By Tim, Julie, Dan, Chris, Kacie and Orlando · June 19, 2026
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The single most consequential rule change in the history of real estate was supposed to collapse buyer-agent commissions. It didn't. Instead, Google quietly turned on home search across all 50 states, real estate fraud went from opportunistic to organized, and sellers are pulling listings off the market at the highest rate since the pandemic.
This week's episode of PowerHouse Talk covered all four — and more importantly, what agents can actually do about each of them before the end of 2026.
💸 Buyer Commissions: Flight to Quality, Not Race to the Bottom
Here's the headline nobody who predicted doom wants to talk about: buyer-agent commissions just went up for the third straight quarter.
According to Perfin's latest data, the average U.S. buyer-agent commission hit 2.43% in Q2 2026 — up from a post-settlement low of 2.36% in Q3 2024, and back to exactly where it sat in Q1 2024 before the NAR settlement was even announced. A March 2026 Clever Real Estate survey pegs total national commissions at approximately 5.70%, split roughly 2.88% to the listing side and 2.82% to the buyer side. Douglas Elliman's Francis Katson told The Real Deal: "Everyone expected a race to the bottom. Instead, the industry got a flight to quality."
Tim, Julie, Chris, and Dan were unified on this one: none of them were surprised. The people who predicted a commission collapse were largely analysts and critics who had never actually worked in real estate. The team's view two and three years ago was exactly what the data now confirms — commission rates are a function of market forces and perceived value, not of settlements or headlines. As markets become harder to navigate for sellers, buyers lean harder on agents, and agents who can demonstrate value get paid for it.
The second leg of the settlement is now fully live in every state. Mandatory buyer-broker agreements are federal law. California's AB2992 took effect January 1st; Texas updated its license law the same day. Buyers sign before they tour. And here's the nuance Dan raised from his market in Virginia, where buyer broker agreements have been required since 2013: removing commission from the MLS has actually made it easier to get listing agreements signed at higher rates, because the conversation is now two-step — you sign the listing side first, and the buyer side comes into focus a month or two later. Less confusion at the table, not more.
The Hot Seat: What Do You Do When Another Agent Already Showed Them Three Houses?
Tim posed a scenario the team tackled directly: a buyer calls you tomorrow, ready to write an offer this weekend. They've already toured three homes with another agent who never got them to sign a buyer-broker agreement. You have two choices: (A) sign them at your full fee, no exceptions, or (B) cut your rate to win the deal.
The team's answers were honest and nuanced:
Dan: If I know upfront I'm only showing them one home and writing one offer, I'd probably do it.
Chris: I'm going to meet them, educate them on my value proposition, and earn the commission I think I deserve. If all else fails, I'll make a business decision — sometimes strategy is worth taking less.
Julie: I don't love having different rules for different people, but if they're ready to write, I'll do the full buyer presentation with a full signature as the first attempt, and keep a flat-fee-for-this-one-transaction as a backup plan.
Tim's broader point: agents who don't take a formal approach — no buyer presentation, no signed agreement, no professional process — are actually putting themselves at a competitive disadvantage. When a buyer encounters an agent who runs a professional business, they can feel the difference. The agent who skipped the contract didn't just break a rule; they showed the buyer what they could expect for the rest of the transaction.
🔐 AI Fraud: Your Clients Are Already Being Targeted
This segment hit close to home — literally. Julie shared a story from years ago, before AI, that is now happening everywhere with far more sophistication. A fraudster hacked her email, set up an invisible folder to intercept messages, found a scanned signature from a testimonial letter, and began impersonating her to her private banker in a wire transfer scheme for over $100,000. The only thing that stopped it was a verbal code word Julie and her banker had privately arranged — a safeguard that wasn't even bank policy. The banker had no idea the emails were fraudulent.
That was years ago without AI. Here's what's happening now:
AI-generated emails are flawless — no typos, no awkward phrasing, no tells
Wire fraud is the most common attack vector: fake title companies sending updated "wire instructions" right before closing, timed for maximum chaos
Voice deepfakes require only a 30-second voice sample to clone your voice, your title rep's voice, or your lender's voice — turning the "just call and verify" instruction into a liability
Seller impersonation and deed fraud by organized rings using AI-generated IDs, fake notary seals, and deepfake video to impersonate property owners — a $137 million LA mansion was hit; Graceland was hit
Fidelity National's Chief Innovation Officer told Inman: "These are not opportunists anymore. They're operations."
