Who Pays the Real Estate Agent in San Diego? How Commissions Actually Work Now

When the commission rules changed in August 2024, I wrote a short post trying to explain them. The honest summary of that post was that nobody — agents included — really knew yet how it would shake out. The settlement was designed to bring more transparency and competition to real estate. While that may have been the goal, what it produced first was an enormous amount of confusion for consumers.

Two years in, that's no longer the interesting part. The confusion has mostly burned off, the paperwork has settled into a routine, and we now have actual data on what happened. Some of it is surprising. Most of the predictions were wrong.

So this is a rewrite rather than an update. Here's a simple breakdown of what you need to know, as of today, if you're buying or selling a home in San Diego.

General information on how agent compensation works — not legal, tax, or lending advice. And one disclosure up front: I'm a REALTOR® at Compass and I'm paid out of commissions, so weigh my read accordingly. Where my interests and a buyer's or seller's might diverge, I've tried to say so.

What Actually Changed, and When

The date you'll see cited most often is August 17, 2024. That was the national implementation deadline for the practice changes that came out of the NAR settlement. If you were following it here in San Diego, though, you probably remember it landing a few days earlier — both of our MLSs moved in the week before the deadline rather than on it. So depending on which calendar you were watching, the change arrived somewhere in that week. San Diego MLS still publishes its current rules.

Three things changed that actually matter to you:

Compensation came off the MLS. A listing can no longer advertise what it will pay a buyer's agent. Compensation is still negotiable and can still be discussed — by phone, by email, agent to agent — it just can't live in the MLS field where every agent could sort by it. Seller concessions can still be posted under the MLS policies in effect here, but they can't be conditioned on paying a buyer's broker.

Buyers sign a representation agreement. Before an agent shows you homes, you and that agent sign a written agreement that states what they'll be paid. It has to be a real number or rate — a percentage, a flat fee, an hourly rate — not an open-ended promise.

Nobody can steer by compensation. Agents and MLSs are barred from filtering or hiding listings based on what they pay. This one gets the least attention and was arguably the entire point.

What did not change: commissions were always negotiable. That was true before the settlement and it's true now. What changed is that the negotiation moved out of a field in the MLS and into a conversation you're part of.

Who Pays the Buyer's Agent Now

This is the question I get most, and the honest answer starts somewhere people don't expect. It isn't a menu of who might pay. You owe your agent what your representation agreement says you owe them. That's the obligation. Everything else in this section is a way of getting someone else to fund it.

Once you see it that way the structure gets simple. California REALTORS® describe three routes, and our local MLS lists the same three:

Whatever the seller contributes is credited against what you owe, not added on top. If you agreed to 2.5% and the seller covers the full 2.5%, you owe your agent nothing further. If the seller covers 2%, you're responsible for the remaining 0.5%. And under the agreements in standard use here your agent can't collect more than that number from all sources combined — but that's a function of how your particular agreement is worded, so read that paragraph instead of taking my summary for it.

The one you'll hear about that mostly isn't a thing here

There's a fourth structure worth naming because people still describe the market as if it were the default: the listing brokerage sharing its own commission with the buyer's brokerage. That's how it worked before 2024, when the split was posted in the MLS.

Nationally this is still permitted. NAR maintains guidance on broker-to-broker agreements, with the conditions that the seller authorize it in writing and the amount be disclosed in advance.

In California, though, it has been quietly designed out. When C.A.R. rewrote its forms in July 2024 it removed cooperating-broker compensation from all of them, including the listing agreement — the compensation paragraph in a California listing agreement is now explicitly for the seller's side of the transaction only. There had been a draft version that included an optional line for the seller to fund an offer to buyer's brokers, and it was cut before release. The standalone form that used to handle broker-to-broker compensation was retired the same month.

So it isn't illegal — I want to be accurate about that, because I've seen agents state flatly that it's prohibited and it isn't. But there's no standard California form that does it, which means it takes a custom addendum, and most brokerages aren't going anywhere near a bespoke document on the exact subject that produced the lawsuits. If someone tells you the listing side is splitting its commission with your agent, that's worth a question or two. It's the old structure, and around here it's now the exception rather than the rule.

