Big changes take effect this month that will mean seismic shifts in how most Americans buy or sell a home and could ultimately drive down residential real estate prices.
Starting on Aug. 17, agents who list homes for sellers on widely used realtor databases won’t be able to offer any payments to buyers’ agents.
That means the power to negotiate realtor commissions will shift away from agents in favor of buyers and sellers.
It also means sellers will no longer be on the hook to fund commissions for all realtors involved in the transaction — a fee that usually amounts to 5% to 6% of the home’s sales price. The seller’s agent commonly shared roughly half of that commission with the buyer’s agent.
Instead, buyers will be entitled to separately negotiate their own agent’s pay and get a signed contract formalizing the terms — all before touring any properties for sale.
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“Under the old system, if you were a buyer and you had an agent, you didn’t get any say in what your agent got paid, unless your agent agreed to credit some of that to your purchase price,” said Venable LLP partner Jill Rowe, who represents real estate brokers and owners.
The new terms are far-reaching because they apply to properties listed on Multiple Listing Services (MLSs), databases controlled by the National Association of Realtors that host more than 90% of all US home sales.
These changes are designed to eliminate conflicts of interest in the real estate industry and make the process friendlier for consumers.
They could drive down real estate commissions and home prices, some said, while transitioning the business of real estate services to more of an à la carte industry.
The new rules came about as a result of a class-action lawsuit from home sellers who argued the old fee-splitting structure was unfair.
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The core of their argument was that the old structure artificially fixed commission rates and influenced agents to steer clients to homes that paid higher commissions. That, in turn, inflated home prices.
A for sale sign stands outside a single-family home in Englewood, Colo. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)
The new rules were agreed to as part of a $418 million settlement with the National Association of Realtors and several large real estate firms last March, ending the first in a string of similar cases to go to trial.
Here is a closer look at what buyers and sellers now need to know:
‘What kind of commission am I paying?’
It will require some homework and patience to understand your rights and obligations under the new system and benefit from the new arrangement.
The “big change,” according to Rowe, is that agents who list homes for sellers on MLS databases won’t be able to offer any payments to buyer’s agents — as was the practice for decades.
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The other significant change is that agents representing buyers will no longer be allowed to take a prospective client to tour any properties without first obtaining written consent about the fees and commissions that the client will have to pay.
All of these details can be negotiated by the buyer. The contract must explain if the agent’s compensation will be calculated as a flat fee, as a percentage of the home’s purchase price, as an hourly rate, or otherwise.
And under no circumstances can that agent’s commission be open-ended or dictated by a seller’s agent.
An aerial view of homes in a housing development in Santa Clarita, Calif. (Mario Tama/Getty Images) (Mario Tama via Getty Images)
Plus, agents must disclose that their commissions are fully negotiable and not set by law.
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“If I were a buyer or seller of a residential property right now, what I would say to my broker is: What kind of commission am I paying?” Rowe said. “What am I getting for that? And what would I get if I had a 1% lower commission, or a 2% lower commission?”
Jennifer Stevenson, a New York State Realtor and NAR regional vice president, said in the past agents could also use listings to offer compensation to other seller’s agents and to cooperating brokers.
“Now we’ll no longer be able to do that,” Stevenson said.
She noted that buyers and sellers were always permitted to negotiate commissions with agents and that under the new rules listing agents will still be allowed to negotiate commission splits, but only outside of the MLS.
A ‘different value proposition’
The ultimate effect on the residential real estate industry is not yet known, although some certainly expect commissions, and even home prices, to fall.
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At minimum, it’s expected to place more power in the hands of clients, especially those already using residential real estate platforms like Zillow (Z), Redfin (RDFN), Realtor.com, and Trulia, to find homes and home details posted on MLS databases.
An iPhone showing the Zillow app. (Smith Collection/Gado/Getty Images) (Smith Collection/Gado via Getty Images)
These platforms had already been disrupting the residential real estate industry by allowing sellers and buyers to efficiently search for information that only relators using MLSs once provided.
“You can just go online, and you can see everything that is available … what its price is, all of the different terms, look at the neighborhood, and see pictures of what it looks like,” Rowe said.
That technology has tremendously reduced the amount of time that agents, and particularly buyer’s agents, spend on behalf of their clients.
“Quite often, the buyers are finding something online and saying, ‘I want to take a look at that,’ and either going by themselves to the open house, or having their agents call the seller’s agent and arrange a look,” Rowe said.
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“So it’s just a different value proposition.”
Alexis Keenan is a legal reporter for Yahoo Finance. Follow Alexis on X @alexiskweed.
