Should You Pay the Buyer's Agent?

Two slogans are fighting over your equity right now.

The first one: "The NAR settlement freed you. Never pay a buyer's agent again." The second: "Offer the buyer's side their full fee or your listing dies on the vine." Both get shouted with total confidence. Both are sold by people who profit when you believe them.

I sell homes in Santa Clarita for seventeen thousand dollars, fixed. Seller side only. I built my name on sellers keeping their money. And I will still sit at a kitchen table in Canyon Country and tell a seller to offer the buyer's agent something. On purpose. Different house, different market, and I tell the same kind of seller to keep every dollar.

Same agent. Opposite advice. That's not a contradiction. That's the doctrine: the money call is yours, and it gets made offer by offer, not by slogan.

What the Settlement Actually Changed

In 2024 the National Association of Realtors settled for $418 million, and the plumbing of buyer-agent pay got ripped out and reinstalled. Three changes matter to you as a seller.

First, buyers must now sign a written buyer representation agreement before an agent tours homes with them. Second, offers of buyer-agent compensation came off the MLS. Your listing no longer broadcasts a payout to the other side. Third, buyer-agent fees are fully negotiable. The buyer can pay their own agent, or you can choose to offer a concession that helps cover it.

Read that last sentence again. The word doing the work is choose. Nothing is automatic anymore. Which means every listing agent in California owes you a real answer to a real question: on this specific offer, does a concession make you money or cost you money?

Most sellers never get that math. They get a slogan, delivered by whoever benefits from it.

Follow the Money Before You Follow the Advice

I spent twenty years with LAPD, most of it on a motor working Valley Traffic. You learn fast that testimony follows interest. The driver tells you a story. The skid marks tell you what happened. So before you take anyone's advice about paying a buyer's agent, ask what the advice pays them.

An agent working on a percentage has a fee structure that just spent years in federal court. A discount outfit wants your listing fast and your questions never. Me? My loyalty is something you can audit. Seventeen thousand dollars, fixed, whether you concede nothing or concede something. There is no version of your decision that changes my paycheck.

That's not virtue. That's architecture. I tore the incentive out on purpose so the advice would come out clean.

Why the Fee Crusader Sometimes Says Offer Something

Here's the part that surprises people, because I'm the guy who built a whole brand on sellers keeping their money.

Entry-level Santa Clarita runs on FHA and VA financing. Starter homes in Canyon Country. Condos and townhomes in Saugus, Newhall, Castaic. The buyers at those price points have often scraped together every dollar they have for the down payment and closing costs. Many of them cannot also write a check to their own agent. Not won't. Can't.

Now run the scenario. You refuse all concessions on principle. The buyers who can't cover their agent's fee don't call you to argue. They quietly drop off your showing list. You didn't get tough. You deleted a slice of your buyer pool, and on some streets it's a big slice. Fewer buyers means less competition. Less competition comes off your price. The concession you refused to pay can come back out of your net, and it often comes back bigger.

Notice the word often. Not always. This is math, not dogma, and the math changes street by street, price point by price point, month by month. I want your buyer pool as deep as it can get, which is why buyers are welcome at my listings and I built the door myself: every open house in this valley, every weekend, one page, free, at SantaClaritaOpenHouses.com. Deep pools lift prices. Yours included.

When the Answer Flips: Keep Every Dollar

Different house, different market, and the advice reverses on the spot.

Say your home sits at a price point where demand runs deep. Multiple offers. Buyers with conventional financing, cash reserves, room in their budget to honor the agreement they already signed with their own agent. In that market, volunteering a concession isn't generosity. It's a donation with no return on it.

Or say a strong buyer arrives having already agreed to pay their agent themselves. Their agreement is their agreement. You don't need to fund it. Keep every dollar.

And sometimes the strongest offer on your table asks for a concession and still wins, because the price above it more than covers the ask. You'll never know which situation you're in from a slogan. You'll know from the paper in front of you.