The Transparency Problem Nobody Mentions

The settlement was sold on transparency. It's worth being blunt about what it actually did to the information available to you, because on the single question buyers ask most — what does a buyer's agent get paid around here? — there is now less published information than there was in 2023, not more.

Here's how the restrictions actually stack up, because they come from two different places and get blamed on the wrong one constantly.

The national rule. NAR policy bars an MLS from accepting any offer of compensation to a buyer's broker, and bars disclosing the total commission negotiated between a seller and the listing broker. This is mandatory for essentially every NAR-affiliated MLS in the country. It is not a San Diego rule and no local MLS can waive it — a point I've heard misattributed plenty of times, including by agents.

The local layer, and this is the part that surprises people. National policy only prohibits conditioning a concession on paying a buyer's broker. San Diego MLS goes considerably further. When we enter a listing, no compensation information can appear anywhere in it — not a field, not the remarks, not a photo, not an attachment, not a link — and that holds through the sold record too. It's a rules violation with a fine attached. SDMLS also has chosen not to allow a line item for a buyer-broker fee in concession reporting at all, in its own words “due to potential legal ramifications.” That's a local decision, not something NAR requires.

Which leaves one number, and it can't tell you anything. We can enter a concession dollar amount. What we can't do is say what it was for. A $15,000 concession on a closed sale might have been a roof repair, a credit toward closing costs, an interest-rate buydown, the buyer's agent fee, or some combination — and the record looks identical in every one of those cases. The one compensation-adjacent figure that survived in the data is undifferentiated by design.

CRMLS, which serves much of the same market, arrived at a similar place from a different direction: it reduced its concession field to a yes-or-no flag with fixed boilerplate text and no amount at all.

None of that is a criticism of our MLS. Both are doing the cautious thing in the wake of a billion dollars in antitrust settlements, and I'd probably make the same call. But you should understand the result, which is that California sits in the strictest cluster in the country. Some MLSs elsewhere still carry a dollar-amount concession field, and a few break out categories within it. One large MLS in Washington declined the settlement outright and still publishes compensation, arguing that pulling it from the MLS “pushes consumers and brokers to make secret deals off MLS.”

That's the part I'd want a client to understand. Compensation is still negotiated, still paid, and still a real number in every transaction. It just moved from a field anyone could query into conversations between two agents. If your agent is good, you get told. If they aren't, you may never think to ask — and there's no longer a database entry that would have told you anyway.

It also broke the measurement, which matters for the next section. There's no MLS field recording what a buyer's agent was paid, and the concession figure that does exist can't be separated into its parts — so the sold record can't answer the question even in aggregate. The most-cited ongoing source of commission data now runs on one brokerage's own transactions and referrals rather than MLS records, and the Federal Reserve analysis I cite below works from MLS data that ends in 2023 — right where the fields came out. So when you see a confident number about what commissions are doing, check what it's built from. Post-2024, almost nobody is working from a population sample, because one no longer exists.

Did Commissions Actually Come Down?

This was the whole premise. Some Wall Street analysts estimated commissions would compress 30% or more. That didn't happen — and the reason it's worth walking through is that the two credible sets of data point in different directions.

My read — and it is a read, because the two datasets genuinely support different stories — is that the settlement changed the paperwork more than it changed the price. And I don't think that's surprising. The market will determine commission rates based on the value provided by the agent. It always has. Taking a number out of a database doesn't change what someone's work is worth — it just changes who has to ask the question out loud.

One consumer advocate who pushed hard for the changes has since argued that decoupling only happened halfway: because sellers kept paying in most transactions, buyers never really got the leverage the reform was supposed to hand them. That's consistent with what I see, though I haven't found a clean dataset on how the three payment structures actually split.

If You're Buying in San Diego

California went further than the national settlement did, and then went further again this year. This is the part that's easiest to get wrong, because it changed twice in two years.

