Ralph Harvey, Jason Safire and Ben Caballero are three of America’s most prolific agents. Together, they sold over 10,000 homes last year alone, and you’ll never find them on the buyer’s side of a transaction. But these listing-only agents still need to adapt their practices to comply with national association of realtors (NAR) A National Council lawsuit settlement goes into effect Saturday.
“We’re changing our approach on a lot of things, we’re doing that with the collateral that we offer, we launched a video series, and we’re obviously having conversations with sellers about what they need. What to do, how it needs to be do and what options they have,” Harvey said.
In 2023, Harvey’s agent ListWithFreedom.com, According to statistics, the transaction volume reached 2,692 transactions and the transaction volume reached US$826.462 million. Real Trends for 2024 Proven data.
Harvey typically charges sellers hundreds of dollars to list their properties on the MLS and collects a 0.25% commission when the home successfully sells. He sees his role in the transaction as simply making sure the seller complies with laws and regulations. If customers want additional services, such as professional photography, he connects them with vendors, who bill sellers directly for those services.
Saphire, like Harvey, only lists properties on the MLS but also offers additional a la carte services such as contract reviews, deal coordination and negotiation coaching for an additional fee, and he has adapted how he educates sellers on how they offer commissions to buyer’s agents.
Like many such limited listing service agents, Saphire is represented by ancestral homeoperates in multiple states and markets, which complicates matters because different MLSs handle offers to eliminate buyer agent compensation in different ways.
“Depending on who I talk to, I have to explain whether or not commissions have been removed from MLS, or when, or if not. Mulinsen password In Massachusetts,” Safire said. “But generally speaking, what I tell them now is the buyer is responsible for the buyer’s agent fee, so even if you’re paying a commission, technically you’re just making a contribution to the buyer so they can fulfill their obligations to the buyer. Family obligations.
Saphire said he advises sellers to build this into the list price, noting that the vast majority of buyers will ask them to help pay for buyer’s agent fees because they can’t pay out of pocket.
“It’s up to the seller whether they want to offer a commission,” Safire said. “I don’t even want to touch it at this point and I’d be excited if I didn’t even have to talk about it. I just want to get out of the rake game.
While Saphire can’t completely sidestep the discussion of buyer’s agent commissions, especially since he operates in MLS PIN, which did not opt out of NAR’s settlement and still allows for co-op compensation on its site, he is doing his best to ensure that the commission is On the other hand, his seller is completely in control.
If a broker asks him about a seller’s offer on a property or the possibility of buyer’s broker compensation, Saphire plans to tell them that it’s up to the seller to express their willingness to pay a commission and that HomeZu will not be involved in any commission negotiations. So far, he said, he hasn’t received a flood of calls asking about commissions, which he thinks is a good sign.
Harvey is taking a different tack and posting on his company website that buyers’ agents compensate sellers for any offer they are willing to make, an exception allowed under the terms of the settlement.
“Our solution was we put all the listings and commission information on our website, which we didn’t have on the website before,” Harvey said.
Harvey said he also noted that commission offers may change if sellers decide to go a different route.
Like Saphire, Harvey wants to see an end to the discussion of buyer’s agent commissions. Ideally, Harvey said, if a buyer wants to use the money to pay for their own agent’s services, they can simply ask the seller for concessions.
“You really shouldn’t talk about commissions,” Harvey said. “I think that’s the best approach that brokers can take and I hope that’s the way the industry evolves and that seems to be the direction that quite a few players are heading towards.”
Cabellero, who only works with production homebuilders and closed 7,012 transactions in 2023, according to RealTrends data, believes the best way to communicate buyer’s agent commission quotes is through an automated system.
“Builders can put this information on their website if they want, or, because we know what the commission they are offering, we have set up a process where agents can call us directly and we can tell them the commission. How much, that’s what we’re doing in addition to what we’ve done before,” Cabello, whose agent is HomesUSA.com Company.
As of early August, he had more than 3,200 listings, but he “couldn’t even begin to help all the agents who might call,” which led him to decide to create an automated system to handle agent inquiries.
Cabello isn’t the only one relying on automation to help him cope with the coming chaos. Harvey’s company, which he calls a “core technology company,” has built a system to help him and his employees navigate the various regulations in 48 states and the roughly 400 MLSs where he works.
“If you come to our system and enter the address of the property you want to list, our system will know what zone you are in and what local documents and forms are required and prompt you to fill them out,” Harvey said. .
Saphire, who operates in Texas, Florida, Virginia and New England, hasn’t set up any automated systems yet, but he has spreadsheets to track when the MLS changes rules, what they are and what he might need Which forms to use.
While agents say they’re used to the disruption, the patchwork rollout of these business practice changes across the country hasn’t made for the smoothest transition. But ultimately, they believe these changes will be best, especially for their limited-service business model.
“I do think more people will find us. Consumers have always had choices, but I think now consumers will be more aware of their options, which is an important thing for all of us,” Ha Wei said. “I think it’s our responsibility as a profession and as individual professionals to understand the options so that we can best educate consumers about who we are, how we are different and guide them on what is best for them. . I talked to a consumer a week ago and they were very happy with our customer service, but they wanted to cancel their contract with us because they thought they weren’t willing to take on so much responsibility for the transaction, and that’s okay.
