Feeling overwhelmed by all the advice about how to handle commissions starting August 17, 2024? Confused about what to say to your buyers and sellers? Adjusting to the coming changes only requires a few simple tweaks in your language, transferring your listing agreement skills to your buyer agreements, plus moving to what I’m calling a “multiple offer mindset,” an approach every competent agent already understands how to use.

It’s incredibly frustrating to see so-called industry experts giving advice that keeps agents trapped in the old model where buyer’s agents are still thinking about being compensated by the seller. Specific examples include websites that display listing commissions to buyers’ agents through the seller/listing agent, advice focused on “seller offers of compensation,” or use of forms that offer “concessions.”

Tweak your language and reset your mindset
I recently had a conversation with Katherine Lappe, the founder and CEO of Direct Offer as well as the owner of WorldWideInvestments.com, a member-based service that has over 6,000 members and that currently lists about 150,000 properties that range from single family, multi-family, probate, For-Sale-by-Owner, commercial, aimed specifically at the investment market.

Lappe pointed out that buyers’ agents working in the auction, commercial, industrial, and investment markets all manage to get paid without commission sharing through a Multiple Listing Service.

Lappe’s remarks made me entirely rethink how agents need to work with their buyers and sellers going forward. Realtors need to make some simple language changes, such as shifting away from using words like “compensation” and “commission” to using “fee” whenever possible, and we need to adopt a “multiple offer mindset.” This simple approach can help both agents and brokers avoid issues with the DOJ as well as with plaintiffs’ attorneys itching to file even more lawsuits.

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