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While most AI in financial services remains advisory, LUMIQ has built the layer that owns the decision — autonomous, auditable AI agents making regulated calls in production at leading banks, insurers, and capital markets firms. Today, LUMIQ serves clients across India, the United States, and Southeast Asia — leading institutions across insurance, banking, and capital markets.
NEW YORK and SINGAPORE, June 19, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — LUMIQ, an AI-native financial services company, today announced a strategic funding round to scale auto-decisioning for financial institutions across the United States and Southeast Asia. The round was led by Bajaj Finserv, one of India’s largest and most diversified financial services groups, with participation from existing investor Info Edge Ventures.
LUMIQ raises Strategic Funding to become AI decision layer for financial services
Right now, thousands of customers are waiting for a policy to be issued, a loan to be disbursed, a claim to be adjudicated, because somewhere an FSI employee is drowning in decisions, held back by the risk of getting it wrong. Today, when e-commerce delivers the same day, banks and insurers still decide in weeks. We built LiteCone to take that burden: AI decides the routine cases, completely and accountably, so humans spend their judgment on the one case that actually needs it. This round lets us bring that to every financial institution in the markets that matter most. Shoaib Mohammad, Co-founder and CEO, LUMIQ
From AI that assists to AI that decides
For decades, financial institutions have bought technology that made their people faster — faster data, faster scoring, faster copilots. The decision still landed on a human. LUMIQ is changing that. Through its LiteCone platform, the company deploys AI agents that read the file, apply the institution’s own guidelines, and reach the decision end to end — escalating only the cases that genuinely require human judgment. The output is not a recommendation. It is a decision, with full reasoning attached, cross-referenced to policy, and defensible under audit.
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The results in production speak clearly. At a leading life insurer, LUMIQ’s LEO agent decides 75–80% of underwriting cases with zero human touch, reduced policy issuance cost by roughly 25%, and compressed turnaround from days to under eight minutes — running 24×7 with complete auditability. Across its client base spanning insurance, banking, and capital markets in India, the US, and Southeast Asia, LUMIQ now processes millions of decisions annually.
LiteCone turns a real financial-services role into a working AI agent in weeks. Every agent we deploy is consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable by design — not as an afterthought. This capital lets us go deeper on the platform and broader across roles. And through our cloud and AI lab partnerships, institutions will increasingly find LiteCone already embedded in the platforms they run today. Vaibhav Dobriyal, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, LUMIQ
This round funds four priorities: expanding go-to-market in the US and Southeast Asia; deepening LiteCone’s decisioning capabilities; extending the agent workforce across more financial-services roles; and building a partnership ecosystem with cloud hyperscalers, AI labs, and core banking and insurance platforms so LiteCone is embedded where institutions already run.
LUMIQ’s investors backed the round for the same reason its customers adopt LiteCone: agents already deciding in production, with auditability and control built in.
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As a financial-services group, we know how much rests on getting regulated decisions right, at speed and at scale. LUMIQ has built AI agents that decide in production with auditability and control built in, the capability the industry has been moving toward. We are proud to lead this round and to support the team’s expansion across the US and Southeast Asia. Lakshmi Iyer, Group President – Investments & CEO, Bajaj Alternates
Our conviction is grounded in what LUMIQ has already built. Their AI agents aren’t just built for the future. They are operating in production today, at speed. This combination is rare, and its value will only compound as the company scales globally. Girish Jhunjhunwala, Fund Manager – PE and VC Investments, Bajaj Alternates
Financial services is one of the hardest categories to crack — regulated, risk-averse, and unforgiving of hype. LUMIQ has put agentic AI into live financial-services workflows and earned the trust of large institutions across the US, Southeast Asia and India. That is how a category-defining company in financial-services AI gets built, and we are proud to keep backing the team as they scale globally. Kitty Agarwal, Partner, Info Edge Ventures
LUMIQ’s goal is to lead one category: auto-decisioning at production scale for financial services. Agents that act, not assist, and never compromise audit, compliance, or predictability.
About LUMIQ LUMIQ is an AI-native financial services company. Through its LiteCone platform and a growing workforce of production AI agents, LUMIQ turns real financial-services roles — insurance underwriter, credit underwriter, claims adjudicator — into agents that are consistent, explainable, compliant, and auditable. The company pairs deep domain expertise across banking, insurance, and capital markets with frontier AI. LUMIQ employs over 350 AI and data specialists, and has offices in New Jersey, Singapore, and Delhi NCR (India).
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Web: www.lumiq.ai
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View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/lumiq-raises-strategic-funding-to-become-the-ai-decision-layer-for-financial-services-302805280.html
Consumer confidence has plunged among traditionally optimistic younger adults amid fears for their personal finances and the wider economy, figures show.
