“Consumers are caught in a maze of ‘What do I do?’ Nobody has good answers and even the realtors themselves have no clue what’s going on,” said University of Buffalo School of Law professor Tanya Monestier.
As new rules went into effect this month following a March settlement between home sellers and the National Association of Realtors, two legal experts have differing opinions on the real estate market’s outlook as changes come to standard contracts for representation and commission payments.
The recent $418 million joint agreement sought to resolve two antitrust cases in which the plaintiffs brought claim against the NAR over its compensation rules with the Multiple Listing Service cooperative compensation model rule. In Moehrl v. National Association of Realtors, the plaintiffs, home sellers who listed their homes on MLSs, accused NAR and others of allegedly conspiring to use the mandatory buyer broker commission rule. The plaintiffs claimed these long-standing practices have inflated the cost of broker commissions, which have largely been nonnegotiable and to be paid by the home seller.
