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Hi reddit,

I wanted to share an update on the process of Google helping to correct their mistakes to get agents at my brokerages Google business profiles back up and running. The CEO of our brokerage has continues to leverage our relationship with Google to spur as much action as is humanly possible.

We've gotten some new, helpful guidance from our contacts at Google that may let some of you get your Google Business Profile back in good shape on your own, without waiting on their engineering queue or paying a 3rd party 'Google-Partner' service.

First, the most important part:

Google is still actively working every case on our list.

If you can still get into your Google Business Profile settings, here's what Google asked us to share to our agents: (also note that if you've been told before that you can't have a profile because you're in a cloud brokerage (eXp Realty, REAL Brokerage, LPT Realty, Realty of America, Fathom, etc. the support staff at Google has been reeducated on that. That has never actually been the case and it should no longer be stated by Google support)

>1) Check whether your profile is set up as a storefront (a physical office/location customers visit) or as a Service Area Business (SAB).

>2) If it's listed as a storefront but you don't actually have a permanent office at that address (for example, you used an satellite office address for verification) Google's advice now is to switch your GBP profile to a Service Area Business.

>Use your home address for verification, keep that address hidden from the public, and set the service areas you actually cover. Google told us this is often the fastest path to getting the profile back online, though it may require re-verification. If you're asked for video verification of your HOME address, be sure to include footage of a utility bill or mail like that in your name and also some proof of your real estate license.

>3) If it really is a storefront location you own or operate, make sure there is clear permanent signage, you can show the location belongs to you, and you have the other verification documents ready. This will be a much harder verification. It needs to be a fully dedicated, street-facing retail style space that only features your business.

Hope this helps any of you cloud based realtors out there. Happy to chat in my DMs if you'd like any further advice.

Best luck to you all

The rules changed in August 2024 and there’s still a ton of bad information floating around. I get asked about this at almost every listing appointment and every buyer consult, and the questions are usually based on a headline someone half-read.

Disclosure up front: I’m a local agent, so I have skin in this game. Weigh accordingly. I’m going to make an effort on describing how it actually works right now; including the parts that are worse for agents

What actually changed

(It’s 2 things, not ten)

1. Buyer agent compensation can no longer be advertised on the MLS. Sellers can still pay it. It just can’t be posted in the listing field where every buyer agent could sort by it. The point was to stop steering, where an agent quietly skips homes offering a lower payout.

2. If an agent is going to tour homes with you, you have to sign a written buyer agreement first, spelling out what they get paid and what services you’re getting. No more handshake.

That’s it. Commissions were always negotiable and still are. Nobody’s fee is set by law, and it never was.

What has NOT changed

Sellers can still pay the buyer’s agent. Most of them in central Virginia still do, because a listing that offers nothing shrinks the buyer pool, and a shrunken buyer pool means a lower price. The money just gets negotiated in the offer now instead of being posted upfront on the MLS and all the aggregators such as, Zillow, Redfin, etc.

Commissions also didn’t collapse the way people predicted. National data has buyer-side compensation hovering right around 2.4% and it went up slightly, not down, in the year after the change. Two years later I’d say the spread got wider around here, not lower: I see everything from 2% to 3%, and buyers who negotiated something custom.

Buyers: what this actually means for you

You’ll sign an agreement before your first showing. Read it. Three things matter more than the rest:

• The rate. Whatever number is in there is the ceiling your agent can collect from any source. If the seller offers more, your agent can’t pocket the difference.
• The term. A six-month exclusive with a broad geographic scope is a real commitment. You can ask for shorter. You can ask for a single-property agreement to start.
• The gap clause. If the seller offers 2% and you agreed to 2.5%, who covers the half point? It should say so in writing. Ask before you sign, not on the way to closing.
In this situation, buyers agents can legally reduce the originally agreed upon fee, via an addendum. But we cannot increase the gap. For that reason, it’s not uncommon for buyers-agents to ask for 3% in the buyer-broker agreement on paper, because in the event where a seller is offering to pay 3%, and the buyer-broker agreement only stated 2.5%, the agent cannot receive that gap. Addendums for this are only allowed if the gap is being reduced, not increased.

