Buyer Broker Agreements in Florida: What You Need to Know After the NAR Settlement

Written by

Arman Javaherian

What the NAR settlement actually did

In March 2024, the National Association of Realtors settled a $418 million class action that had been bouncing around the courts for years. The case argued that the way commissions worked, with sellers always paying both their own agent and the buyer's agent, amounted to price-fixing. A federal jury in Kansas City agreed.

The settlement didn't just write a check. It forced the industry to change how commissions get negotiated and disclosed. The new rules went into effect in August 2024, and they're the reason buyer broker agreements suddenly became a thing every buyer has to deal with.

Three changes matter most:

The MLS can't list buyer's-agent commission offers anymore. Sellers can still pay the buyer's-agent commission, but the offer has to happen outside the MLS, usually negotiated into the contract.
Any agent who shows you a home has to get a signed agreement first. It has to spell out what they're being paid and who's paying it. It can't be vague. The old "we'll figure it out at closing" approach is dead.
Commission rates are fully negotiable. The 2.5 to 3 percent that used to feel like a fixed law of physics is now just a starting point.

That's the regulatory backdrop. Now let's talk about what the actual agreement looks like in Florida.

What is a buyer broker agreement

A buyer broker agreement, sometimes called a buyer representation agreement, is a contract between you and a real estate agent. It says the agent will help you find a home, and in exchange, you'll pay them a specific amount when you buy one. That's the whole thing at its core.

Florida agents typically use the Florida Realtors Exclusive Buyer Brokerage Agreement (the EBBA). There are non-exclusive versions and single-property versions too. The differences matter, and we'll get into them.

The form covers a few specific things:

The duration. How long the agreement is in effect.
The geographic area. What cities or counties the agreement covers.
The commission. What the agent gets paid, expressed as a percentage of the purchase price, and who's paying it.
The services. What the agent has actually agreed to do for you.
The termination terms. How you get out of the agreement if it isn't working.

Sounds simple. The details are where things get interesting.

Do I have to sign a buyer agent agreement

Yes and no. If you want a Florida licensed real estate agent to show you a home, you'll need a signed agreement first. That part isn't optional anymore, and it applies whether you're touring a $250,000 starter home in Lakeland or a $2 million condo in Brickell.

But here's where it helps to know your options.

You don't have to sign an exclusive long-term agreement on the spot. Agreements can be written for a single property, a single day, a specific neighborhood, or for a longer term that still lets you cancel at any time. The right shape depends on the brokerage you're working with.

You also don't have to use a traditional agent at all. If you want to skip the long-term lock-in entirely, you can:

Tour properties directly through the listing agent. The listing agent represents the seller, not you, but they'll typically still let unrepresented buyers see the home.
Visit open houses, which don't require a buyer broker agreement.
Use a rebate brokerage like Homa, which uses a non-exclusive agreement you can cancel at any time and that only applies to homes the brokerage is actually helping you tour.

So the rule is "if you want a buyer's agent to show you a home, you sign something first." It is not "you sign a long-term exclusive at 3 percent or you don't see houses." Big difference.

What the NAR settlement actually did

Three changes matter most:

The MLS can't list buyer's-agent commission offers anymore. Sellers can still pay the buyer's-agent commission, but the offer has to happen outside the MLS, usually negotiated into the contract.
Any agent who shows you a home has to get a signed agreement first. It has to spell out what they're being paid and who's paying it. It can't be vague. The old "we'll figure it out at closing" approach is dead.
Commission rates are fully negotiable. The 2.5 to 3 percent that used to feel like a fixed law of physics is now just a starting point.

That's the regulatory backdrop. Now let's talk about what the actual agreement looks like in Florida.

What is a buyer broker agreement

The form covers a few specific things:

The duration. How long the agreement is in effect.
The geographic area. What cities or counties the agreement covers.
The commission. What the agent gets paid, expressed as a percentage of the purchase price, and who's paying it.
The services. What the agent has actually agreed to do for you.
The termination terms. How you get out of the agreement if it isn't working.

Sounds simple. The details are where things get interesting.

Do I have to sign a buyer agent agreement

But here's where it helps to know your options.

You also don't have to use a traditional agent at all. If you want to skip the long-term lock-in entirely, you can:

Tour properties directly through the listing agent. The listing agent represents the seller, not you, but they'll typically still let unrepresented buyers see the home.
Visit open houses, which don't require a buyer broker agreement.
Use a rebate brokerage like Homa, which uses a non-exclusive agreement you can cancel at any time and that only applies to homes the brokerage is actually helping you tour.

