Breaking the Barrier: Implications of 2024 Ruling Against NAR on Home Prices and Market Quality

On August 17, 2024, a court ruling changed real estate market practices that prohibit the posting of real estate agent commission rates on multiple listing services and mandate buyer contracts that specify agent commission fees. Real estate agent commissions function as intermediary transaction costs, and this ruling aims to potentially reduce these costs. Using data on single family home transactions in St. Paul, Minnesota from Zillow.com, Realtor.com, and Ram- sey County Property Tax database, I utilize a difference in difference model to examine the short-term impacts of the ruling on market dynamics in resi- dential real estate such as home prices, market liquidity, market frictions, and the efficiency of price discovery. Findings suggest that there are no short term effects of the 2024 NAR ruling on home prices and market quality. Robust- ness checks using non-single-family properties, different control and treatment groups based on price range, and a visualization of neighborhood-level effects on single family properties also support these results.