The agreement, and the three-month clock

State law has required a written buyer-representation agreement since January 1, 2025. It has to state the compensation, the services, when payment is due, and how to terminate. It's capped at three months for an individual buyer and it can't auto-renew. State law provides that an agreement violating those limits is unenforceable — what that means for one you've already signed is a question for a lawyer, not for me.

That three-month cap is genuinely buyer-friendly and underused. You are not signing a year-long commitment to one agent. If it isn't working, it expires on its own — but read the paragraph on what happens after it expires. Most forms provide that if you later buy a property that agent introduced you to during the term, compensation can still be owed. Ask how long that period runs before you sign.

What changed on January 1, 2026

New state regulations took effect this January that tightened the timing. The statute said the agreement had to be signed no later than when you make an offer. The regulation now creates a presumption that it's practicable to sign before your agent shows you a property — in person or on a live video walk-through. It also defines "three months" as 90 calendar days starting the day after the last signature, and requires any renewal to be signed before the original expires.

Practically: expect to sign before you tour, not before you write. If you're told it's fine to keep touring without paperwork, ask which version of the rule that's based on — the timing changed this January.

One thing that has not changed: a listing agent showing you their own listing, acting only for the seller, isn't your buyer's agent. Walking into an open house doesn't by itself require a representation agreement — though plenty of hosts will ask you to sign in, which is a different thing.

Two questions to ask before you sign

Ask what the rate is and whether it's negotiable — by law it is, and California requires that agreement to carry a bold notice saying compensation isn't fixed by law. As I read the rules, the rate also isn't supposed to arrive preprinted on the form. If it's already filled in when it reaches you, that's a conversation, not a given.

Then ask what happens if the seller doesn't cover it. You want the answer before you're emotionally committed to a house, not during a counter-offer.

If You're Selling in San Diego

When you sign a listing agreement now, you're agreeing to your listing agent's compensation. That's it. What a buyer's agent gets paid isn't part of that conversation anymore.

A buyer may ask you to cover part or all of their agent's commission as part of their offer. However, you're not agreeing to anything in advance. In California this comes through in the purchase agreement itself — there used to be a separate form for it, and in the December 2024 forms release it was retired and folded directly into a paragraph of the standard purchase contract. So it arrives as a term of the offer, alongside price and closing date, and you treat it the same way: accept it, counter it, or decline it. C.A.R. revises its forms periodically, so confirm against the current version with your agent.

Which means it's leverage, and leverage cuts both ways. In a seller's market, you may have more room to decline. But in a buyer's market, the buyer may push for you to cover more of these costs — and in a market where Redfin put seller concessions in roughly 46% of U.S. sales as of May 2026, declining outright can cost you buyers. That figure bundles repairs, closing costs and rate buydowns, and I don't have a clean San Diego-only number for agent fees specifically — but the direction is real.

The instinct I'd push back on is treating this purely as a cost to minimize. What you're actually deciding is how wide you want your buyer pool to be. A buyer who has to pay their own agent out of pocket has less cash for a down payment, and some of those buyers simply can't stretch. Whether that trade is worth it depends on your price point, your competition, and how fast you need to be gone — which is a pricing conversation, not a principle.

What Your Loan Will and Won't Allow

This is the least-discussed piece and it can change what's actually possible in a deal.

The practical upshot for a buyer with limited cash: a seller concession is generally worth more to you than the same dollars out of pocket, because it doesn't compete with your down payment. That's worth knowing before you decide how to structure an offer.

Where the Fight Actually Moved

If you're only tracking commissions, you're watching the wrong thing now. The live argument in the industry has shifted to which listings you get to see at all.

In March 2025 the industry kept the rule requiring listings to be filed with the MLS once they're publicly marketed, but added a delayed-marketing status alongside the existing office-exclusive exception, where a listing is shared only inside the listing brokerage. Both require the seller to sign off. Since then several large brokerages have leaned into private and pre-market listings, one major portal reversed its own policy on displaying them, and Washington and Connecticut have passed laws requiring that homes marketed to a limited group also be marketed publicly.

