🔴 Pending home sales fell 5.4% in June — in all four U.S. regions
NAR’s pending home sales report landed this week: contract signings fell 5.4% in June, reversing the annual gains we saw this spring. High rates are pressing on demand, and sellers are feeling it.
When contract activity softens, leverage moves toward buyers. Fewer competing offers. More negotiating room. More seller flexibility on price, credits and terms.
💡 What this means for buyers:
A soft market doesn’t hand you anything — it creates the conditions for leverage. Whether you convert any of it depends on whether the person negotiating for you knows how.
A mediocre agent in this market fails invisibly. You’ll never see the credit you didn’t get or the price reduction that was available. No statement itemizes what your agent’s judgment cost you.
Free test to run this month — ask any agent you’re considering: “Pending sales just fell 5.4% nationally. What does that change about how you’d structure my offer?” A weak answer describes the market. A strong answer changes the strategy.
🎯 Bottom line: The leverage is there for the taking, but you have to take it. Most buyers will waste this opportunity the same way they approach the hire itself: taking the first option in front of them and never comparing. Don’t be most buyers.
That question offered above is just the beginning. My Buyer Agent Interview Blueprint gives you one interview question for each of the Five Dimensions of Outstanding Buyer Representation — five questions that reveal in one meeting what most buyers never learn until escrow. Free. → HireForwardBlueprint.com
🟡 A homebuyer settlement deadline is five weeks out
The buyer-side commission lawsuits — the quieter cousins of the seller cases that made headlines two years ago — are wrapping up through settlements: Keller Williams for $20 million, RE/MAX for $8.5 million, and NAR paying $52.25 million into a separate fund.
For context: those are small numbers by class-action standards, the companies admitted no wrongdoing, no business-practice changes were attached, and the buyers’ central theory — that inflated commissions were passed through into home prices — was never tested in court. A judge struck the class-certification motion last fall. The record supports more than one reading, and I’d treat anyone who tells you it proves something — in either direction — with suspicion.
💡 What this actually means for buyers:
If you bought an MLS-listed home that closed on or before April 14, 2026, inside your state’s eligibility window (California reaches back to January 2017), you’re likely a class member — even if your agent was with a different brokerage. The requirements: the home was on an MLS and a broker earned a commission on the sale.
Filing takes about twenty minutes with your closing statement in hand. Deadline: August 25, 2026.
The official, court-supervised site is HomeBuyerLitigation.com — use that exact URL; settlements attract copycat sites.
🎯 Bottom line: Expect any payment to be modest, and to arrive only after final approval and appeals. File now and wait for your check.
📋 FROM THE HIRE:FORWARD DESK
That free interview question up top? There’s a whole arsenal where it came from. The Buyer Agent Interview Toolkit gives you 3–4 questions for each of the Five Dimensions, guides to my trick questions, and a scoring framework that lets you efficiently compare three candidates apples to apples. In a market that’s about to reward sharp hiring, it’s the fastest $69 upgrade to your homebuying outcome. → HireForwardToolkit.com ($69)