Many real estate downturns are followed by promises of consumer-friendly process reform and increased attention on affordability.
As with the subprime mortgage crisis, many believed the ongoing buyer commission lawsuits would totally realign how homes traded and agents are compensated. A truly open-market model. Within a year, commissions ticked up and little changed. It’s now been three years.
Despite almost two decades of absorbing direct hits to its fault line, the industry foundation remains seemingly uncompromised. However, is the constant battle for self-preservation undermining real estate’s oft-stated fiduciary promise to do right by consumers? Has there been any meaningful improvements to the transaction process?
The subprime mortgage scandal held no one accountable, even though agents were selling homes as quickly as banks would underwrite them. The NAR settlement launched from the premise that buyers were mislead about commission standards. Yet, in many cases, the consumer still pays more than pre-settlement.
Priced out, confused and search-weary, are consumers justified in their pursuit of help from outside the legacy brokerage world?
Losing in court, winning anyway
The settlement’s answer was greater transparency and clearer negotiation. But the buyer representation agreements that followed have created a different question: What happens when buyers understand the terms, sign the contract — and later decide they want out?
A couple in Pennsylvania signed a binding year-long contract with a brokerage for buyer representation. After several showings and delayed emails, according to Business Insider, the family wanted out.
The broker said otherwise, leaning on the buyer representation agreement that required a cancellation fee and full commission of 4% if they purchased through another agent. And, yes, buyers can take a long time to submit an offer, but three-to-six months is the more typical contract length in Pennsylvania.
“The contract didn’t mention anything about the buyer’s options to terminate the agreement. And if [the buyers] decided not to buy, and ended up leasing a property at any point during the one-year timeframe, they’d still owe the brokerage one month’s rent plus the $995 fee,” the report said.
“I saw that, and my heart dropped,” buyer Kirsten Ganas told Business Insider. “I didn’t even realize that was in there. I didn’t know that was even a thing.”
Of course, that is one example. Not all brokers use the same buyer representation agreement, nor do they all choose to enforce it. Thus, the language of this contract does not represent the industry as a whole, but it does illustrate how consequential the terms of a buyer representation agreement can become once a buyer signs.
What changed and what didn’t
Blake O’Shaughnessy, a real estate broker and founder of flat-free brokerage Ownli, wrote about new buyer agency agreements for HousingWire earlier this year.
“What changed was the paperwork. What did not change was how the process actually feels to a buyer navigating it for the first time. More documents were added, but very little was simplified. Legal exposure was addressed. Consumer confusion was not.”
Like O’Shaugnessy, Boulder, Colorado’s Mike Chambers believes tech-forward alternatives to legacy processes are the answer. He founded a company called Ridley.
“I think for the most part, the brokerages are very much positioning themselves to protect this model and do things in a thinly veiled, consumer-friendly way. But reality is [that] it’s all about control over inventory and ultimately control over the process,” Chambers said. “The brokerages try to control the inventory, maybe not give access to the data that’s powering what’s going into a CMA or, you know, control over the forms and not giving people the ability to see the forms without having a license and different things like that.”
Chambers said he simply believes the open collaboration between automation and agent expertise is the better balance for the consumer.
“I just think that when you look at how technology really has made this process more straightforward and continues to, I think people look at this [process] and they’re like, am I going to get $100,000 in value for this transaction?”
Chambers’ model is supported further in part by a 2025 homeowners survey conducted by Anytime Estimate, a Clever subsidiary. While 91% of respondents plan on using an agent, only 61% said they consider one “inherently necessary” to the process.
In 2024, that number was 10 percentage points higher, suggesting that the consumer is starting to understand that after two decades of sophisticated technology advancements and the onset of AI, it should be easier by now to buy and sell a home.
New models
That’s what drove Katie Hill to launch Unlisted, a consumer-led platform that lists every house in America. Or close to it. Whether for sale or not, users of the application can indicate to owners they would be interested in buying their home if they ever consider selling. It’s not designed to bypass agents, Hill said.
“It made me realize real estate is not black or white, for-sale or not-for-sale. Rather, many homeowners, 66% according to thousands of surveys we’ve collected, live in the grey space of open to selling now or in the future, though not for-sale yet,” Hill said.
Hill’s model is definitely a new way of thinking about homebuying out from under the common transaction standard. Uber didn’t bankrupt the taxi industry any more than Airbnb did hotels. But each offers consumers viable alternatives.
