the past five years.

NAR settled for $418 million, but the settlement also ensnared more than 20 brokerages that have also all settled for millions. The total damages are now more than $1 billion.

Payouts for individual home sellers are not expected to be significant, but the total amount that an average American is entitled to will depend on how many people submit claims between now and May 9. Eligibility varies depending on the state you live in, the brokerage your real estate agent worked with, and the date your home listing was entered into a multiple listing service.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times .