The Offer-by-Offer Doctrine

So here's the rule I actually live by, and it was never "never pay buyer agents."

You decide, offer by offer, with advice from the one agent in the room who has no financial stake in the answer.

Every offer gets the same cold treatment: price, financing type, concession request, timeline, and one number at the bottom that matters, your net. An offer that asks for a concession but comes in at a higher price can net you more than a clean offer below it. A clean offer can beat a bigger number with weak financing behind it. We put the nets side by side, raw, and you pick. Your equity, your call. My job is to make sure the call is made on evidence, not on someone's commission-flavored ideology.

One line here because I mean it: this post is education, not legal or tax advice. Your sale has its own facts, and you should run your specific situation past your own professionals before you sign anything.

Zero Buyer Referral Fees. Not a Dime. Not Ever.

There's a quieter leak in this business, and I want you to see it before you hire anyone.

Plenty of "listing" agents make buyer-side money without ever representing a buyer. An unrepresented buyer walks into the open house, the agent hands them off to a teammate or a friend across town, and a referral cut flows back when that buyer's deal closes. Legal. Disclosed somewhere in a stack of paper. And it plants a stake in the ground, because now the advice you're getting about concessions and buyer traffic has a rooting interest baked into it.

I take zero. No buyer representation. No referral fees on buyers. No finder's anything. When an unrepresented buyer at one of my listings needs an agent, a lender, an inspector, they get three names, never one, and I don't collect from any of them. What they get from me first is the real estate version of Miranda, from my mouth, before they say a word that costs them.

My only check in your deal is your seventeen thousand dollars, fixed. You can see exactly how that works at seventeenk.com. That's the whole paycheck. That's why my advice on this question is worth taking.

Kitchen Table Q&A

Seller: "You're the seventeen-thousand-dollar guy. Why would you ever tell me to hand money to the buyer's side?"

Connor: "I wouldn't tell you to hand anybody anything. I'd show you what each offer nets you, with and without the concession, and then it's your call. Some streets, a concession buys you a deeper buyer pool and a better net. Some streets, it buys you nothing."

Seller: "The internet says I never have to pay a buyer's agent again."

Connor: "The internet is right about the rule and silent about your market. You're not required to pay anyone. But on an entry-level home, the FHA and VA buyers who often can't pay their own agent don't call to negotiate with you. They just never show up."

Seller: "So the settlement changed nothing?"

Connor: "It changed the most important thing: who decides. That payout used to be baked in before you ever signed. Now it's your decision, offer by offer, eyes open. That's a real win. Just don't confuse the right to refuse with an obligation to refuse."

Seller: "What if I refuse everything on principle?"

Connor: "Then make sure the principle is worth what it costs on your street. I've watched sellers get tough, feel great, and pay for the feeling out of their net."

Seller: "Would you offer a concession selling your own mother's house?"

Connor: "Depends entirely on the offers on her table. That's the whole point. I'd run her nets exactly the way I'd run yours, and I'd take the biggest one."

Seller: "How do I know your advice isn't feathering some buyer agent's nest?"

Connor: "Because there is no nest. Seventeen thousand dollars, fixed, seller side only. No referral fees on buyers, not a dime, not ever. Say yes to a concession or say no. My check doesn't move either way."

Seller: "And if the buyer shows up with no agent at all?"

Connor: "Then there's no buyer-agent fee to even discuss. I read them their rights at the door, and if they want the house, I write their offer with their exact terms. Cleanest conversation in real estate."

Before You Sign Anything

Twenty-seven years in this valley taught me that sellers rarely get hurt by the market. They get hurt by advice with a paycheck hiding inside it. So bring me this question before you sign a listing agreement anywhere, and we'll run your numbers together, clean. While you're at it, read the dual agency asterisk too, because I publish my fine print out loud. Everyone gets my honesty. One side gets my loyalty. That's the whole doctrine, and this question is where it earns its keep.