So the rule is "if you want a buyer's agent to show you a home, you sign something first." It is not "you sign a long-term exclusive at 3 percent or you don't see houses." Big difference.

If you tried to tour a house in Florida in the last year and the agent slid paperwork across the table before they'd even unlock the door, you ran into a buyer broker agreement. It probably caught you off guard. Eighteen months ago you could walk into an open house, ask a few questions, and leave without committing to anything. Now there's a contract attached to the front door.

So what changed? And how serious is the thing you're being asked to sign?

Here's the short version. Florida buyers can no longer tour a home with a real estate agent without first signing a written agreement that spells out what the agent gets paid and how long you're committed to them. That's a federal change, not a Florida-only one. But it lands in Florida in some specific ways that are worth knowing before you sign anything.

So what changed? And how serious is the thing you're being asked to sign?

What Florida buyers should look for in the agreement

Here's where most buyers get into trouble. They scan the agreement, see "standard form," and sign it without reading the parts that actually matter.

Don't do that. Look at these five things before you put pen to paper. They tell you almost everything about what you're really signing up for.

1. The termination clause

This is the single most important part of the agreement. If you can cancel at any time with written notice, then a longer term and a wider scope don't trap you. If you can't cancel, then even a short-term exclusive can lock you into an agent who isn't pulling their weight.

Read the termination language first. Something like "either party may terminate this agreement at any time with written notice" is the cleanest version. Some forms make you wait out the full term. Some require the agent to agree to release you. Know which one you're signing.

2. The scope of what the agent gets paid on

This is where buyers get burned the most. Some agreements say the agent gets paid on any home you buy in a given area during the term, even one you found yourself on Zillow on a Saturday morning. That's not hypothetical. It's happened to plenty of buyers who didn't read the form.

The protection you want is language that limits the agreement to homes the agent is actively helping you tour or write offers on. If the form covers "any home purchased in Florida during the term," that's a different deal than "homes the agent has shown you." The second one is the one you want.

3. The duration

Duration matters less than the termination clause. A 30-day exclusive you can't get out of is worse than a 6-month agreement you can cancel any time. Read them together.

Some agents will write in six months. Some will write in a year. Some will fill in 30 days. None of those are inherently good or bad. What matters is whether you can walk away if the relationship isn't working and whether the agreement only applies to homes the agent actually showed you.

4. The commission

The agreement has to say what the agent gets paid. Common phrasing is "2.5 percent of the purchase price" or "the amount offered by the seller, with the buyer responsible for any shortfall."

That last one is the one to watch. If the seller offers 2 percent and your agent's agreement says 3 percent, you owe the difference. On a $500,000 home, that's $5,000 out of your pocket at closing.

You can negotiate this. You can ask the agent to accept whatever the seller offers, with no shortfall coming from you. Whether a given agent agrees is up to them, but the rate isn't fixed.

5. Exclusivity

An exclusive agreement means you can't work with another agent during the term. A non-exclusive lets you work with multiple agents at once. For most buyers, especially first-time buyers, non-exclusive is the safer choice.

If the form says "exclusive" and you're not sure about the agent yet, ask for a non-exclusive version. If they won't accept that, you've learned something useful about how this is going to go.

How to handle the commission

This is the part nobody felt comfortable doing before the settlement. Now it's expected.

Two real options:

Ask the seller to cover it. Most Florida sellers in 2026 are still offering buyer's-agent commission as part of attracting buyers in a softening market. Your agent can write the commission into your offer as a seller-paid expense. If the seller agrees, you don't pay anything directly.
Use a rebate brokerage. In Florida, agents can legally rebate part of their commission back to you at closing. Rebate-built brokerages like Homa do it as their default model. That rebate can come back to you as cash at closing, go toward your down payment, or be applied to a mortgage rate buydown that lowers your monthly payment for the life of the loan.

The right answer depends on the agent, the property, and how you want the savings to show up. The wrong answer is to sign whatever's in front of you and assume it's standard.

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Take control and save thousands on your path to homeownership

Buy Smarter with Homa

Take control and save thousands on your path to homeownership

The Florida-specific stuff

Florida has a few wrinkles that matter when you're signing a buyer broker agreement.

First, Florida operates under transaction brokerage by default. Unless you specifically ask for "single agency" representation, the agent works as a transaction broker, which means they have a duty of fairness to both you and the seller, but not the full fiduciary duty a single agent would owe you. Most buyers don't realize this. The form has a checkbox for it, and it's worth understanding what you're checking.

