At Keller Williams’ annual Mega Agent Camp, franchise founder Gary Keller and several leaders shared how agents can navigate recession fears and commission confusion with clarity.

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The nation’s largest MLS removed compensation fields from its platforms on Aug. 13, after offering detailed guidance to agents on the terms of NAR’s proposed settlement.

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Innovation is in our DNA at Inman — that’s why we’re excited about August’s Technology and Innovation Month. We’ll kick it off by celebrating the companies and individuals pushing the industry forward with an expanded slate of Inman Innovator Awards at Inman Connect Las Vegas. Then, we’ll continue to celebrate the brightest minds in real estate all month long.

Digital sales presentation solution Highnote is helping agents break through the noise with a new Digital Buyer Presentation system and Done-for-You, a service that enables agents to outsource the creation of their presentations to expert designers. Both new offerings are available to agents starting Friday.

Mark Choey

“Our platform goes beyond design because our founder and investors are all former top-producing agents. We understand what’s needed to create a top-tier tool that amplifies professionalism and raises the bar in the industry,” Highnote founder and CEO Mark Choey said in a written statement on Friday. “Highnote isn’t just about presentations; it’s about defining a better way to communicate with clients.”

The Digital Buyer Presentation system leverages a ChatGPT integration to help agents craft more engaging presentations and real-time interactive data that guides agents on how and when to follow up with prospective clients.

The first part of the Digital Buyer Presentation is a pre-meeting presentation that introduces homebuyers to the agent and their team, lists key performance stats (e.g., transaction sides, sales volume, etc.), and provides a guide on buyer agency and the value buyer agents provide during the transaction.

From there, the guide reminds buyers of when and where the consultation will take place, what will be discussed, and information about critical parts of the transaction process, from signing a buyer representation agreement all the way to closing.

After the consultation, agents can create and send a post-meeting presentation summarizing what was discussed, providing key market insights, highlighting several potential listings based on buyer needs, and the next steps should a homebuyer agree to sign an exclusive buyer representation agreement.

Highnote tracks homebuyers’ real-time engagement and provides an easy-to-follow timeline of how many times the presentation was opened, which sections were viewed and for how long, giving agents clues on how best to follow up with a buyer.

Agents can customize the presentations at any time or offload that task to a team of designers through the new Done-for-You service, which is $349 for the first presentation. The second Done-for-You presentation is $299 and includes further discounts for subsequent orders. The Digital Buyer Presentation system is part of the Highnote subscription, which is $348 per year for individuals.

“With this process, agents are able to win clients, leads, listings and buyers before the meeting because this is something that stands out so far beyond what other agents are doing. It sets a professional tone [and] shows value just in the presentation itself,” Choey told Inman. “The sales process is full of documents and a lot of steps, so putting it in this platform makes it clear for buyers and sellers. This will be a game changer for agents.”

Choey said these services are critical for the industry as agents brace themselves for cooperative compensation policy changes per the National Association of Realtors’ buyer-broker commission settlement. 

“You really should be giving your examples of how you’ve helped clients in the past before getting through these tricky steps,” he said about the guidance consumers especially need in light of the NAR settlement. “For winning buyers, it’s just a game changer and it’s going to be the standard for real estate agents to be pitching with digital interactive presentations because old school is not going to work long term.”

Spark Tank Media CEO Jeff Lobb and Keller Williams Midtown Atlanta Managing Broker Deborah Blue seconded Choey in written statements, noting Highnote’s new services will help agents “stand out among the noise.”

“It’s become critical to treat buyers just like sellers — with a professional presentation designed to win buyers’ business. And Highnote is a great platform that provides such a solution,” Lobb said.

Added Blue, “Technology moves fast, and our consumers move faster. Having a platform like Highnote allows me to present every aspect of our communication from nurture to close. The feedback from sellers, investors, and buyers … ‘impressive,’ ‘professional’ and ‘informational.’ We stand out among the noise. Love it!”

Choey said the Highnote team has plans to introduce more AI-powered features this year, including a Highnote AI coach that can review a potential client’s digital footprint and craft a personality profile. That profile, he said, will help agents give their presentations an extra-personal touch.

