New rule for Americans who want to buy a home from August 17th – with extra documents and risk of additional charges

PROSPECTIVE homeowners are facing a change to the home viewing process, with new contracts being released within weeks.

A new system will be introduced that will force anyone looking for a new home to sign with an estate agent before viewing any property.

Starting August 17, buyers will have to sign a mandatory agreement due to the decision in agreement with the National Association of Realtors, according to the Washington Post.

The new process is expected to lower the price for buyers, putting an end to the artificial inflation of real estate commissions.

This inflated commission occurred because sellers pay real estate agents half the commission rate of a sale or about 6% of the sales price.

Under the new system, buyers will have to pay part of the commission to real estate agents along with sellers.

However, concerns have been raised about the contracts buyers will be asked to sign, as the templates show they are full of legal jargon.

“No one in their right mind is reading these forms,” Tanya Monestier, a law professor at the University at Buffalo, told the outlet.

Moestier reviewed several new contract templates and communicated his concerns to the Department of Justice.

The professor said a sample contract she reviewed from the California Association of Realtors appeared to be intentionally confusing to buyers.

She described the draft as “dense, complicated and confusing”.

Legal experts said she believed the document’s incomprehensibility was “intentional.”

However, the Association of Realtors hit back faced such comments, calling the Professor’s criticisms “misguided”, “absurd” and with little knowledge of state legislation, although he has since made several changes to the project.

“The revised forms are greatly simplified, making them more transparent and easier for consumers to understand with the help” of their Realtors, Brian Manson, general counsel for the California Association of Realtors, told the WP by email.

However, other industry figures have raised similar concerns, with one noting that sellers’ commission payments benefit buyers with smaller budgets.

“Our market is made up of a lot of first-time homebuyers, a lot of middle-class working families trying to buy homes, and they really can’t afford it, or they may not have the savings” for a commission, Edward Rogers, the head of a real estate agent in Philadelphia told the news agency.

However, NAR highlighted that the industry has long maintained open commission negotiations for sellers, which has resulted in some buyers being asked to sign contracts in advance.