It’s difficult to say whether the settlement reached by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) on commissions will have any effect on the price of housing, Santa Barbara agents say. “Buyers and sellers will retain the same power they had in negotiating their respective agents’ compensation,” said Brian Johnson of the Santa Barbara Association of Realtors. “The important thing is that the process remains transparent.”
The settlement comes out of a lawsuit in Missouri, in which a jury awarded $1.7 billion to plaintiffs in October for conspiracy to inflate commissions, an award that could have tripled under antitrust laws. The NAR settled in March for $418 million, joining the real estate firms that had settled out of the case earlier for about $200 million. The settlement included about 10 similar lawsuits and all NAR-affiliated national, state, and local Realtor associations, whether they’d been sued or not. The Santa Barbara Association of Realtors is in the last category. Nonetheless, as a member of the NAR, the settlement affects how the local group will operate.
The plaintiffs in the Burnett case objected to the buyer agent fees contained in a seller agent commission agreement, under the argument that homes for sale were easily found online without the help of an agent. According to the National Association of Realtors, two results emerged from the settlement: The MLS, or the Multiple Listings Service, an encyclopedia of what’s on the market, would no longer contain information about commissions. Second, agents must have written agreements with buyers before touring homes.