Chris shared that he's already received deepfake videos of himself — built from his social media — that were genuinely alarming in their accuracy. His company's IT team sent him a completely realistic phishing email his first week after an acquisition and he nearly fell for it.
What to do about it — practical steps from the team:
Drop any suspicious email into Claude or ChatGPT. Ask it to check the DNS routing and whether the sender address matches the domain it claims to be from.
Check your Gmail activity right now. Scroll to the bottom right corner of your Gmail inbox and click "Details" under Last Account Activity. If you see any IP addresses or locations you don't recognize, log those sessions out immediately — and assume you've been compromised.
Set up a verbal code word with anyone who handles your money. Julie and her banker had one. It saved over $100,000.
Add this to your buyer and seller consultations. The agent who educates clients about wire fraud before closing is demonstrating a layer of expertise and protection that most agents never mention. It's a differentiator and a liability shield.
Ask your title company and lender what they're doing about it. Many haven't fully caught up to how sophisticated these attacks have become. The conversation itself builds trust.
🔍 Google Just Entered the Home Search Arena
Segment three brought a headline that's still developing in real time. Google has rolled out HouseCanary-powered home listing ads to all 50 states. Mobile search results in every U.S. market now display real estate listings with full photos, price, beds, baths, click-to-call, and book-a-tour — directly inside Google search, before the user clicks anywhere else. EXP is already inside the program, feeding all active MLS listings plus the recently acquired NextHome inventory. In some pilot markets, EXP listings are the only ones showing up.
Simultaneously, two MLSs in two months have moved to cut Zillow off: MRed (Chicago) suspended Zillow's data feed (a federal court partially restored it), and RealTracks (Nashville) gave Zillow a May 31st deadline and is in active negotiations. Zillow's license expires June 8th. These MLSs are shipping the same data to Google for free — with broker attribution — while threatening to charge Zillow for access. Zillow's entire data advantage for the past 20 years is now being redistributed.
The team debated where Google actually wants to go with this:
Chris was definitive: Google will monetize through ads, not referral commissions. Getting into the messy, agent-by-agent transaction business is not something a company at Google's scale would tolerate. They'll sell ads to agents, stay in the lane they know.
Dan was more open: Google has shown it can flex into competitors' spaces — Google Docs vs. Microsoft, Google Sheets — and HouseCanary is already licensed as a broker in all 50 states. Whether they actually go all-in or use this as leverage is still an open question.
Julie landed on the most practical take for agents: if you're dependent on Zillow for your leads, you now have a direct competitor from one of the largest companies on earth. This is the moment to diversify your lead strategy, not double down on a single channel.
Tim raised the biggest unanswered question: is Google, through Gemini, quietly building an AI-first home search interface that doesn't need to sell leads at all — one that finds properties, books tours, and answers buyer questions without any agent ever getting a referral? Nobody knows. But the architecture is already there.
What to add to your listing presentation right now: Your listings aren't just going on Zillow, Realtor.com, and the MLS. They're on Google's home search, visible directly in mobile search results before buyers click anywhere else. If you're with EXP, say so explicitly. If you're in a market where Google is already live with EXP listings, show the seller a screenshot. This is a real, demonstrable differentiator — especially against any Compass agent who's pitching "private exclusives" as an advantage when only 5-6% of off-market homes actually sell before hitting the MLS (and often at lower prices than they would have gotten with full exposure).
🏠 The De-listing Wave: Scary Headline, Real Opportunity
The final segment tackled the story dominating real estate media: 5.8% of all U.S. home listings were pulled from the market in April, tied with December 2025 for the highest share since the pandemic, according to Redfin. Massachusetts saw a 78% year-over-year increase in de-listings from May 2025 to May 2026. Texas leads the country — Dallas, Fort Worth, and Houston all above the national average. Florida and California metros follow closely.
Here's what the team actually said about it: this is an expired listing. It always has been.
