Your Listing Expired. Do You Have to Pay a Buyer's Agent When You Relist? And Can You Offer 0%?

Your listing expired. You are getting ready to put the home back on the market, and somewhere in that process you land on the topic of commissions. Maybe your old agent told you one thing. Maybe a friend who watches the news mentioned that the whole commission system changed in 2024. Maybe you read that nobody has to pay a buyer's agent anymore and you figured you could finally stop paying that money.

A little knowledge here is dangerous, because the rules did change, and they changed in a way that can genuinely hurt an expired listing if you misunderstand them. Let me give you the honest picture for the Philadelphia market, the same way I lay it out for every seller I relaunch.

"Do I Have to Pay a Buyer's Agent When I Relist My Expired Listing?"

No. You are never required to offer a buyer's agent any compensation, whether it is your first listing, your relist, or anything in between. There is no rule tied to relisting an expired listing that creates an obligation to pay the buyer side, and there is no Pennsylvania or New Jersey law that requires a home seller to pay a buyer's agent. A seller can legally offer full compensation, partial compensation, or zero.

So on the narrow legal question, you have your answer: you do not have to pay a buyer's agent, and offering 0% is within your rights. If that was the whole story, this post would be three sentences long. It is not the whole story, and here is why.

"What Actually Changed About Commissions?"

Before the National Association of Realtors settlement took effect on August 17, 2024, the standard practice was for the seller's listing to advertise in the MLS exactly how much the buyer's agent would be paid, usually as a percentage of the sale price. It was baked into the listing, buyers' agents could see it, and it quietly shaped how much attention a home got from the people who bring you buyers.

That is gone now. Listing brokers can no longer advertise offers of buyer-agent compensation in the MLS. In the Philadelphia and South Jersey region, that means Bright MLS, the MLS that covers the market, no longer carries that compensation field the way it used to. Bright MLS actually allowed a $0 buyer-broker compensation entry starting back in August 2023, before the settlement, and its rules let the amount be set at any value from zero upward.

Here is the practical result: if you do want to offer a buyer's agent something, you cannot just put it on the MLS listing and call it done. Any offer of buyer-agent compensation has to be negotiated off-MLS, through a phone call, an email, the purchase agreement, or the buyer-broker agreement. There is a separate seller-concession field in the MLS, but that field is meant for a credit toward the buyer's closing costs, and it may not be used to communicate buyer-agent compensation.

This is the part most sellers miss. The rule change did not make buyer agents disappear. It moved how they get paid into a negotiation that happens behind the scenes, and it gave many sellers the false idea that they can simply set the number to zero and the whole system will work the same as before. It will not.

"If 0% Is Legal, Why Would I Ever Offer a Buyer's Agent Anything?"

Because your home has to be toured to be sold, and under the new rules, buyers in Pennsylvania and New Jersey must sign a written buyer-broker agreement before an agent can tour them through a home. That agreement spells out in writing how the buyer's agent gets paid. If the agent is not going to be paid from the seller side, then the buyer is the one who has to cover it in that agreement.

Now think about what that means for an expired listing specifically. Your home already carries the story that it sat on the market and did not sell. It is the hardest kind of listing to relaunch. The last thing you want to add on top of that is a reason for buyer's agents to quietly skip your showings and steer their clients toward a comparable home across the street that comes with compensation attached.

That is the reality of the new marketplace. Nobody is breaking rules to do it. Agents owe a fiduciary duty to the buyer, not to you, and many buyers are now being asked to pay their own agent out of pocket if the seller offers nothing. A buyer who does not want to pay that may never see your home at all. When your listing already expired once, you cannot afford to take buyer agents out of the equation and hope the right buyer stumbles in on their own.

A 0% offer is legal. It is also, for most expired listings in the Philadelphia and South Jersey market, the wrong move, and it can turn a home that needs every advantage it can get into one that gets skipped.

How This Changes Your Relisting Strategy in Philadelphia and South Jersey

So what do you actually do? You stop treating buyer-agent compensation as a giveaway and start treating it as part of your marketing plan, the same way you treat pricing and photography. Here is how to think about it when you relaunch.

First, decide on your approach before you list, not after. The old way of just letting whatever number the agent suggested sit in the MLS is over. You and your agent should agree on the compensation strategy up front, and your agent will communicate it off-MLS to the buyer agents who are actively showing homes in your neighborhood. In a market like Philadelphia, where the pool of serious buyers is real but competition from other sellers is growing, you want the active buyer agents on your side.

Second, understand that this is a price conversation, not a separate bucket of money. Whether you set the buyer side at zero or at something that keeps buyer agents bringing people through, the seller net number is what matters. If you build an attractive compensation into your sale but price the home honestly and competitively, you will net more than a seller who prices too high to save whatever they think they are keeping. I tell every seller the same thing: it is not what you pay on the way out, it is what you walk away with that counts.

Third, if you are relisting an expired home, know that your biggest lever is still the same one it always was: getting the first wave of showings to happen in the first two weeks. New listings get the freshest look from buyers and buyer agents. A relaunch that is priced right, presented right, and positioned right in front of the active buyer agents in your neighborhood creates momentum. A relaunch that quietly offers nothing while the same priced home next door offers the standard buyer-side compensation starts at a disadvantage on day one.

Finally, get the negotiation handled the smart way. Since buyer-agent compensation now lives in the purchase agreement and the buyer-broker agreement rather than in the MLS, a seller's best protection is an agent who handles those conversations for you and knows the local norms. That is where experience with the market and with the agents who actually bring buyers in Philadelphia and South Jersey makes the difference between a relaunch that sells and one that sits again.

Here is the bottom line. Yes, you can offer a buyer's agent 0% when you relist, and no law in Pennsylvania stops you. But for a home that already expired once, the smarter question is not "how little can I get away with paying" but "what does it take to bring real buyers through the door at full market value." History says the sellers who win in this market are the ones who price honestly and put a straight, fair plan in front of the agents who can actually move the home. The sellers who treat zero as a win usually end up paying a much higher price in days on market.

I work with expired and hard-to-sell homes across Philadelphia and the surrounding suburbs, including South Jersey, every day. If your listing expired and you are trying to figure out the commission strategy that will actually get it sold, I will lay out the numbers side by side for your specific home, your neighborhood, and your situation. No pressure, no jargon, just a straight answer on what to do next. Book a call or pick up the phone.