GfK’s long-running Consumer Confidence Index remained unchanged at an overall score of minus 23 in June.
However, the analyst said this was was “misleading as, beneath the surface, there are new signs that confidence is weakening”.
Source: GfK
Neil Bellamy, consumer insights director at GfK, said: “The biggest fall this month is among those aged 16 to 29, traditionally one of the most optimistic groups.
“Here confidence has dropped 11 points over the past month to minus two, the lowest level seen for two years, driven by large falls in views on both their own personal finances and the wider economy.
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“More broadly, there are now no demographic groups with a positive confidence score, including higher-income households earning £50,000 or more, who have slipped back into negative territory as of June.
“Confidence remains subdued and vulnerable to further economic or political uncertainty.”
Sourve: GfK
Overall, confidence in personal finances over the coming year remained flat at minus two, four points lower than this time last year.
The measures of both personal finances and the economy over the previous 12 months were both slightly down, by two points and three points respectively, “reflecting the sense that things have been extremely tough over the last year for so many”, GfK said.
The only measure to increase was expectations for the wider economy over the next 12 months, up two points to minus 36 but still eight points below this time last year.
The major purchase index, an indicator of confidence in buying big ticket items, remained at minus 20, four points lower than June last year.
“Ships of the World, start your engines. Let the oil flow!” said Donald Trump on social media after he announced the signing of an interim peace deal with Iran on Sunday. Under the agreement – which Iran acknowledged included a 60-day negotiating period for a final deal – the president said that following retrieval of mines, there would be a “toll free opening” of the Strait of Hormuz.
But many of the finer details remain “unclear”, said The Guardian. There are questions over the “exact timing of the reopening of the maritime route, who will oversee safe passage and whether any conditions will be applied”.
Financial markets have welcomed the announcement, but further volatility could yet hit people’s pockets.
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Have oil prices changed?
The price of oil fell to about $83 (£62) per barrel following Sunday’s announcement, its “lowest since the early days of the war”. Then on Tuesday it dipped below $80. In February, before the first missiles struck Iran, each barrel cost around $73. The price peaked at around $120 at the height of the conflict.
Prices are expected to fall in the wake of a prolonged ceasefire, and there are “real grounds for optimism”, said Politico. Damage to oil-specific infrastructure has been “limited”, meaning it could take “as little as six weeks to resume outflows”.
“So that’s the energy crisis sorted, right?” Not so fast.” A combination of damage to wider infrastructure and the continued closure of the Strait of Hormuz has meant roughly 12 million fewer barrels of oil have been produced each day. And they “won’t magically reappear on the market even if the pact holds”.
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Will this continue?
The “first big test” of the deal will be whether shipping companies will have enough “confidence” to return the use of the strait to pre-war levels, said The New York Times. If successful, this will free the 250 tankers and 330 cargo ships trapped in the Gulf, according to the BBC, and transport oil around the world. Oil and gas producers in the Gulf nations would then need to re-establish “wells, refineries and other infrastructure”.
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Even if all of that were to materialise, European and Asian countries who have historically depended on oil from the region “will face a long wait”. Processing oil takes considerable time. “It is unlikely that the prices of gasoline, diesel and other fuels will return to pre-war levels anytime soon.”
What about inflation?
Despite air fares “surging” and fuel costs “tipping higher”, UK inflation remained at 2.8% in May, said The Independent. This was a “surprise” to economists, who had widely predicted a rise to 3% and “perhaps even beyond” due in part to the war in Iran.
Remaining at this level could imply that the “cost-of-living squeeze will not play out as badly as had been anticipated” earlier this year, even if the “Iran war sent energy costs spiralling”. However, prices are set to rise again later in 2026, leaving savers to make sure their investments are earning an interest rate “well above the rate of inflation”.
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What does this mean for consumers?
Food prices in the UK look to be rising more slowly. Should the Strait of Hormuz open freely, fertiliser, which has “soared in costs” and put pressure on farmers, could fall substantially, said the BBC. Jet fuel has already seen a “small fall in price”, with Northwest Europe jet fuel trading at $1,033 (£780) per tonne, compared with $831 pre-conflict and around $1,840 at its peak.
How will businesses be affected?
Beneath the “encouraging headlines” about inflation control, there is a “hidden crisis for businesses”, said The Telegraph. The Iran war triggered one of the largest energy shocks in history, meaning businesses were “swallowing soaring costs to spare shoppers”.
“Input rises” for producers climbed by “8.7% year on year in May”, larger than the 7.9% in April and the highest in more than three years. On the bright side, this means the economy may avoid a dreaded “wage-price spiral”, but conversely lower margins could lead to increased pressure on the employment market.
