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As the spring market built up momentum ahead of real estate’s busiest season, buyer’s agents found their rates increasingly squeezed from multiple angles, new Intel survey results suggest.
The large majority of agents surveyed each month as part of the Intel Index survey continue to say that their commissions have not changed, or have declined only slightly, since the NAR settlement rules went into effect in August.
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But the share of agent respondents who have been spared of negotiations with buyers has steadily eroded since the start of the year, the May survey results show. And more agents are dealing with sellers who want to attempt a hard strategy of not paying the buyer commission, Intel found.
Taken together, the results paint a picture of a market where an ongoing downward tug on commissions continues to strengthen, a reality with limited short-term impact but unknown long-term consequences.
Intel breaks down the findings in this week’s report.
Rising exposure
In late August, the first weeks after the National Association of Realtors settlement rules went into effect, roughly 3 in 4 agents said they hadn’t yet dealt with any buyers or sellers trying to take advantage of the new rules to drive a hard bargain.
Today, fewer agents are fully insulated from the change.
The first shift happened from August to September, as more buyers and sellers wrapped their heads around their options.
But Intel has observed a more recent shift in buyer behavior as well, coinciding with the start of the spring season and continuing through the most recent May results.
Intel: Over the last 3 months, what portion of your prospective buyer clients tried to negotiate a lower commission than what has been traditionally paid to buyer’s agents in your market?
December survey % → May survey %
- 66% → 57%: None tried to negotiate below the typical range
- 19% → 26%: Some, but fewer than 10%
- 9% → 10%: More than 10%, but fewer than half
- 6% → 7%: More than half tried to negotiate below the typical range
As we can see above, the share of agents who have no exposure to commission negotiation in recent months has dropped to a little over half of recent survey respondents.
Still, for the vast majority of survey respondents, these negotiations with buyers remain rare — making up fewer than 1 in 10 of the buyer clients with whom they ended up doing business.
For 17 percent of agent respondents, however, buyer negotiations have increasingly become a fact of life, affecting a significant share of their clients.
Intel also found evidence that sellers have taken the spring market as an opportunity to benefit from the new rules.
Intel: Over the last 3 months, what portion of your seller clients actually took a hard-line approach against covering the buyer’s agent commission?
December survey % → May survey %
- 74% → 64%: None
- 19% → 25%: Some, but fewer than 10%
- 2% → 6%: More than 10%, but fewer than half
- 4% → 5%: More than half
Here, too, we see that more agents have had experience with listing clients who were dead-set against the longstanding U.S. real estate practice of covering the buyer’s agent commission.
While these cases remain rare, it’s clear that the practice is not going away any time soon, even as agents largely advise their sellers against taking a route that might hurt their listing’s appeal on the market.
And the overall effect of these changes on commission rates? Not much, at least for most agents.
- Just over 47 percent of agent respondents in May said that they have observed no change to commission rates in their markets since the rules went into effect, and another 33 percent described the decline as slight.
- Only 5 percent of agent respondents told Intel that their compensation rates had decreased “significantly.”
- That’s even fewer than the 7 percent who said they have been able to negotiate higher rates as a result of the changes.
Intel will continue to monitor these trends in the months to come.
Methodology notes: This month’s Inman Intel Index survey was conducted May 20-June 3, 2025, and received 529 responses. The entire Inman reader community was invited to participate, and a rotating, randomized selection of community members was prompted to participate by email. Users responded to a series of questions related to their self-identified corner of the real estate industry — including real estate agents, brokerage leaders, lenders and proptech entrepreneurs. Results reflect the experience of the engaged Inman community, which may not always match those of the broader real estate industry. This survey is conducted monthly.
