A year and a half after a historic legal shake-up that was supposed to reinvent how home buyers and home sellers pay real estate agents, little has actually changed.

The 2024 class-action settlements against the National Association of Realtors were supposed to give buyers and sellers the power to negotiate commissions rather than accept long-standing “standard” rates. But a new report from the Consumer Policy Center shows that most agents are sticking to the old playbook.

“The settlement provided home buyers with new opportunities to negotiate commissions, but the industry has figured out how to minimize these opportunities,” said Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at Consumer Policy Center.

While conducting mystery-shopper interviews from July through September, CPC researchers found th

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