Realtor associations needed to be at their best to prepare members to do business without an MLS-published offer of compensation. They had months to prepare members to alter their thinking to transition seamlessly. They chose to fritter and waste the hours defending what was lost. Many agents have likely moved on with no problems, but many are struggling.
The people most affected by the agent’s confusion are their buyer clients. Instead of focusing on structuring an offer to appeal to the seller, some agents get overloaded worrying about how much they will get paid.
One agent has asked me twice, on the same property, if the seller is willing to pay a 3% buyer agent commission. My reply is consistent. “Maybe. The seller is aware that an offer to purchase may include a provision for them to contribute to the buyer agent commission. They understand that the commission is negotiable and will be evaluated based on its value to them when they review the offer.”
The peculiar thing is that even if the answer to the question was “Yes, they are willing to pay a 3% buyer agent commission, ” that does not commit the seller to agree to pay anything. Unless there is a binding agreement between my firm and the buyer agent’s firm or the buyer and the seller, discussing a commission amount is a waste of time. Every buyer agent should know that the answer to the question about a commission amount is an emphatic “MAYBE.” Until a seller sees an offer and evaluates the terms compared to any other offer they have, they are not bound to.
The new commission system is tricky for some agents because they never understood how the commission-sharing system worked for a hundred years prior. They just knew they were guaranteed the published rate, which was almost always 3%. In reality, the new system is simple. Everything is negotiable.