Could Minnesota Soon See A Shortage Of Real Estate Agents?

Real Estate has been a popular career path for many folks over the last few years. Most of us know someone who works in the field. One of the reasons this field is so popular is because there’s good money to be made.  

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That is, until a settlement that was reached last week with the National Association of Realtors that could bring commissions down by around 50%. The complaint against realtors was they were keeping the brokers' fees higher than they needed to be. 

If you’ve ever bought a house, you agree to the commission rate before a contract is signed, and that has still been the case, but there was apparently some deception at least implied.  

So, what does this mean for the future of the real estate industry. John Ahnemann of Minnesota EXP told KSTP-TV that there could be a lot of real estate agents leaving the field. Ahnemann says that there are a lot of agents that are on the bubble of being able to make a living as it is.  

He says that average realtors only sell four and a half homes per year, and losing commissions would be enough to force them into another line of work. Ahnemann says that negotiations on who pays the buyer agent could become trickier.  

If this settlement is approved, it will go into effect in July. This could help reduce the costs of homes but is not the primary driving factor in affecting the overall costs of homes.  

Interest rates obviously have a major impact on the costs of homes as well as how many homes there are on the market to be sold. One challenge right now is there are more buyers than there are homes on the market. The median home sold last month was sold at $329,000.