No, Realtors do not get paid for showings. Residential real estate runs on commission, which means your agent earns nothing for touring you through houses unless and until a sale actually closes. If you look at twenty homes over two months and decide not to buy, your agent walks away unpaid. What changed in August 2024 is that you now have to sign a written agreement with your agent, setting their fee in specific terms, before they can show you a single property.
Why There Is No Per-Showing Fee
Agents work on contingency. They cover their own fuel, marketing, licensing, and insurance, and they absorb every hour spent scheduling tours, opening lockboxes, and walking buyers through houses that never result in an offer. The arrangement only pays off when a deal closes, and the commission at closing is what the agent is counting on to make all the earlier unpaid work worthwhile.
When a sale does close, the agent is paid a percentage of the final price. Since the 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement took effect, buyer’s agent commissions have averaged roughly 2.4 percent, down from a longstanding norm closer to 3 percent.1Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Commissions and Omissions: Trends in Real Estate Broker Compensation On a $400,000 home at 2.5 percent, the buyer-side commission would be $10,000, paid at closing rather than parceled out per tour.
The Written Agreement You Sign Before Any Tour
As of August 17, 2024, you must sign a written buyer agreement with your agent before touring any home, in person or virtually, if that agent’s brokerage participates in a Multiple Listing Service.2National Association of REALTORS®. What the NAR Settlement Means for Home Buyers and Sellers The agreement has to state the agent’s compensation in terms that are objectively ascertainable: a flat dollar amount, a specific percentage, or an hourly rate. Vague language like “whatever the seller offers” or a range of percentages is not allowed.3National Association of REALTORS®. Compensation, Commission and Concessions
You will know the number before you ever step inside a property. Read the document carefully. It creates a legal obligation, and once signed it affects how easily you can switch agents later.4National Association of REALTORS®. Consumer Guide to Written Buyer Agreements
Who Actually Pays the Commission
Before the settlement, the seller almost always paid both agents’ fees through the listing agreement, and the buyer-side offer appeared right on the MLS. That is no longer the case. Sellers can still offer to pay the buyer’s agent, but they are not required to, and the offer cannot be posted on the MLS listing itself.1Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Commissions and Omissions: Trends in Real Estate Broker Compensation Compensation is now spelled out in the listing agreement between the seller and their brokerage and in your written agreement with your agent.5National Association of REALTORS®. Consumer Guide: Listing Agreements
In practice, the fee lands in one of three places:
- The seller agrees, through negotiation outside the MLS, to pay the buyer’s agent as part of the deal. This remains common, particularly in buyer-friendly markets.
- You pay your own agent, with the amount shown as a line item on your closing disclosure and paid from your funds at settlement.
- You and the seller split the fee, with the specifics worked out during offer negotiations.
Whoever pays, the money moves at closing through the settlement agent, usually a title company or real estate attorney, who distributes funds from your mortgage proceeds or cash after contractual obligations are met.
Using Seller Concessions to Cover Your Agent’s Fee
If paying your agent out of pocket worries you, seller concessions are the usual workaround. A concession is when the seller agrees to cover certain buyer costs as part of the sale, and those costs can include your agent’s fee.6National Association of REALTORS®. Consumer Guide: Seller Concessions
Two limits matter. First, if a seller advertises a general concession on the MLS, that concession cannot be conditioned on the buyer using a particular agent or paying their agent a certain amount; any payment specifically aimed at the buyer-side fee has to be negotiated outside the MLS listing.6National Association of REALTORS®. Consumer Guide: Seller Concessions Second, lenders cap total seller concessions. FHA loans limit seller contributions to 6 percent of the purchase price, and conventional loan limits vary with the size of the down payment.
One option that is not on the table: rolling the buyer-side commission into your mortgage. Conventional, FHA, and VA loans do not allow buyer agent compensation to be financed into the loan amount. If the seller will not cover the fee and you cannot negotiate a concession, the money comes from your own funds at closing.
Retainers and Transaction Fees
A small number of agents or brokerages ask for a retainer before the home search begins, typically from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. When charged, retainers are often credited back toward the commission at closing rather than functioning as a permanent cost. They remain uncommon, but ask before you sign.
Separate from the commission, many brokerages charge a flat administrative or transaction fee at closing to cover paperwork, compliance, and file management. These generally run from a few hundred dollars up to nearly $2,000 depending on the brokerage, and they are negotiable. They also tend to surface late, on closing documents. Ask at the start of the relationship whether the brokerage charges one and get the amount in writing. If your buyer agreement does not mention a transaction fee, you have grounds to push back if one appears at the closing table.
Switching Agents After You Have Already Toured Homes
Your buyer agreement may include a protection period, sometimes called a tail period, that typically lasts 30 to 45 days after the agreement ends. If you buy a home during that window that your former agent showed you or introduced you to, that agent may still be owed their commission. The clause exists to prevent buyers from touring with one agent and then closing with another to dodge the first fee.
Timing drives how clean the switch is. Before any offers have been written, moving to a new agent is generally straightforward, because simply having shown you a home is usually not enough on its own to lock in a commission claim. Once an offer has been submitted, it gets harder. The first agent may argue they were the procuring cause of the sale, meaning their work started the chain of events that led to the purchase, and the dispute looks at the full course of events, including who first introduced you to the property, whether that agent stayed in contact, and whether you had a legitimate reason to leave.