Two practice changes go into effect August 17, 2024. Practice change #1: The MLS offer of compensation is going away. Practice change #2: You need a written agreement with a buyer to tour a home.
WRA created a written agreement to use when touring a home in pre-agency. The WRA’s Pre-Agency Showing Agreement (WRA-PASA) is used when you are in pre-agency (the buyer is not yet a customer or a client) with the buyer and the buyer wants to tour a home. The form is available to WRA members in the WRA’s Forms Library at https://www.wra.org/forms/.
Most existing listing contracts and buyer agency agreements do NOT need to be amended. For listing contracts and buyer agency agreements with a mandatory use date before August 15, 2024, provide the WRA’s Compensation Disclosure (WRA-CD). Have them sign and date and your contract is now in compliance with the Settlement Agreement.
EXCEPTION: Any existing buyer agency agreement where the commission is identified as “whatever is offered in the MLS,” “whatever the listing firm is offering,” or some other open-ended language, YOU MUST amend your buyer agency agreement to have a commission amount that is objectively ascertainable (e.g. percentage of the purchase price, specific dollar amount, etc.). Use the WB-47 Amendment to Buyer Agency or Tenant Representation Agreement to amend your contract.
Do not use or go looking for “workarounds” to the removal of the MLS offer of compensation. Offers of compensation cannot be anywhere on the MLS or MLS adjacent platforms such as scheduling platforms, in remarks, associated documents, etc.
The Seller Payment of Compensation to Buyer’s Firm in the WB Offers to Purchase is ONLY for use by buyers who have a buyer agency. When a buyer has buyer agency, the buyer’s agent’s firm can ethically suggest the buyer use the offer to purchase to try to get the seller to pay the buyer’s firm’s fee. A subagent working with a buyer-customer CANNOT suggest the buyer-customer use the terms of the buyer’s offer to purchase to ask the seller to pay the subagent a fee. A subagent may NOT place the subagent’s interests ahead of the interests of the clients of the principal firm in the transaction in which the subagent has been engaged by the principal firm. Wis. Stat. § 452.133(4)(b). This means the subagent cannot place their own interests (financial or otherwise) ahead of the seller’s interest.
All of the summer 2024 WB forms and WRA forms can be found at the button below.
The WRA has updated three forms in the WRA Forms Library since July 1, 2024. See below for the specific forms and changes. We regret these errors and apologize for any inconvenience.
The corrected version is in the WRA Forms Library and the DSPS Real Estate Contractual Forms Library. Members who have already downloaded the library for their use may re-download the library or just the affected forms.
WB-14 Condominium Offer to Purchase. Page 7 of 13 was incorrectly labeled page 5 of 13 in the upper right corner of the form.
WRA-PASA Pre-agency Showing Agreement. A missing period was added to line 38 between the sentence that ends in “OFFER TO PURCHASE” and “This is an agreement…”
RANW Addendum A: Line 52 blank line was added. Line 74 The right parenthesis was added. Line 106 picoCuries per liter abbreviation removed redundant backslash. Line 233 box around Strike One was added back. Line 310 RESPA right parenthesis was added.
The summer 2024 WB and WRA forms are not yet available in zipForm. ZipForm is working diligently to add the new forms to its platform, but the volume they need to process is unprecedented nationwide.
Details about the changes to the 2024 WB forms and WRA forms can be found at www.wra.org/formsupdate.
