2024 NAR Settlement
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The NAR settlement is the 2024 agreement that ended a nationwide antitrust fight over real estate commissions. The National Association of Realtors paid $418 million and changed two practices, effective August 17, 2024: buyer-agent pay can no longer be advertised in the listing service, and a buyer must sign a written agreement with their agent before touring a home.
We’ve closed deals under both the old and new rules. We’ve written buyer agreements with a stated fee since before New York required them. So here’s what changed and what didn’t, and how it plays out for an NYC buyer.
The one-line version: the commission didn’t shrink, but it stopped being automatic.
| Practice | Before | After August 17, 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Buyer-agent compensation in the MLS | The listing broker offered a set split | Cannot be published in the MLS at all |
| Buyer working with an agent | Often informal, no signed agreement | Written agreement with a stated fee, before touring |
| Who can pay the buyer’s agent | Usually, the seller, via the split | Seller may still pay off-MLS, or the buyer pays |
| A “standard” 6% | Widely assumed | Explicitly “not set by law and fully negotiable” |
What is the NAR settlement?
It is a class-action settlement: $418 million and a promise to stop doing one specific thing. NAR agreed on March 15, 2024, to resolve claims that its rules inflated commissions. A court gave final approval on November 26, 2024.
The money is paid over about four years. The bigger effect is the two rule changes above. Every Realtor-affiliated listing service had to adopt them.
Separate brokerages settled on their own. Anywhere paid about $83.5 million, and HomeServices of America about $250 million. RE/MAX and Keller Williams settled for about $55 million and $70 million. Across every settlement, the total tops $980 million.
The lawsuit behind it
The case was Sitzer, later Burnett, v. NAR, filed in 2019 in federal court in Missouri. On October 31, 2023, a Kansas City jury needed about two and a half hours. It found NAR and several large brokerages liable for conspiring to keep commissions high.
The jury’s verdict awarded $1,785,310,872. Under antitrust law, that trebled to roughly $5.36 billion. NAR chose to settle rather than appeal that number.
The rule at the center of it required a listing broker to offer buyer-agent compensation to put a home in a Realtor MLS. That is the rule the settlement killed.
What changed for buyers and sellers
As a seller, you can still offer to pay the buyer’s agent, and most do. You just can’t advertise it through the MLS. The offer is now a direct, written term of the deal.
For buyers: before you tour a home with a licensed agent, you sign an agreement that states their fee. The number has to be specific, not a range or “whatever the seller offers.” The number moved from the fine print to the negotiation.
Neither side is required to use any particular commission structure. A flat fee, an hourly rate, a percentage, or zero are all allowed, as long as it’s written down first.
Why NYC is different: REBNY, not NAR
Most NYC agents belong to REBNY, not NAR, and NYC listings run on REBNY’s Residential Listing Service. That’s a listing-sharing system, not a Realtor MLS. New York keeps its own paperwork, as usual.
REBNY moved on its own timeline:
- Decoupled commissions on January 1, 2024
- Opted into the NAR settlement in June 2024
- Required written buyer agency agreements before showings from January 13, 2025
- Removed all compensation fields from the RLS on August 1, 2025
Our page on the REBNY RLS walks through each step.
The practical result in NYC matches the national one. The seller still pays the buyer’s agent on most deals via a co-broke, and the offer now comes directly from the seller.
Did the NAR settlement lower commissions?
Barely, so far. The Federal Reserve looked, and mostly shrugged: its 2026 study found the average buyer-agent commission drifted from about 3% in the late 1990s to about 2.7% in 2023, with buyer agreements and rebate bans showing “no material or statistically significant” effect on advertised rates.
Redfin’s own data put the typical buyer-agent commission near 2.42% in 2026, roughly flat year over year. CNBC’s read a year in was that rates “haven’t changed much.”
What did change is leverage. Because the fee is now an explicit line, it’s easier to negotiate. It’s also easier to route part of it back to the buyer as a commission rebate. Our closing-cost calculators let you model a deal with the rebate in it.
Where the fight stands now
On August 19, 2026, the Eighth Circuit affirmed the settlement, largely ending the class-action saga. The appeals court closed the book; the Justice Department kept a bookmark in it.
The DOJ withdrew from its own 2020 NAR consent decree in 2021 and won the right to reopen its investigation in 2024. It has told courts the mandatory-buyer-agreement rule “raises independent concerns under the antitrust laws.” So the settlement is final, but the DOJ’s separate view is not.
If you want representation with a disclosed rebate under the new rules, see what NestApple returns to buyers.
What we see on our own closings
The practical shift for us is small because we already use written agreements with a stated fee. For many buyers, the change feels bigger. They are handed a contract at the first meeting and asked to commit to a number.
Our advice is the same as before the settlement. Read the fee line and shorten the term.
And know that in New York, the seller still pays on most resales. They just have to say so out loud now. This page is part of our guide to NYC commissions and rebates.
Common questions
When did the NAR settlement take effect? The $418 million payment was agreed on March 15, 2024. The practice changes took effect on August 17, 2024, and the court gave final approval on November 26, 2024.
Do sellers still pay the buyer’s agent? Yes, on most deals. Seller-paid buyer-agent compensation is still legal. It just can’t be advertised through the MLS, so the seller now offers it directly and in writing.
Did the settlement make commissions 2%? No. It set no rate. Rates are negotiable and, per the Federal Reserve, the national average has barely moved, hovering near 2.7% on the buyer side.
Does the NAR settlement apply in New York City? The practice changes reached NYC through REBNY, which opted into the settlement in June 2024 and removed RLS compensation fields on August 1, 2025.
Nicole Fishman Benoliel co-founded NestApple in 2017. She's a lawyer admitted to the New York bar - her law degree is from La Escuela Libre de Derecho in Costa Rica, with further study at IE Business School in Madrid and an LLM from Fordham in New York. She does not act in a legal capacity at NestApple; every client is referred to an attorney who handles real estate deals full time.
