More than a year has passed since several New York City-based brokerages and trade groups settled a wave of antitrust lawsuits over broker commissions, and predictions about the hit on commission rates have so far not come true.
The average commission charged by agents in New York is roughly 5.7 percent of the purchase price, which works out to 2.9 percent for the listing broker and 2.8 percent for the buyer’s agent, according to a survey published by Clever last month.
The rate in the Empire State was on par with the national average, which was higher than the 5.4 percent reported in 2025 and 5.3 percent in 2024.
The numbers don’t tell the whole story, as the survey was based on just 500 agents. The report doesn’t parse out New York City, where rates can vary by sub-market and are likely lower given the dominance of the luxury market. Commissions are generally a smaller share of deal prices at the high-end of the market.
Still, they’re a good indication that the litigation over commissions and the fallout, including the billions of dollars brokerages agreed to pay, have had little effect on the amount of money agents earn from deals — a sentiment echoed by some New York City-based brokers.
“Everyone expected a race to the bottom,” said Douglas Elliman’s Frances Katzen, referring to the impact of the lawsuits and subsequent rules decoupling commissions. “Instead, you’re seeing a flight to quality.”
Last year, New York’s leading trade association, the Real Estate Board of New York, began requiring buyers’ agents to obtain signed agreements. The mandate came a year after the organization forbid listing brokers from advertising compensation offers to buyers’ agents on the residential listing service, among other changes.
While the policies have had little effect on commission rates, Katzen said, they have forced agents to have more direct conversations with their clients, instead of relying on industry conventions. (Many agents previously stated that commissions have always been negotiable, especially in New York City, where several buyers and sellers have made multiple trades throughout their lives.)
“The commissions haven’t disappeared, they’ve recalibrated,” Katzen said. “The reality is New York is not a one-size commission market. It just made the conversation more explicit.”
If anything, the new landscape has made it more difficult for buyers and sellers to negotiate commissions later on in the transaction process, said Briggs Elwell, whose company RLTYco provides commission advances, among other services.
“Agents are being told they have to pre-negotiate their split ahead of time,” Elwell said, adding that that translates to less “wiggle room” in the final hour of a deal. “There’s no room for that last ditch negotaibility.”
Compass’ Tali Berzak said that from her perspective, commissions hadn’t drastically changed following the lawsuits and the rule changes, but instead, clients, particularly buyers, were becoming more discerning about the agents they choose to work with now that more of their money could be on the line.
“What [these lawsuits] did was put power in the hands of buyers agents where they never had power before,” Berzak said. “As a buyer’s agent, if you’re not showing your value early on, buyers are going to find a new person to work with.”
Not so fast…
If there’s one day a residential real estate reporter should avoid checking social media, it’s April 1. Instagram becomes a minefield as brokers take to the platform to post a host of announcements. Some are obviously ridiculous (such as Palm Beach’s Margit Brandt, who posted a listing for the state of Florida, asking $1 trillion); but others are much more difficult to suss out.
Here are a few that tripped up our team this week:
- Ryan Serhant announced the rollout of a new home fragrance, complete with a promo video of the celebrity broker in the shower, as well as a separate website prompting visitors to fill out a contact form for pre-orders. We’re, admittedly, still not sure whether this is a prank or the soft launch of a new revenue stream.
- Elliman’s Frances Katzen and the firm’s Assouline Team both announced they’d be leaving the brokerage to start their own ventures. Katzen called hers Off Market and described the firm as “the AI-equivalent of every other brokerage, just with better instincts and fewer meetings” and as having “absolutely no budget for our agents.”
- Elliman’s Michael Lorber posted on Instagram that he was leaving the firm to join Compass.
NYC Deal of the Week
The most expensive home to hit the city register this week was a townhouse that once housed famed designer Oleg Cassini’s workshop. The property at 15 East 63rd Street sold for $34.5 million, ending a years-long saga to offload the home owned by Cassini’s sister-in-law, Peggy Nestor.
The 25-foot-wide townhouse, which was at the center of a bankruptcy proceeding at the time, hit the market in 2024 asking $65 million. It spans 18,000 square feet and has seven bedrooms, eight bathrooms and three terraces.
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