🔴 Junk fees are the new commission controversy
Compass is being sued by Florida homebuyers over a $475 fee they say appeared in their purchase contract without adequate disclosure.
The fee was there. In the paperwork. Compass says so.
And in a statement to Inman, Compass defended it as standard practice across the industry.
I'm a 25-year broker. In my experience — and at my brokerage, one of the largest in the country — buyers are not routinely charged junk fees at closing. I can't speak to every market or every brokerage. But "standard industry practice" is not how I'd describe what I've seen.
💡 What this actually means for buyers: Buyers are regularly handed documents they don't fully understand, by people they haven't vetted, in transactions moving faster than they're prepared for. That's the real problem. Not one fee in one contract.
🎯 Bottom line: Ask your agent, in writing, for every fee their brokerage will add at closing beyond commission — before you sign anything, not later when you’re staring at a closing statement.
🟡 No agent fee relief for buyers
The NAR settlement was sold as the thing that would finally lower what buyers pay their agent. Two years in, the data says otherwise.
Buyer’s-agent commissions: 2.70% in 2021, down to 2.58% right before the settlement took effect in 2024, then back up to 2.82% as of a February 2026 survey of 533 agents. Total combined commission today sits at roughly 5.70% — basically where it was before anyone went to court.
Two things happened at the same time, and together they cancel out any downward pressure.
First, the settlement pulled compensation offers off the MLS. Whatever else was wrong with that system, it gave every buyer’s agent — and by extension every buyer — a visible number before they ever toured a home.
Second, the fee negotiation got handed to buyers who’ve never run a negotiation like this. Most people have never negotiated a professional services fee before in their life.
No visible benchmark, plus no buyer experience negotiating fees, equals no downward pressure. The price didn’t move because nothing was pushing on it.
The irony: the settlement’s stated goal was to increase transparency. What actually happened is the number got more opaque, not less.
Buyers lost the one figure they used to have clarity on.
🟢 Mortgage rates just did buyers a favor nobody’s talking about
30-year rates aren’t flat right now — they’re volatile. A six-week low of 6.43% on July 2 snapped back above 6.7% by July 8–10 as oil prices spiked on renewed Iran conflict fears. The Fed doesn’t meet again until July 28–29.
Here’s what that spike is hiding: every time rates push back up, another wave of buyers drops out of contention. Fewer people willing to transact means less competition for whoever’s still in the game.
🎯 Bottom line: high rates aren’t just a cost. They’re a leverage shift.
And that cost can be shifted to the seller. When fewer buyers are bidding, sellers get nervous. Nervous sellers negotiate — on price, on repairs, on closing costs, on timeline.
This is the exact moment a mediocre agent and a great one stop looking the same. A mediocre agent writes an offer and hopes. A great one knows which levers are actually available to pull right now — and pulls them before you’ve even toured the third house.
⚖ Fair deal or missed opportunity: it depends entirely on who’s negotiating for you.
If you’re buying in this rate environment, don’t just ask an agent “what’s your commission.” Ask: “Walk me through how you will negotiate on my behalf in this high-rate environment.” Their answer tells you everything.
Ready to find someone who can actually work this market for you? Start with Choose — the course I built for buyers who want to make a smart hire, not just any hire. → HireForwardChoose.com ($297)
🟢 Buyers are using AI more — and trusting it less for the decision that matters
82% of consumers now use AI for real estate research (Realtor.com, Oct. 2025). But a YouGov survey from December found a sharp split: 65% trust AI to compare home prices, and only 14% trust it to actually act on their behalf in a purchase decision. 44% said they’d pay extra just to have a human verify an AI-generated housing recommendation.
💡 What this actually means for buyers: People are using AI to gather information, not to make the call — and that instinct is correct. There’s currently no independent, outcome-based data feeding those AI answers about who to hire. It’s agent-authored marketing, filtered through an interface that sounds neutral. The research can be AI-assisted. The hire still has to be yours.
📋 THE HIRE:FORWARD DESK
Home Search Priorities Worksheet
25 years in this industry taught me something: the buyers who get the best outcomes aren’t the ones who found the “right” house. They’re the ones who knew what they needed before they started looking.
Most buyers skip that step. They start touring homes on gut feeling, then expect their agent to somehow read their mind.
My Home Search Priorities Worksheet fixes that — three quick steps to:
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🙋♀️ And one parting thought
The homebuyer agent you hire determines how every hard moment in your transaction gets handled downstream. That's why I'm so passionate about "hiring forward." Read more at WhyHireForward.com.