When Eric Itakura listed his Mountain View, California, condo last year, he hoped to save some money on commissions.

The rules over how agents’ fees are set had recently been rewritten as part of a landmark settlement reached between the National Association of Realtors and a group of home sellers. For decades, sellers typically paid a fee between 5% or 6%, split between their own broker and the buyer’s. The new rules, industry watchers predicted, might finally chip away at that standard by forcing buyers and their agents to negotiate separately.

RELATED: How to negotiate commissions with your real estate agent

But Itakura found that not much had changed. Two buyers made offers, both asking that he cover their agent’s fee. One wanted 2.5%, the other 3%. Itakura knew he could say no — but he also knew the buyers could walk.

“There’s a convention that’s been in place for a long time,” Itakura said. “The more you try to buck against that standard, the more potential problems you create for yourself.”

Across the country, sellers like Itakura are discovering that while the settlement changed the rules on paper, the practice of sellers paying commissions remains the same — and so have the fees. Nationwide, the average buyer’s agent commission in the second quarter of 2025 was 2.43 percent, according to Redfin — almost identical to a year earlier, before the rule change. On a median-priced Bay Area home of $1.3 million, that’s about $31,600 going to the buyer’s agent.

In the past, a buyer didn’t have to sign a contract with their agent — in fact, they may have been oblivious to their agent’s fee, given that the seller typically paid. The practice was enforced by an NAR rule that required a seller to communicate their commission split to the buyer’s agent for any listing uploaded to the NAR-affiliated multiple listing services, or MLS, the private databases where agents can see homes for sale.

Eric Itakura stands at his home in Los Gatos, Calif., on Tuesday, Sept. 16, 2025. (Shae Hammond/Bay Area News Group)

A group of home sellers in Missouri sued the NAR in 2019, arguing that the practice kept fees artificially inflated. A jury sided with them, and in a settlement, the Realtors association agreed to “decouple” the commissions. It instated a new rule requiring buyers to sign a buyer-broker representation agreement before making an offer, stating the agent’s fee and that the buyer will pay if a seller declines.

The contracts have played a role in maintaining the industry’s fees, especially in a slow housing market. Even though a seller can always say no, they may feel that they have to cover a buyer’s agent, because if they don’t, the buyer would be locked into paying the agreed-to fee out-of-pocket — a cost many buyers can’t afford.

“These contracts put sellers under great pressure to accept the agent’s normal rates, almost always either 2.5% or 3.0%,” said Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Policy Center in Washington, D.C.

Under the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Justice expressed concerns about the new requirement. In a filing last year related to the case, the DOJ warned that the rule “may harm buyers and limit how brokers compete for clients.”

The National Association of Realtors says the contracts help define the relationship between a buyer and their agent, add transparency to the transaction and allows a buyer to negotiate their fee. “Written buyer agreements are pro-consumer and pro-competition,” the association wrote in statement.

Realtors have enshrined the practice in law across several states, including California. In 2024, the California Association of Realtors sponsored a bill that requires buyers to sign these agreements. It passed easily, with bipartisan support.

“Sellers understand that it’s to their benefit to pay the compensation,” said Janelle Boyenga, an agent based in Los Altos. “Especially since prices are so high, buyers don’t want to come up with extra money. It’s hard enough to buy a home in Silicon Valley.”

The standard buyer-broker agreement form drafted by the California Association of Realtors even includes a box that agents can check to say “Buyer does not have sufficient funds to pay broker.” The message to the seller is clear: Don’t pay commission, and the buyer may walk.

In a statement, CAR said that “each seller is free to make their own decision whether to contribute towards the buyer’s broker compensation.”

“You’re free to tell them no,” said Berkeley agent Daniel Stea. “But if you tell them no, that could change their offer, because then suddenly they’re going to have to find a way to pay their agent.”

Before they sign, buyers can try to haggle for a lower fee with their agents to bring a more competitive offer to the table. Agents say their fees are negotiable, and always have been.

But the industry is defensive of its fees. In the Bay Area, a dozen agents interviewed said that 2.5% remains the standard fee for buyers’ agents, although a few “discount” and flat-fee brokerages charge less. Some agents say they would rather lose out on a client than lower their price.

“I don’t typically go lower than 2.5%, because that’s my value,” said Ricky Flores, an agent with Sotheby’s in Menlo Park. “I work hard, and what I bring to buyers is worth more than dropping my commission down.”

Some agents interviewed said the brokerages they work for pressure agents to keep fees at 2.5% or higher. Brokerages typically receive 15% to 40% of their agents’ commissions.