Second, Florida doesn't require an attorney at closing. The title company handles the closing paperwork. That means a buyer's agent in Florida is doing a slightly different job than in states where lawyers carry more of the contract review.

Third, the Florida Realtors form has gotten longer and more buyer-friendly since the settlement. There's clearer language about what the commission is, who pays it, and what happens if the seller's offer falls short. That's a good thing. But it doesn't mean the form fills itself out fairly. The numbers and terms still depend on what's written in, and the agent has every incentive to write the version that's best for them.

How rebate brokerages change the math

The buyer broker agreement is mostly designed around the traditional 2.5 to 3 percent commission. The math looks different when the model is built around rebating that commission back to the buyer.

Take Homa as an example, since it's a Florida-focused rebate brokerage built around the post-settlement world. A Homa buyer broker agreement is:

Non-exclusive. You can work with other agents. You can buy a house Homa didn't show you and you don't owe them anything.
Cancellable at any time. The term is 6 months covering all of Florida, but you can end the agreement whenever you want.
Limited to homes Homa is actively helping you tour. If you find a home on your own and buy it without Homa's help, the agreement doesn't apply.
Rebate-built. A meaningful portion of the buyer's-agent commission the seller offers comes back to you at closing.

You can take that rebate as cash, apply it to your down payment, or use it to buy down your mortgage rate. A rebate of a few thousand dollars on a $400,000 loan can knock your rate down by roughly 0.25 to 0.75 percent. That's $100 to $200 less per month for the next 30 years.

Compare that to a traditional 3 percent buyer broker agreement, where the seller's offer goes entirely to the agent and you get nothing back.

What to do if an agent won't budge

You'll meet agents who won't move on commission, won't accept a non-exclusive form, won't write in a clean termination clause. They'll tell you "this is how it's done."

It's not. Walk.

There are too many agents in Florida and too many flexible alternatives to lock yourself into terms you're not comfortable with. The settlement was specifically designed to give buyers room to negotiate, and any agent treating it as business as usual is signaling that they don't intend to operate in the new world.

A reasonable agent in 2026 will explain the form clearly before you sign, use a termination clause that actually lets you walk away, limit the agreement to homes they're actively helping you tour, and be transparent about what the seller is offering and what shortfall, if any, you'd owe.

If you're not getting that, you're talking to the wrong agent.

The Florida-specific stuff

Florida has a few wrinkles that matter when you're signing a buyer broker agreement.

How rebate brokerages change the math

The buyer broker agreement is mostly designed around the traditional 2.5 to 3 percent commission. The math looks different when the model is built around rebating that commission back to the buyer.

Take Homa as an example, since it's a Florida-focused rebate brokerage built around the post-settlement world. A Homa buyer broker agreement is:

Non-exclusive. You can work with other agents. You can buy a house Homa didn't show you and you don't owe them anything.
Cancellable at any time. The term is 6 months covering all of Florida, but you can end the agreement whenever you want.
Limited to homes Homa is actively helping you tour. If you find a home on your own and buy it without Homa's help, the agreement doesn't apply.
Rebate-built. A meaningful portion of the buyer's-agent commission the seller offers comes back to you at closing.

Compare that to a traditional 3 percent buyer broker agreement, where the seller's offer goes entirely to the agent and you get nothing back.

What to do if an agent won't budge

You'll meet agents who won't move on commission, won't accept a non-exclusive form, won't write in a clean termination clause. They'll tell you "this is how it's done."

It's not. Walk.

If you're not getting that, you're talking to the wrong agent.

The bottom line

Buyer broker agreements aren't going away. The NAR settlement made them a permanent fixture of buying a home in Florida, and most buyers will sign at least one before closing. That's fine. They're not inherently bad, and a good agent earning a fair commission is worth what they cost.

What changed is that the terms are now visible. You can read them, you can ask questions, and you can walk away if the answers aren't right. The pieces that matter most are the termination clause and the scope language. Get those right and a longer term or a wider geographic area aren't really a problem.

If you're buying in Florida and you want to keep more of the commission than the traditional model lets you keep, look at rebate brokerages. The agreements are simpler, the terms are friendlier, and the rebate can fund a real-dollar reduction in your monthly mortgage payment.

Read what you sign. Pay attention to the parts that matter. And don't pay 3 percent because someone told you that's the way it works. That stopped being true in August 2024.

The bottom line

Read what you sign. Pay attention to the parts that matter. And don't pay 3 percent because someone told you that's the way it works. That stopped being true in August 2024.