Then in your offer, you ask the seller to cover your agent’s fee. That’s the normal-most common path here. And a genuinely useful thing most buyers don’t know: FHA, Fannie, and Freddie all confirmed that seller-paid buyer agent commissions don’t count against the seller paid concession caps, as long as it’s customary in the local market. Which in the greater Richmond area and surrounding counties, it still is.
So asking the seller for your buyers-agent fee does not eat into the closing-cost credit you were also going to ask for. Those are completely separate buckets.

VA (Veterans Affairs buyers):
The VA also lifted its old ban on veterans paying their own agent’s fee, so you have options you didn’t have before.
Confirm the specifics with a VA-savvy mortgage broker.
(btw, banks such as ‘Navy Federal or ‘Veterans United’ are not affiliated with the military. The name is misleading imo. Highly recommend seeking advice from a “mortgage broker”, specializing in VA loans).
-this alone can save you money & headache.

Sellers: what this actually means for you

You are negotiating two numbers now, not one.

The listing fee (what you pay your own agent/listing agent) and whatever you’re willing to put toward the buyer’s side are separate line items. Some sellers offer nothing and see what comes in. Some offer 2.5%-3% because they’d rather not narrow the field.

I’d think about it this way:

if you offer nothing, the buyer has to bring cash out of pocket for their agent on top of a down payment and closing costs. Some can. Plenty can’t, especially first-time buyers, which is a big chunk of the sub-$400k market around here. Those buyers will either skip your house or come in lower to make the math work. The fee doesn’t disappear. It moves into the price.

That doesn’t mean pay whatever’s asked. It means run it as a pricing decision, not a moral one.

The honest gotchas

• Ask your listing agent for their fee in writing and ask what they’d do differently at a lower fee. If the answer is nothing, that’s an interesting answer.
• If you’re a buyer touring open houses solo, you don’t need an agreement just to walk through and chat. You only need one before an agent tours you privately or writes contracts for you.
• Nothing in these rules makes it easier to skip representation and “save the commission.”
As a buyer, calling the listing agent directly usually doesn’t lower the total fee, because the listing agreement already locked it in. It just means one person is now on both sides.

NAR settled another related case (the buyer-side claims) in April 2026 for another $52 million, and notably that one required no new practice changes. So the rules as described above are the rules for now. If something big changes, it’ll likely come from a court or the DOJ, not from the industry.

Happy to answer questions in the comments:

On what a reasonable buyer agreement looks like, how the concession math actually works in an offer, whether it makes sense to offer nothing as a seller.

No need to DM.

-Daniel Yoon

Been on the listing side of a lot of transactions around here, and the number one surprise at the closing table is never the sale price. It’s the gap between the sale price and the wire that hits your account.

Disclosure up front: I’m a local agent. Weigh accordingly. This is just the math I walk every seller through before we list.

Let’s use $425k since that’s close to the metro median right now.

Commission is negotiable, and it changed in 2024.
Since the NAR settlement, what you pay your listing agent and what you offer toward the buyer’s agent are two separate conversations. A listing fee typically runs 2.5 to 3%. Offering something toward the buyer’s side is optional, but in this market most sellers still do because it widens the buyer pool. Budget 5 to 6% total if you offer both, less if you don’t. On $425k, that’s roughly $21k to $25k. It’s the biggest line item by far, which is why it’s the one worth actually discussing instead of accepting.

Virginia’s grantor tax.

The state charges the seller $1 per $1,000 of sale price at recording. On $425k, that’s $425. Small, but people don’t know it exists. (If you’re selling in Hampton Roads instead of Richmond, there’s an additional regional transportation fee on top. Richmond metro doesn’t have one.)

The stuff nobody budgets for:

• Mortgage payoff includes accrued interest through the closing date, not just the balance on your statement
• Pro-rated property taxes for the portion of the year you owned it
• Deed prep and settlement fees, usually a few hundred dollars
• HOA resale packet if applicable, often $200 to $400, and the seller pays it
• Pre-listing repairs or credits negotiated after inspection. In this market, buyers are asking again, and repair credits are back on the table.