This news organization asked several brokerages whether they enforce a 2.5% fee. Coldwell Banker declined to comment. Sotheby’s and Christie’s did not respond. A Compass spokesperson said in a statement, “Compass believes that all commissions are negotiable and not set by law.”

Because most of them work solely on commission, agents also have little incentive to offer discounts. Many work as both listing agents and buyer’s agents and don’t want to see the industry standard lowered.

“It’s a cooperative industry,” said Brobeck. “That makes it a lot easier to maintain the standards of the culture.”

Agents said that they’ve seen some buyers cover their own commission, particularly wealthy ones looking to sweeten their offers. In hot markets where they have more leverage, a seller can also push back against a buyer’s request to cover the compensation. The buyer’s agent, desperate to close a sale, may even tear up their original contract and agree to lower their fee.

But rarely does it come to that, agents say. Most sellers just consider their net earnings after commissions and choose an offer from there. Inspections, closing dates or the offer price come up in negotiations more often than commissions.

Ultimately, that’s how Itakura felt — even though he bristled at the 3% fee, he took that offer because the buyer seemed more likely to close.

“We didn’t want to fight for something on principle,” he said. “The bigger picture was getting the condo sold.”

By Shalina Chatlani, Stateline.org

A new Trump administration rule bars immigrants living in the United States under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) from buying health insurance from Affordable Care Act marketplaces.

Related Articles

Lawmakers and activists call for action after AP reveals US tech role in China’s surveillance state

Trump’s Rose Garden Club is a lavish new hangout for political allies and business elites

Wisconsin congressman wants Mayo Clinic’s funding pulled after apparent employee’s Charlie Kirk comments

Trump’s touting of an unproven autism drug surprised many, including the doctor who proposed it

The economy was a strength for Trump in his first term. Not anymore, according to recent polling

The change, announced in June, took effect at the beginning of this month. It reverses a policy change enacted by the Biden administration for last November’s annual enrollment period.

DACA, which President Barack Obama established in 2012, applies to certain immigrants who are here illegally but were brought to the U.S. as children. The program was enacted to protect them from deportation and allows them to work for renewable two-year periods. To be eligible, an immigrant must have come to the U.S. at age 15 or younger before June 15, 2007. DACA participants also must be high school graduates, high school students or veterans of the U.S. military.

The oldest are now in their early 40s, some with children of their own.

Even though there are some 525,000 active DACA recipients, only about 10,000 were getting their health insurance from the marketplaces before the policy change, according to the federal Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. However, critics of the new Trump administration rule say participation would have grown as more people became aware of their eligibility.

DACA recipients from 19 states were blocked from the marketplaces, though, because of pending litigation. More than 20% of all DACA recipients reside in just two of those states: Texas (17%) and Florida (4%).

Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Center for Immigration Studies, a nonprofit group that backs stricter immigration rules, said DACA was an “abuse of executive authority” and should not have entitled some immigrants to benefits. The rule change simply restores the status quo, Vaughan said.

“It was kind of an experiment or an end run around our legal immigration system that was set up by the rules that were set up by Congress to try to offer an amnesty to this particular group,” Vaughan said. “Because it’s not a legal status, these individuals are not, under the law, eligible for certain public benefits, and one of them is subsidized health insurance.”

But critics of the change say it’s cruel to cancel health care coverage for people who were brought to the country as children.

“Health care is a fundamental human right all of us, no matter where we were born, how much money we have, what we look like, what language we speak, we should be able to access quality and affordable care when we need it,” said Isobel Mohyeddin, a policy associate at the National Immigration Law Center, which advocates for immigrants.

Mohyeddin and her colleagues surveyed 433 DACA recipients in 2024, before DACA recipients were eligible for the marketplace. Eighty-one percent had health coverage, the vast majority through their employer or a union or professional association. But nearly 20% lacked coverage, more than twice the national uninsured rate of 8%.

Mohyeddin said that many of the DACA recipients without coverage reported skipping recommended medical and dental appointments or declining to fill prescriptions, because they couldn’t afford it or were fearful of being targeted for their status.

“The stripping of eligibility is a devastating step backwards, not only for DACA recipients, but families and immigrant communities in general,” Mohyeddin said.

While DACA recipients were only recently allowed to purchase coverage on the marketplace, it was a huge step toward better health outcomes for them, said Arline Cruz Escobar, director of health programs at Make the Road New York, a group that provides legal and social services to immigrants.

“We see a lot of mixed-status households, and so I think people are just very confused about what this means for them, and what it means for their families,” Cruz Escobar said. “We already know that the immigrant community doesn’t access enough preventive care and screenings and so, I can only imagine that we will see an increase in a lot of chronic conditions, or undiagnosed chronic conditions that could have been prevented.”