“We’re rolling out a personality lookup using AI this quarter,” he said. “So you say, ‘I want to pitch to [a new prospect] and I need to know [their] personality. I need to know what [they’re] interested in and what [they’re] not. So you enter [their] email or LinkedIn profile, and then [the AI coach] will do an analysis of [their] personality and give tailored recommendations as to how to design the presentation to [them].”

“AI is so powerful for agents and we believe in practical AI,” he added. “It’s about focusing on the stuff that’s going to work and help an agent win more buyers, win more listings and get their jobs done faster.”

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Whether it’s refining your business model, mastering new technologies, or discovering strategies to capitalize on the next market surge, Inman Connect New York will prepare you to take bold steps forward. The Next Chapter is about to begin. Be part of it. Join us and thousands of real estate leaders Jan. 22-24, 2025.

Rhonda Burnett is a mom and former school psychologist. Jeremy Keel works as an attorney focusing on elder law. Jerod Breit serves as an executive director for Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Hollee Ellis spent years working as a high school teacher.

These four people come from different backgrounds, are different ages, and in a different universe might never have crossed paths. But in our timeline, they have one thing in common that brought them together: They all bought homes, then sued over the commissions they had to pay.

Burnett, Keel, Breit and Ellis are among the many consumers behind a slew of antitrust lawsuits that have rocked the real estate industry. The suits focus on how agents get paid, and after years of litigation they led to a handful of major settlements this year. The most notable of those settlements was between the plaintiffs in multiple cases and the National Association of Realtors (NAR), and it included an agreement from NAR to change various rules.

This weekend marks the deadline when those rules go into effect. The deadline has prompted something of a race to the finish line as multiple listing services update forms and issue stern warnings, while NAR scrambles to educate the public. Meanwhile, industry leaders are spending significant energy assuaging concerns while agents debate the impacts in online forums.

All of which is to say that consumers like Burnett, Keel, Breit and Ellis have forced the real estate industry into a brave new world. In venues virtual and real, the changes happening now are widely accepted as the most significant evolution in the homeselling business in at least a generation.

To understand what’s happening now, Inman reached out to key players and agents across the U.S. There are two takeaways from these conversations:

• First, multiple listing services — which are tasked with actually implementing the new rules — have already been rolling out changes. And the apocalypse has not arrived.
• But second, some in the industry’s trenches say confusion still abounds. As a result, real estate practitioners need to exercise caution as the dust settles.

What exactly is going on?

Realtor-affiliated MLSs have until Aug. 17 — which is Saturday — to comply with the rule changes set by the National Association of Realtors. The changes have the potential to upend how real estate agents and brokers are paid nationwide and, backers say, may also lead to tens of billions in savings for consumers if overall commissions decline.

NAR’s leadership set the August deadline ahead of a Nov. 26 hearing, during which a federal court will consider whether to grant the settlement final approval.

In the next few months until then, industry watchers — including the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) — will likely pay close attention to how the new rules play out, and to their impact on consumers, before deciding whether to potentially seek further changes.

Until then, these are the main changes MLSs must put in place by Saturday:

• Eliminate any requirement of offers of compensation in the MLS between listing brokers or sellers to buyer brokers. Previously, NAR’s Participation Rule, also known as the cooperative compensation rule, required listing brokers to offer buyer brokers compensation to submit a listing to the MLS.
• Forbid agents, brokers and sellers from making any offers of compensation in the MLS to buyer brokers and from disclosing listing broker compensation or total broker compensation in the MLS. This requires the MLS to eliminate all broker compensation data fields in the MLS.
• MLSs must not help agents, brokers or sellers make offers of compensation to buyer brokers through any non-MLS mechanism, such as by providing MLS data to websites that function as a platform for offers of compensation from multiple brokers.
• Require brokers working with a buyer to enter into a written agreement before the buyer tours any home. If an agent or broker will receive compensation from any source, the written agreement with the buyer has to specify the amount or rate of compensation to be received or how that amount will be determined. The amount has to be “objectively ascertainable” and can’t be “open-ended.” The deal also specifies that the compensation an agent or broker receives for brokerage services can’t exceed the amount or rate agreed to in the buyer’s agreement.
• Require agents and brokers acting for sellers to, in writing,“conspicuously disclose” to sellers and get their approval for any payment or offer of payment that the listing broker or seller will make to a buyer representative. They also have to specify the amount or rate of the payment.
• Require agents and brokers to conspicuously disclose to prospective sellers and buyers “that broker commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable.”
• MLSs must not provide the ability to filter out or limit MLS listings that are communicated to consumers based on the compensation offered to the buyer broker or the name of a brokerage or agent.

