Agreement states agents do “not share commissions with a buyer’s broker”

A new residential listing agreement just dropped. 

Three weeks before a deadline to comply with new rules, eXp Realty released a listing agreement specifying that it “does not share commissions with a buyer’s broker,” Inman reported.

Holly Mabery, senior vice president of brokerage operations at eXp, told Inman the brokerage was “not going to do broker-to-broker compensation,” and that the updated agreement was part of an effort to protect agents.

The new agreement is in response to the National Association of Realtors settlement, which included agreement by the trade organization to overhaul some of its rules related to agent commissions. The changes, which ban listing agents from offering compensation to buyers’ agents on Realtor-affiliated multiple listing services, take effect Aug. 17.

The listing agreement still allows for buyers to request concessions — which can go toward broker commissions — from sellers. According to eXp, the agreement serves to effectively move commission negotiations from the brokers for the seller and buyer to the buyer and seller themselves.

“Our position as of right now is we’re going to make sure we’re going to reflect that broker-to-broker commission sharing on the MLS is no longer allowed,” eXP Realty CEO Leo Pareja said on the Broke Agent Media Podcast.

Pareja acknowledged that the agreement was the company’s “best interpretation of the rule changes.”

Offering concessions to buyers appears to be a popular response to the crackdown on agent-negotiated commissions.

Inman previously reported that some of the country’s largest MLSs have added or enhanced the ability for listing brokers to include seller concessions on their platforms.

Bright MLS and California Regional MLS now give listing brokers the option to include seller concessions when they enter the home into the MLS. Previously, Bright just had seller concession fields for when a listing closed.

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