The impact of the new Trump administration rule on DACA recipients will vary, as some states offer other health care options to noncitizens.

States are going to have to decide whether they can afford to offer state-subsidized health coverage to DACA recipients and other immigrants who are no longer eligible for federal help, said Jessica Altman, executive director of California’s marketplace exchange, Covered California.

California has the most DACA recipients, at 147,440. Altman said more than 2,300 of them have purchased plans on the California marketplace and will lose their coverage. She said many DACA recipients in the state were not aware of their eligibility, and more would have enrolled if the Trump administration hadn’t made the policy change.

California provides state-funded health coverage to all income-eligible immigrants, regardless of their legal status. But Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in June signed a budget that scales back that coverage because of budgetary issues.

In light of federal changes and financial obligations on states, Altman said, California will have to make the same choices as other states about how or whether to help DACA recipients with their health care.

“The hard part is, to actually make coverage affordable for the populations that we’re talking about, you have to fund financial assistance at least somewhat comparable to what’s available on the federal marketplace,” Altman said. “So the state dollars are really where the rubber meets the road.”

Stateline reporter Shalina Chatlani can be reached at schatlani@stateline.org.

©2025 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The night before the Trump administration began enforcing a 25% tariff on Canadian imports, Chicago-based GI Stone had 13 trucks at the U.S. border, each loaded down with specialized granite set for installation in the Obama Presidential Center under construction in Jackson Park.

Only eight trucks made it through before the tariffs took effect on March 4.

“We rushed all the trucks we could get,” said Sandya Dandamudi, GI Stone’s president and owner. “But there was a lot of congestion and long lines, so everything took a long time to process. For us, the tariffs have been a bit of a nightmare, and the biggest problem is the chaos.”

Sandya Dandamudi, president of GI Stone, in the GI Stone facility in West Town, Aug. 28, 2025. (Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune)

Adjusting to the tariffs imposed on Canada and other countries has not gotten easier over the past six months. The White House has imposed or canceled tariffs on nations with little or no notice, sending up and down the costs of key imported building materials such as steel, aluminum, copper and lumber. Construction industry leaders say the tariffs have made it more difficult to predict prices, secure financing and kick off new development. And even though short-term fixes, including stockpiling inventory, have so far helped developers and contractors avoid passing along cost increases to consumers, tariffs will ultimately mean higher rents and housing costs.

“The uncertainty is worrying builders,” said Molly McShane, CEO of The McShane Cos., a national real estate and development firm. “People understand deals won’t move forward if prices change four times a week.”

Administration officials say tariffs encourage domestic sourcing and manufacturing. The administration also says tariffs boost job creation and tax collections, while encouraging more consumers to buy American-made products.

“Large and persistent annual U.S. goods trade deficits have led to the hollowing out of our manufacturing base; resulted in a lack of incentive to increase advanced domestic manufacturing capacity; undermined critical supply chains; and rendered our defense-industrial base dependent on foreign adversaries,” a White House statement read.

Dandamudi said she understands the desire to buy American, but sometimes it’s not possible. GI Stone’s highly skilled workforce transforms quarried and engineered stone into finished countertops, flooring, walls and staircases for high-end residences and other projects at its North Side manufacturing facility. American quarries produce high-quality stone, but not in the full range of colors demanded by U.S. apartment and condo dwellers, so the company relies on products from Canada, Italy, India and many other countries.

“I provide American jobs,” Dandamudi said. “But for us, a 25% tariff could be lethal. I’m not a politician, but that doesn’t make sense.”

President Donald Trump’s administration temporarily canceled the Canadian tariff soon after GI Stone’s remaining trucks crossed the border, but the company got stuck with a huge bill, Dandamudi said. Although the Obama Presidential Center eventually covered GI Stone’s loss, even temporary hits can be tough to absorb, especially with high interest rates squelching the market for new construction.

“My guys are already feeling a bit of a pinch,” she said of the firm’s dozens of employees, including stone fabricators, setters and finishers. “(The Obama Presidential Center) eventually made us whole, but it was stressful and too much of a burden for a small business to bear.”

A big concern for builders

Many of the materials that are essential in residential and commercial construction — steel, aluminum, lumber, copper and stone — are now subject to tariffs.

Steel and aluminum are used for high-rise apartments, and are often imported from Brazil, Mexico, Canada and other countries. Contractors use heavy steel columns to assemble building frames, reinforce concrete with steel rebar and form exterior curtain walls with both steel and aluminum. Lumber, which is frequently imported from Canada, is widely used in single-family home construction.