The one piece of good news: capital gains:

If it was your primary residence for two of the last five years, the first $250k of profit is excluded from capital gains ($500k married filing jointly). Most Richmond sellers owe nothing. If you’ve owned a long time or it was a rental, talk to a CPA before you list, not after.

Rough rule of thumb:

expect ‘all in’ selling costs somewhere around 7 to 9% of sale price, then subtract your payoff to get your net. Any decent agent should hand you a net sheet with these exact numbers before you sign a listing agreement. If they won’t, that tells you something.

Happy to answer questions in the comments on any of these line items or how the numbers pencil at a different price point.

No need to DM.

Lived here and worked in this market for a while, and there’s a handful of things that come up over and over with people buying their first home around here.
Figured I’d put them in one place.

Quick disclosure up front: I’m a local agent, so weigh this however you want. Not pitching anything, just the stuff I end up re-explaining every week.

The market right now isn’t 2022.
Metro median is sitting in the low-to-mid $400s for single-family, with the city itself closer to the high $300s. Rates have settled into the mid-6s. The big change is that the frenzy cooled. You’re usually not fighting twelve offers and waiving everything anymore. Inventory is still on the tight side (a couple months of supply), so clean move-in-ready homes under about $350k still go fast, but seller concessions are back. I’m regularly getting closing-cost credits and repair credits for buyers, which was basically impossible two years ago. New construction in Glen Allen, Chesterfield, and Hanover is also throwing in incentives like rate buydowns and covered closing costs because builders have standing inventory. Worth a look even if you assumed new build was out of budget.

Your tax rate depends a lot on which side of a county line you land on.
This is the one that surprises people. Real estate tax is charged per $100 of assessed value and it varies by locality:

• Richmond City: $1.20
• Chesterfield: about $0.91
• Henrico: about $0.83
• Hanover: about $0.81

On a $400k house, the city runs roughly $4,800 a year versus around $3,300 in Henrico. That’s about $125 a month difference baked into your payment for the exact same price tag. None of that is a reason to avoid the city. You might want the walkability, the Fan, whatever. Just know it’s part of affordability and not every online calculator catches it. Double-check the current numbers too, since localities reset rates at budget time each spring.
Most first-timers here qualify for help they don’t know about.
Virginia Housing (the state agency, used to be called VHDA) has a Down Payment Assistance grant that is a true grant, not a loan you pay back, usually around 2 to 2.5% of the price, if you’re under the income limit and use one of their loans.
There’s a separate Closing Cost grant aimed at VA and rural loans, which matters if you’re military or buying out toward the county edges. You generally need a credit score around 620 and a homebuyer education course (online, a few hours, cheap).
Richmond City also runs its own down-payment program on top of that for buyers inside the city.
The catch: you have to use a Virginia Housing-approved lender to get the grant, so ask about it before you lock in a lender, not after.

A rough budget-to-area map.
Very generally: under about $300k tends to be eastern Henrico, parts of Chesterfield, and the Southside. Mid-range puts you in a lot of Chesterfield, western Henrico, and Hanover/Mechanicsville. The Fan, Museum District, and Short Pump are where you cross into $500k and up. Chesterfield and Hanover have been the fast growers for families chasing newer homes and schools. If your commute matters, the I-95/295 split is the thing to study, not just distance on a map.

A few honest gotchas:

• Get fully underwritten, not just “pre-qualified,” before you shop. When decent homes still move in a week or two, a soft pre-qual loses to a clean pre-approval every time.
• Budget for the stuff after the down payment: inspection (around $400 to $600), appraisal, and the first year of taxes and insurance going into escrow. The down payment is rarely the number that actually catches people short.
• Don’t skip the inspection to win an offer unless you genuinely understand what you’re taking on. The market has eased enough that you usually don’t have to.

Happy to answer specific questions in the comments: neighborhoods, how the assistance programs work, how the numbers pencil out at a given price.

No need to DM.

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