“The every-day home shopper resents being treated like leads, not people,” Hill said. “They want to be met where they are and buy a home they really love with confidence. They are exhausted of feeling rushed and pressured. Great agents understand this and bring care and creative solutions to the process.”
Obviously Ridley and Unlisted aren’t alone in its category. Its motivation for being is essentially what drove the “iBuyer” movement, and is in part behind Opendoor’s phoenix-like rise from the penny stock abyss.
There are countless solutions aiming to prove consumers want alternatives to all things home buying and ownership. Even Martha Stewart has an angle. However, none of them have the nation’s oldest trade organization backing them, so traction is notably more difficult to gain. It should be noted that Ridley did land a seed round from notable industry fund, Fifth Wall.
But NAR’s grip isn’t quite as confident these days, as evidenced by the pace of CEO Nykia Wright’s media train and of course, the nation’s largest brokerage supporting an unproven startup trade association.
A license, not a qualification
Gibson Group/Real Brokerage’s Nathan White believes a big reason for the lagging consumer experience is the expertise of the very people licensed to be in the business. The bar is set too low, he argues.
“I think every problem we have in our industry right now has to do with the barrier to entry, I really do,” he said. “That stat that came out last year, that 70% of agents didn’t do a transaction last year? Like, what are we doing? That to me is about money, not about the consumer.”
White’s take is that NAR depends on dues, and dues require people having licenses, regardless of how often they wield them.
He argued against Ohio House Bill 238 that reduced required hours for licensing from 120 to 100 and doesn’t believe brokers do enough to support their agents’ soft skills, especially in large brokerages.
Far too many buyers and sellers serve as “guinea pigs” for inexperienced agents, according to White.
“At my previous brokerage, we had 100 agents and one broker, and I can tell you, they didn’t look at a thing we did,” White said. “The only time they cared is when someone screwed up, and then they’d get upset, and I’d be like, ‘You can’t get upset at this person because you haven’t given them any guidance.’”
Widening the moat, narrowing the access
Yet, there’s a clear desire to be better at the job. Aleks Bugarski, Director of Business Development for Tom Ferry, the highly popular sales coach, told me that “close to 5,000 people” attended the 2026 Success Summit.
“Maybe 50% of the attendees fly in,” Bugarski said. “We had 2,000-plus registered to livestream it. Lots of office watch parties.”
Buffini. Ninja Selling. On and on. Every year, agents by the thousands contribute to a billion dollar industry for outside help with their business, filling a void left by the ones they thought they could turn to upon entering the field.
Relative to filling voids, consumers turned to portals when the onset of the consumer internet revealed what was possible. In lieu of office visits, all-day car tours and signing agreements to see a home, consumers went online and now, listen to AI platforms.
The largest brokerage brand in the nation believes its exclusive listing program gives consumers what they’re seeking—choice. However, what does that change about the process? Document hassles. Endless vendors. Confusing contracts. How does it make it easier to actually buy and sell?
Many argue that it doesn’t. Getting more at closing doesn’t mean it was easier to buy or sell. Once again, an industry solution to a big problem isn’t being built around the people it most impacts.
But, has what Compass, Zillow, Homes.com, Google and a slew of multiple listing services managed to do making things more confusing for consumers?
Portal wars, consumer casualties
It’s becoming more clear that Compass is aiming to build a national search portal. In an August earnings call, Reffkin said consumers will follow the listings.
He claimed that he expects 90% of MLSes to have rules that allow for private listings and ‘Coming Soon’ listings by the end of the year. As that happens, ‘agents will just put [listings] on our sites, and then people will search where the inventory is,’ Reffkin said. ‘We’ve done the research.’”
Compass has formed deals with a number of Realtor associations, MRED the most notable. Its efforts are coming under congressional scrutiny.
Should Compass wiggle out of the legal spotlight, it’s possible they become that end-to-end transaction solution Zillow seems so hesitant to become. Momentum appears to favor Compass.
Regardless of how the current quagmire gets resolved, the economy alone has given consumers another bandolier of reasons to turn to cheaper, more streamlined technology-driven alternatives.
To White’s point, the top 20% of practitioners are safely sheltered from the frontline risks. Their services and expertise remain invaluable.
However, industry leadership might want to find new ways to embrace its middle tier, as well as come to the realization that if the consumer experience doesn’t soon become its focus, AI-based automation will be the least of its worries.