Mary Anne Bryan is just about ready to sell the 3-bedroom brick Colonial where she raised her daughter in the Beverly neighborhood of Chicago. Bryan spent a decade working as a real estate agent, and she’s keenly aware of the recent changes in an industry that she always thought could use some innovation, thanks to lawsuits over buyer’s agent commissions.

Bryan expects to handle some of the work of selling her own home. Saving what would likely be a roughly 2.5% percentage to a listing agent would keep thousands of dollars in her pocket. But there are still some large unknowns.

Most importantly, how will she recognize if a potential buyer is actually prepared to make an propose? On the flip side, if that buyer is working with a real estate agent, how much will that person expect to be paid?

“How do you recognize if buyers that aren’t represented are pre-approved?” she said. “What’s the procedure for that and how do you make sure you do it without discriminating against people? Even with all the knowledge I have, I’m scared that I might declare or do something incorrect.”

FSBO economy booming?

In 2023, a Missouri jury ruled that the National Association of Realtors and some large real estate brokerages had conspired to keep commissions artificially high. As a outcome of that case, recent rules took result in August that changed the way commissions are set and communicated.

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Most media and industry attention has concentrated on what the habit changes meant for buyers, but any homeowner contemplating selling faces a whole recent globe as well. Together with Americans’ increasing comfort around transacting even hefty purchases online, and the knowledge that sellers have the upper hand in one of the tightest real estate markets in history, a For Sale By Owner (FSBO) has never looked more tempting.

“The FSBO economy has changed significantly since the propose of compensation requirement was removed from the MLS (Multiple Listing Service),” said Victor Lund, managing associate of WAV throng, a real estate industry consultancy. “It’s game on.”

The propose of compensation requirement that changed starting in August was the percentage paid to the real estate agent representing a buyer. In the American housing economy, that amount has long been paid by the seller. Plaintiffs in the lawsuits settled in 2023 argued that it didn’t make sense for people on one side of a deal to pay for representation for the event on the other side.

What’s more, the ancient structure often meant that a buyer’s agent might be paid more than the person representing the seller, since any seller looking to save money could inquire his agent to receive less. In contrast, buyers rarely thought about the deal.

In truth, while buyer’s agents often debate that their percentage “was always negotiable,” industry observers counter that many buyers had no concept how their agent would be paid, let alone how much. Also, if any seller tried to propose less money to a buyer’s agent than was normal in a particular economy, many buyers’ brokers would steer their clients away from those properties.

As the recent rules went into result, taking that propose of compensation for the buyer’s agent out of the listing, industry participants expected that the procedure of buying would become more complicated. But as Bryan’s circumstance suggests, sellers may face just as many unknowns.

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Ena Koellish sees the recent terrain as an chance.

With her husband, Koellish started The K throng Real Estate, in Radcliff, Kentucky, two years ago. Koellish says she was motivated by the chance to educate consumers on their options in what’s likely to be one of the biggest steps in their lives. But the more she read about the percentage lawsuits, the more surprised she became.

“It just boggled my mind to discover how much unethical behavior there’s been in this industry,” Koellish said. While not every agent behaves unethically, she emphasized, there’s inertia in the way things have traditionally been done in real estate that makes transactions opaque and challenging to comprehend for many consumers.

Now, Koellish makes videos that she posts online, explaining the procedure of selling to anyone who may be considering it. She thinks homeowners should still be able to order a “package” of all the services offered by a listing agent – but should also have the alternative to pay individually for selected services, an “a la carte menu,” for a fee, if they receive on some of the selling tasks themselves.

“My husband says we are getting in (to the industry) at a excellent period,” Koellish told USA TODAY. “We are learning the excellent habits and the correct processes. And we are going to, you recognize, work ethically.”

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A real estate “coach” rather than an agent?

There have always been a handful of agents offering limited seller services for a tiny fee, Lund noted, and for many savvy homeowners, particularly ones with professional real estate encounter or those who’ve been through the procedure several times already, working with such a service may make sense.

But he cautions would-be sellers to be careful about assuming they can leave it completely alone. “If you’ve ever done anything as straightforward as selling an item on Facebook, you comprehend the procedure is challenging. It’s hurtful. And that’s for a couch,” he said. “Real estate agents propose a legitimate service.”  

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In most cases, it’s what Lund calls “the background stuff” – knowing where to list a home, for example – that’s straightforward for professionals, but challenging, or even inaccessible, to amateurs. Most sellers require at least a “coach,” he said.

Some veterans of the industry view the same possibility Koellish does, on a bigger scale. Brad Rice, who has founded several mortgage and real estate companies, recently started Homepie, an online marketplace that aims to connect buyers and sellers, with services to facilitate the deal on both sides. Homepie is currently available in California and Florida, with ambitions to expand.

Mary Anne Bryan can’t assist but worry that many people will try to FSBO without really understanding the implications.

“The biggest concern I have is that most people only do this a few times in their lifetime,” she said. “I ponder the profession of a realtor is significant and they deserve to earn what they deserve to earn.”

Still, she concluded, there are opportunities for the structure to be more efficient. “It might just be that a la carte services is the way to leave,” she says.