Those building materials are now typically subject to tariffs of anywhere from 10% to 50%.

“Consumers face an overall average effective tariff rate of 17.4%, the highest since 1935,” and up from 2.4% in February, according to The Budget Lab at Yale, a nonpartisan policy research center, which analyzed data on all U.S. imports through Sept. 3.

“That’s a massive jump; that’s a Smoot-Hawley jump,” said Reagan Pratt, director of The Real Estate Center at DePaul University, referring to the Depression-era law that drastically raised tariffs. “The real estate industry has ways of adapting to things that are permanent, but has a hard time adjusting to things that are constantly changing.”

On Aug. 29, a federal appellate court ruled that Trump’s use of federal emergency powers to impose many tariffs was illegal, increasing the uncertainty even though it temporarily left the tariffs in place. The Trump administration asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review the decision.

The tariff squeeze doesn’t mean total development costs will soar out of control, said Omar Rihani, executive vice president and national residential sector leader for Chicago-based Project Management Advisors. Labor is also a huge expense, and many materials come from domestic sources, so tariffs typically push up total development costs by a couple of percentage points.

But the tariffs are still a big concern for apartment builders.

“Assuming no rent increases, that can take away 20% of your profit margin,” Rihani said.

And that could be enough to tip the balance between launching a project and setting it aside, especially because tariffs are not the only obstacles developers face. High interest rates, elevated costs of borrowing and high construction costs already make it difficult to start new developments, even though Chicago has a shortage of rental housing and city officials have approved the construction of thousands of new units.

“We have seen many projects that remain in the planning stages for a long time,” McShane said. “Interest rates have been a far bigger problem for developers than tariffs, but it’s such a jumble of different factors that go into this that it’s hard to attribute to one factor or the other.”

One Chicago developer said tariffs were making it more difficult to build a significant West Loop residential project.

“For our project at 1000 W. Jackson, we were in advanced conversations with a large equity investor and tariffs killed the negotiations,” said Anthony Hrusovsky, principal at Mavrek Development, according to the 2025 Chicago Mid-Year Sentiment Report by DePaul University and the Urban Land Institute, Chicago District Council. “It introduced a level of uncertainty around cost, which had previously been riskless in our eyes. The last thing Chicago needs right now is another reason for an equity group to not do a deal.”

Mavrek secured city approval for 1000-16 W. Jackson Blvd. in 2024. The company plans to build a 25-story tower with nearly 400 apartments and a ground-floor grocery. The company declined to comment further.

The number of construction cranes dotting Chicago’s skyline did tick up slightly this year. Construction crews in January had six cranes up, and 10 by August, including at the Shedd Aquarium and the Obama Presidential Center and another for Related Midwest’s 400 Lake Shore apartment project on the lakefront, according to the online newsletter Chicago YIMBY. There were 62 Chicago cranes in the air during 2017.

Impact on the economy

The evidence that tariffs hurt the economy is clear, said Steven Durlauf, a professor at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.

More than half of Chicago commercial real estate experts surveyed by DePaul and the Urban Institute say tariffs will have a moderate impact on their business, while another 30% say the impact will be very high.

Related Articles

Lawmakers and activists call for action after AP reveals US tech role in China’s surveillance state

Trump’s Rose Garden Club is a lavish new hangout for political allies and business elites

Wisconsin congressman wants Mayo Clinic’s funding pulled after apparent employee’s Charlie Kirk comments

Trump’s touting of an unproven autism drug surprised many, including the doctor who proposed it

The economy was a strength for Trump in his first term. Not anymore, according to recent polling

Job growth was slow over the summer, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The economy created 79,000 jobs in July, fewer than anticipated by labor economists, and lost 13,000 in June, the first monthly decline since 2020, the bureau reported.

“Those are not numbers where there’s any ambiguity,” Durlauf said.

Trump fired Erika McEntarfer, the bureau’s commissioner, in August, hours after the disappointing report, claiming it was rigged. The numbers for the following month were worse. The bureau’s Sept. 5 report said the economy created 22,000 jobs in August, and the unemployment rate rose to 4.3%.

If current tariff levels and other economic conditions remain steady, Trump’s efforts will produce a trade-off, according to The Budget Lab at Yale. U.S. manufacturing output would expand in the long-run by 2.7%, but those gains would be “more than crowded out by other sectors,” with construction output contracting by 3.8%.

