Buying or selling a home? You need to know these new rules

HOW MUCH DOES THE HOUSING MARKET PLAY INTO THIS? In a sluggish housing market where homes are taking longer to move and sellers are having to lower prices, it’s more likely that a buyer will

be able to negotiate for the seller to cover their agent’s commission. In a hotter market, where properties are selling fast and receiving multiple offers, sellers will have the leverage to

accept an offer from a buyer who isn’t asking for them to cover their agent’s fees. Still, real estate agents say sellers should keep offering to cover the buyer’s agent commission. “We’ve

advised that it would be wise for sellers to continue to be open to covering some or all of the buyer’s costs, because the last thing you want to do when you are selling something is to make

it complicated for someone to buy it or to limit the number of people who can buy it,” said Alex McEwen, associate broker with Selling Utah in Orem, Utah. WILL COMMISSIONS ACTUALLY COME

DOWN? It’s unclear whether the policy changes will spur sellers or buyers to negotiate lower broker commissions, and whether they’ll succeed if they do. Buyer-agent commissions have eased

somewhat this year. The average buyer’s agent commission fell nationally from 2.62 percent at the beginning of the year to 2.55 percent through July 14, according to an analysis by Redfin.

However, because home prices have kept rising this year, the average commission paid to a buyer’s agent in dollar terms has risen about 1.7 percent since January to $15,377. Stephen Brobeck,

senior fellow at Consumer Federation of America, expects that more sellers will be encouraged to negotiate with their agent to lower their commission by at least half a percentage point.

“That represents, over the course of a year in the housing market, a very large sum of money,” he said.  _Suzette Lohmeyer, the home, family and auto editor for aarp.org, contributed to

this article._