The word "de-listing" is a media invention designed to make a routine market dynamic sound catastrophic. Dan put it plainly — Redfin only has 10 years of data, and they keep comparing everything to 2021 and 2022, which were the most unusual years in modern real estate history. If you compare today's expireds to peak pandemic years when homes sold the same day they listed, of course there are more expireds. That's not a crisis. That's a normal market.
What the team was unanimous on: there are more opportunities on the board right now than most agents realize. Sellers who pulled their listing didn't all stop wanting to sell. Many of them are exhausted by the process, not by the goal. And that's a very different conversation to have.
The Script: Converting a Withdrawn Seller
Chris demonstrated this live on the call — Tim played the reluctant seller. Here's the exchange:
Chris: "Hey, I understand you pulled the listing. Can I ask you something? Is it because you just don't want to go through what you just went through again, or did your plans to move completely change?"
Tim (seller): "Frankly, we just don't want to deal with the showings again."
Chris: "I don't blame you — I do this for a living and I don't love it either. But if you could sell the home, get a price that makes sense, and get to where you want to go without having to do all of that again… would you be open to a conversation?"
Tim: "Sell the home without the showings? Yeah, I'm open to that."
Chris: "Here's what I do. Once I see the property, I can solicit two or three cash offers from investors. There's going to be a price for the convenience, but let's see if we can get one high enough where it still makes sense for you."
Tim's point after the role-play is worth writing down: the seller who's pulled their listing is not primarily motivated by net proceeds. They're motivated by the least amount of hassle. An agent who shows up with an exit plan — not a new listing pitch — can close deals at 10 to 20% below market value, and the seller will still say yes. Julie and Tim have personally bought rental properties this way. Don't assume maximum net is the goal. Ask the right questions and you'll find out it usually isn't.
Dan's pre-qualification lens for this market: look for life-changing events. The two listings he closed most recently both had clear, urgent motivations — one seller had a capital gains tax deadline approaching August 1st, another lost his federal job due to DOGE and was relocating to be with someone in another state. Move-up sellers with no deadline and a comfortable rate? They can wait. Sellers with deadlines, divorces, job changes, estate situations, or tax pressures? They will move.
🎯 The One Thing to Focus On for the Next Six Months
Tim closed the show with a direct question to the team: if you could only do one thing to generate leads heading into 2027, what would it be?
The team was aligned: expireds.
Chris and Julie were emphatic. Open houses are also producing right now — but expireds are the richest vein in this market because of the volume of sellers who listed aspirationally, didn't get their price, and pulled rather than adjust. Many of them still need to sell. They just need a different conversation and a different agent.
Dan added one important layer: learn creative financing alongside your expired outreach. The sellers you want most are often move-up buyers sitting on a 3% or 3.5% mortgage who can't stomach the thought of giving that up to buy at 7%. If you can show them how to extract value from their low rate — through assumable mortgage structures, subject-to deals, or blended financing — you're solving a problem their current agent almost certainly doesn't know how to solve.
The mechanics Dan walked through: if a seller has a VA or FHA loan at 3.5% and the buyer wants to assume it, the buyer qualifies for the existing loan (shorter process, no appraisal needed — the bank already has the value). Where there's an equity gap — say the home is worth $650K but the balance is $500K — new lenders are now coming in with a second loan at market rate for the gap, allowing the buyer to achieve a blended rate around 3.9% even at today's market. That's a compelling story. And almost no agent in your market is telling it.
Tim's closing prompt for every expired call you make this weekend: add one question to your pre-qualification script. Ask the seller what type of mortgage they have. If they have a 30-year fixed at a low rate, that mortgage may be assumable — and knowing that could be the difference between a listing that goes nowhere and a transaction that closes.
Coming up next week: Dan is building out a full creative financing episode with real examples — assumable loans, subject-to deals, and the scenarios where it changes everything for a stuck move-up seller. Don't miss it.
— Tim, Julie, Dan, Chris, Kacie and Orlando
Hosts, Power House Talk
whylibertas.com/harris
whylibertas.com/dan
whylibertas.com/heller
whylibertas.com/kacie-anderson
whylibertas.com/orlando-montiel
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