A recent court ruling shook up the real estate industry and for good reason. The National Association of Realtors (NAR), along with several of the nation’s largest brokerages, lost a major antitrust lawsuit over how commissions are structured. But while headlines focused on buyers and agents, the deeper issue was largely ignored: sellers have long been paying for services they don’t always need.
The lawsuit centered around one key issue: sellers being required to offer compensation to the buyer’s agent in order to have their listing appear on the MLS. That practice, the court decided, limited competition and unfairly inflated commission costs.
What the lawsuit didn’t address is just as important:
Most sellers today don’t need a full-service listing agent to access professional marketing tools. The same resources agents use high-quality photography, floor plans, custom listing pages, MLS syndication are now available directly to homeowners.
Here’s what this means in plain terms:
- The buyer’s agent still plays a valuable role: showing homes, writing contracts, guiding the buyer.
- But the listing side? That’s where sellers now have flexibility.
Sellers can still offer 3% to a buyer’s agent to ensure cooperation and exposure but they no longer need to automatically give away another 3% for listing services they can manage themselves or source à la carte.
At the heart of the lawsuit was the idea that commissions should be negotiable not assumed. What it missed is that sellers should have always had the right to decide how they market their home, and whom they pay for representation.
Today, that’s finally becoming reality.
With platforms like brDIY, sellers can access the tools of a pro listing agent without giving up 3% of their home’s value.
This lawsuit might have been aimed at buyer-side compensation, but it opens the door for a broader shift: empowering homeowners to decide how much help they need, and how much they’re willing to pay for it. The tools are already here. The question is whether sellers will take the reins or keep following a model that no longer serves them.