In order to comply with these settlement terms, some MLSs are instituting hefty fines. Some are also giving subscribers the ability to advertise that sellers are willing to consider concessions to buyers, the latter of which buyers have the choice to use for buyer broker compensation.

Additional resources: 

MLSs race to change

With the Aug. 17 deadline looming, many MLSs began rolling out rule changes in recent weeks and months. And the world has not ended, executives indicated.

• For example, MIBOR, a broker listing cooperative serving Indiana, pushed its changes live on July 1. When the changes went live, there were 5,000 total residential listings in MIBOR. In the 30 days since removing fields for buyer agent compensation, agents added another 4,400 listings.
• “In that month there were about 9,000 opportunities to do something wrong,” MIBOR CEO Shelley Specchio told Inman. “We only had 39 compliance tickets — 39 people we had to reach out to and explain to them why they couldn’t do what they tried to do.”
• The California Regional Multiple Listing Service, the largest MLS in the U.S., went live with its updates on Aug. 13. Art Carter, CRMLS’s CEO, urged agents to play by the rules: “Don’t add an addendum. Don’t add anything that can be displayed to all of the users of the multiple listing service because there will be a fine attached to it.”
• CRMLS general counsel Edward Zorn told Inman he felt confident that most MLSs were prepared for Aug. 17 and had communicated with their members about the changes: “The MLSs have stepped up and done what they needed to do to be ready for the change.”
• Brian Donnellan, CEO of Bright MLS, the nation’s second-largest multiple listing service, spoke with Inman Tuesday — the day before Bright was set to implement its changes — and said his organization would take an “educate first” approach to addressing potential violations.
• “We’re going to do our best to make sure that we educate folks prior to fining them,” Donnellan said. “At the end of the day, I would imagine we’re going to have to fine people because this is a really big issue. Everybody’s looking right now.”
• Donnellan said he expected to hear mixed emotions about the changes once they’re implemented and Bright members interact with the updated system. “These guys eat what they hunt. They’re probably a little bit more stressed than anybody else. I can see where their stress comes from.”

Additional resources:

Agents scramble — but questions (and frustration) linger into the 11th hour

Multiple listing services may have scrambled to roll out changes, but some in the agent community — echoing recent comments at Inman Connect Las Vegas — told Inman the process has been nothing short of confusing.

• Courtney Poulos of ACME Real Estate in Los Angeles, whose firm has long specialized in exclusive buyer agency agreements, has seen mixed messaging at times. She specifically criticized the lack of “any true protocol for open houses,” among other things.
• “It has been a very confusing rollout,” Poulos also said. “I think that [NAR] announced the proposed settlement changes before they had a good plan for rolling out the procedural stuff. Our association [the California Association of Realtors] had educational seminars with new forms that they then had to revise, and then had a new seminar saying, ‘Forget everything we just told you, we revised the form.’ So the rollout has been very sloppy. It’s causing a lot of confusion.”
• Over in Orlando, Florida, Veronica Figueroa and The Fig Team have already been dealing with rules changes because the local multiple listing service — Stellar MLS — put those changes into effect on Aug. 6. Figueroa’s team has been fine, but she said that isn’t the case for everyone in the area.
• “If I’m speaking honestly, I don’t think we can say we’ve been fully prepared to the point that we weren’t going to have some breakage or some friction,” Figueroa told Inman. “We’ve already seen fines in the MLS, and there’s a lack of transparency as to what those fines are for.”
• Meanwhile, Andrea Geller of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Chicago told Inman that she is “as ready as I can be.” But, she added, others aren’t. “I’m concerned about the other agents around me.”

Additional resources: 

What happens now? 

