Who Pays the Buyer’s Agent Commission Now?
The short answer: it is negotiated in every single deal. Since the NAR settlement took effect in August 2024, the seller no longer pre-commits a buyer-agent fee just by listing on the MLS. Your agent’s fee is set in a written agreement you sign before touring, and the money comes from the seller, from you, or both, depending on what your offer negotiates.
That is the whole system. The rest of this page is what it means in practice for a Chicago buyer.
What Actually Changed in 2024
Traditionally, commission worked like this: the seller signed a listing agreement at a percentage, and part of that percentage was offered to whichever agent brought the buyer. The offer of buyer-agent compensation was published on the MLS, so by the time you toured a home, the fee was already baked in and nobody discussed it with you.
The settlement removed two pieces of that machine:
- Buyer-agent compensation cannot be advertised on the MLS anymore. Sellers can still offer it, but it is negotiated deal by deal instead of posted upfront.
- Buyers must sign a written agreement before touring. The agreement states what your agent charges. You see the number, in writing, before you are committed to anything.
What did not change: the work still exists, and someone still pays for it. The question every buyer now has to answer is how big that number is and how it travels through the deal.
How the Fee Travels Through Your Offer
Here is the part almost nobody explains. When your offer asks the seller to fund your agent’s compensation, that request is part of what the seller evaluates. Two offers at the same price are not the same offer:
| Offer A | Offer B | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $400,000 | $400,000 |
| Buyer-agent compensation requested | $10,000 (example 2.5%) | $1,400 (flat-fee balance) |
| Seller keeps | $390,000 | $398,600 |
The seller compares nets. Offer B wins the comparison at the identical price, because it carries a smaller request. This is why the size of your agent’s fee is not just a cost question. It is an offer-strength question.
The Three Ways It Gets Paid
- Seller-funded, negotiated in the offer. Still the most common outcome in Chicago. Your offer requests it, the seller weighs it against everything else in your terms.
- Buyer-funded. If a seller offers nothing, the fee in your representation agreement is yours. With a percentage agreement that can mean a five-figure surprise. With a flat fee it is a known, bounded number from day one.
- Split. The seller funds part, you cover the difference.
I believe the honest reading of the new rules is this: the settlement did not lower anyone’s fee, it just handed buyers the ability to choose what their representation costs and to feel that choice in the strength of their offers. Buyers who sign a 2.5 percent agreement in 2026 are choosing the old system voluntarily.
What This Looks Like With a Flat Fee
Net Gain Realty represents buyers for a flat $1,995. The offer we write for you requests only the remaining balance from the seller, never a percentage. What that changes about your offer, and about your downside if a seller refuses to fund anything, is arithmetic, and it is worked through on this site: what a buyer’s agent costs in Chicago and flat fee versus percentage on the buy side.
Rules and norms described as of July 2026. Compensation in any specific transaction is negotiated between the parties.
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