The Federal Reserve has begun to provide a bit of relief. The softening labor market led Fed officials to cut interest rates by a quarter-point at its Sept. 17 meeting, making it cheaper to secure financing for new homes or development. Industry leaders say it’s a good start, but hope to see more cuts in 2026.

“While a 25-basis-point reduction may not materially transform the landscape overnight, it meaningfully improves investor psychology, underwriting conditions, and the cost of capital—key ingredients for renewed momentum,” said Avison Young CEO Mark Rose.

Other commercial real estate experts say tariffs haven’t busted construction budgets yet. Many piled up huge inventories of key products like steel and lumber before tariffs hit, or forged agreements with contractors to split cost increases.

“For the last four to six months, we’ve been guessing as everything changed day-to-day, but most companies took steps to mitigate any cost increases,” said Julie Workman, a Chicago-based real estate attorney and partner at Saul Ewing LLP. “They did the best they could for as long as they could.”

Chicago-based developer and general contractor Focus and its partners were able to arrange financing for their 1221 Washington project — a 19-story, 287-unit mixed-use development in Fulton Market — and break ground this September, but CEO Tim Anderson said cost increases could be tougher to swallow in 2026. A key factor will be how much domestic producers boost their prices to match the higher costs of overseas material.

“Once they get protection from foreign steel, what is their incentive to keep prices low?” he said.

The prices for hot-rolled steel bars, plates and structural shapes from U.S. producers, important components in construction, have gone up more than 14% since April, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data cited by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The price for domestic lumber has remained relatively steady.

“It’s still such a yo-yo environment,” Anderson said. “The problem is going to be what happens eight months from now, but there are going to be price increases as we head down the path with tariffs.”

And the quick fixes like relying on built-up inventories won’t work much longer, Workman said.

“It’s really a shame because of the severity of the country’s housing shortage,” she said. “I feel like things are about to go over a cliff.”

By LARRY NEUMEISTER and MICHAEL R. SISAK, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Justice Department officials could face court-imposed sanctions for public comments about the prosecution of Luigi Mangione in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson if they don’t limit what they say, a New York judge said Wednesday.

Related Articles

YouTube to start bringing back creators banned for COVID-19 and election misinformation

Kimmel returns to late night with an emotional monologue but no apologies following suspension

Black pastors say Charlie Kirk is not a martyr, while decrying racism and political violence

Wall Street drifts lower as its big rally loses steam

Shooter is dead after killing at least 1 and injuring others at a Dallas ICE facility

Judge Margaret M. Garnett in Manhattan said in an order that statements by government officials about Mangione possibly facing the death penalty may have violated a local rule meant to limit public comments to ensure a fair trial.

Defense lawyers for Mangione had asked that his federal charges be dismissed and the death penalty be taken off the table as a result of the comments.

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state and federal charges in the fatal shooting of Thompson on Dec. 4 as he arrived at a Manhattan hotel for his company’s annual investor conference.

In the federal case, Mangione is charged with murder through use of a firearm, which carries the possibility of the death penalty, as well as stalking and gun offenses.

Defense lawyers argued in a written submission to Garnett that Justice Department officials poisoned the case when U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi declared prior to his April indictment that capital punishment is warranted for a “premeditated, cold-blooded assassination that shocked America.” Bondi announced in April that she was directing Manhattan federal prosecutors to seek the death penalty for Mangione.

His lawyers argued that Bondi’s statements and other official actions — including a highly choreographed perp walk that saw Mangione led up a Manhattan pier by armed officers, and President Donald Trump’s administration’s flouting of established death penalty procedures — “have violated Mr. Mangione’s constitutional and statutory rights and have fatally prejudiced this death penalty case.”

In her order Wednesday, Garnett said it appeared that multiple Justice Department employees may have violated the rule limiting what can be said publicly about a case prior to trial. She said the statements apparently were made by two high-ranking staff members in the department.

The judge asked the department to explain how the violations occurred and what steps are being taken to ensure no future violations happen.

“Future violations may result in sanctions, which could include personal financial penalties, contempt of court findings, or relief specific to the prosecution of this matter,” the judge wrote.

A message for comment sent to the Justice Department was not immediately returned.

The order from Garnett was not the first time a Manhattan federal judge has scolded Justice Department officials for public statements in a criminal case.

In April 2015, Judge Valerie Caproni accused then-U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara of straying “so close to the edge of the rules governing his own conduct” when he announced a corruption case against former Democratic New York Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver that Silver had a legitimate complaint that the “media blitz” that accompanied his arrest was prejudicial.

Silver was eventually convicted on corruption charges and was sentenced to over six years in prison. In January 2022, the federal Bureau of Prisons announced that he had died in federal custody at age 77.