Though the deadline has arrived, a number of questions remain unanswered. Will sellers generally keep offering commissions? Will buyers pay out of pocket? Will the DOJ push for bigger change? Will commissions meaningfully trend down? No one knows at this point, but those are all issues worth watching in the coming months.

The future of NAR is also an open question. The settlement came after a period of tumult for the organization, with scandal and executive turnover dominating news cycles in 2023. Now, a rival organization is making a bid for new members, some industry players have cut ties with NAR, and the organization still lacks a permanent CEO. The coming months, then, will act as a critical test for an entity that has defined real estate for decades.

Agents and the organizations that serve them will also have to exercise caution lest they run afoul of the rules in the immediate future:

• CRMLS, for example, told its members that they should expect a $2,500 fine if they include language around compensation within the MLS.
• Michael Ketchmark, the lead plaintiffs’ counsel for a case known as Sitzer | Burnett, told Inman in an exclusive interview this week that he will be watching the situation closely: “If anyone thinks they’re going to be able to avoid the application of this settlement agreement and the law by creating some new forms or hiding this cooperation on new websites, they’re wrong. If we get any sense that people or corporations are doing that out there as a way around this, we plan on taking swift legal action.”
• Agents who want to make it through this period of change, then, need what Figueroa characterized as a “mindset shift.” “I think what’s important right now is confidence in your consultation, competence and being able to truly articulate how you’re going to get [consumers] to the finish line by getting them the best price, the best negotiations, and that you’re an expert that has proven results.”

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Whether it’s refining your business model, mastering new technologies, or discovering strategies to capitalize on the next market surge, Inman Connect New York will prepare you to take bold steps forward. The Next Chapter is about to begin. Be part of it. Join us and thousands of real estate leaders Jan. 22-24, 2025.

The Aug. 17 deadline is here, and agents have been in a mad dash to update their systems and processes to comply with the new buyer agreement requirements.

But here’s the catch: Even with a signed buyer agreement in hand, agents might find themselves empty-handed unless they also establish a solid compensation plan.

The buyer agreement will spell out your compensation rate, but it likely won’t detail how you’ll actually get paid. What if the seller isn’t offering concessions? What if the buyer doesn’t have the funds to pay you?

Until Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae update their regulations to allow buyer agent compensation to be rolled into the buyer’s loan, it’s crucial to have a compensation plan to ensure you get paid for your hard work.

As I spoke about on a special panel about agency at Inman Connect Las Vegas, this is a complicated issue, and it’s going to take careful planning and execution with customer service to get the results that you are looking for.

Drafting this plan in collaboration with your buyers before showing homes will ensure that your buyers are prepared and that you’re in full agreement when it’s time to write the offer.

Steps to create a rock-solid compensation plan

Step 1: Identify ‘the home’

Once you find “the home,” reach out to the listing agent to inquire if the seller is offering any concessions or compensation to cover the buyer agent compensation (BAC).

Step 2: Draft the offer

When drafting the offer, include the BAC fee agreed upon in your buyer agreement. From here, several scenarios could unfold:

• Scenario A: The seller accepts your terms, and you proceed to mutual agreement.
• Scenario B: The seller counters with a lower rate than agreed upon in the buyer agreement. Collaborate with your buyer to decide whether to reject the counter or accept it, and cover the difference.
• Scenario C: The seller rejects the request for compensation, and the buyer must decide whether to pay the BAC in full or walk away from the offer.

Exploring payment options

If the buyer needs to pay the full BAC, several options are available to secure the funds:

• Down payment adjustment: The buyer might apply a portion of their down payment funds toward the fee.
• Closing costs: Explore with the lender the possibility of incorporating the BAC into the closing costs and increasing the purchase price to cover the difference (subject to appraisal).

No matter who ultimately pays the buyer agent compensation fee, the key is to work together to ensure the fee is covered and, most importantly, that your buyer lands their dream home.

Remember this

With a comprehensive compensation plan in hand, addressing all the “what ifs” in a transaction, you’ll not only comply with the new regulations but also ensure you close with a check in hand. So, take the time to create this plan, and set yourself up for success in this new era of buyer agreements. 

Cassie Walker Johnson is a managing broker at Windermere Real Estate. Connect with her on Instagram and LinkedIn.