From a practical standpoint, I don’t expect it changes too much for the typical home buyer or home seller, but it DOES set up conditions where a prospective home buyer might need to come up with additional money in the form of closing costs if they fall in love with a home where the seller is unwilling to offer a concession towards the buyer agent’s fee. I should note that for many years now, it was customary for the seller to almost automatically offer that concession under a mis-guided assumption it was required to work that way.
Another key change for buyers is that in order to even view a home outside an open house setting they will need to enter into a buyer agency agreement, which is a legally binding contract that sets up the rules of engagement and terms by which a buyer’s agent would represent that buyer.
There are some other, lesser impact changes tied to the act noted on the two images following:
We’ll keep close tabs on the impacts these changes make to how business is conducted over the next few months.