I should say plainly where I sit on this one: I'm at Compass, which is among the brokerages that have pushed hardest on private and pre-market listings. I still think buyers should know it's happening and should ask about it. Read my take with that in mind.

Consumer advocates have raised a fair-housing concern about this. Their argument: a home shown only to a limited network is a home that some qualified buyers never learn about, and they contend networks like that don't reflect the full buyer pool. One 2026 estimate put private listings at roughly 8% of all listings, against a historical norm of a few percent. Nobody actually knows the real number, because it isn't disclosed — which is part of the objection. I'm relaying it, not measuring it.

I'd rather buyers know this is happening. If you're working with an agent, ask them directly how they find homes that aren't on the public sites, and what they do about it.

And none of this is settled law yet. The cases that produced the 2024 changes have largely worked their way through appeal, but new suits keep getting filed, several states have started legislating past the industry's own rules, and the Department of Justice has kept weighing in on private commission cases — most recently arguing that trade-association rules don't get an automatic pass under antitrust law. Expect more changes.

What I'd Actually Do

If you're buying:

• Read the representation agreement before you sign it, and treat the rate as a starting point. It's negotiable by law and the form can't come to you with the number preprinted.
• Confirm it's three months or less and that there's no automatic renewal.
• Ask what happens if the seller won't cover it — get that answer up front.
• Talk to your lender early about how a concession versus an out-of-pocket payment changes your cash to close. Especially on VA.
• Ask your agent how they find off-market and pre-market listings. It's a real question now.

If you're selling:

• Decide your posture before offers arrive, not in the middle of a counter. Know what you'd contribute and what you wouldn't.
• Price the trade honestly. Declining to contribute narrows your buyer pool; whether that costs you more than the contribution depends on your market.
• Ask your listing agent how they intend to handle it when an offer requests it. A good answer is specific.
• Ask where your home will be marketed, and whether anything would keep it off the public sites. If so, ask why, and get it in writing.

The Honest Bottom Line

Two years on, the change I'd point to isn't the price. It's that the number is in front of you, in writing, before anyone starts working for you. Sellers decide in the moment rather than committing months ahead. Nobody can quietly sort listings by what they pay. Those are real improvements even though the headline number barely budged.

But I want to be precise about what that number is, because this is the part most likely to cost you if you misread it. It's an opening position, not a rate card. A brokerage sets what it typically charges — that's a normal business decision and I don't fault anyone for having one. What it is not is a fixed price. It isn't set by law, there's no standard rate, and California requires the agreement in front of you to say so in bold type. The rate isn't even supposed to reach you preprinted on the form.

So it's negotiable, and the leverage is more ordinary than people expect: if you and that agent can't land on a number you're both comfortable with, you hire a different one. That's exactly how you'd treat a listing agent, and exactly how you'd treat any other professional you were bringing onto a project. One honest caveat — the individual agent may not have authority to move off their brokerage's rate on their own. If they tell you that, it may well be true. It's also information: you now know what you're choosing between.

Which brings me back to how I'd think about choosing one in the first place. Just like any service provider, the compensation a professional can justify is based on the perceived value of their services. If you are hiring a contractor to remodel your bathroom, you do not necessarily want to go with the lowest or highest price, but rather the contractor that you feel will get it done properly at a justifiable cost.

That was true before the settlement and it's the only part of this I'd call settled. The number reaches you earlier now, and it's negotiable. What it's worth is still your call. Hiring the right agent matters more now, not less — there are more moving parts, more things that are negotiable, and more places where inexperience costs the client real money without anyone breaking a rule.

If you're working through a specific transaction and want a second read on how compensation is being handled, that's a conversation we're always glad to have. And if you're earlier than that, our neighborhood guides are a decent place to start narrowing down where you'd want to be.

This is my personal interpretation of the changes as of the date this is written and should not be seen as legal advice.