Do Florida Agents Have to Use a Written Buyer Brokerage Agreement?

Updated August 2026 · Reviewed by Adams, Cameron & Co.

This is one of the few genuinely new things in the job. An agent who was producing in 2023 and is producing today is doing one thing now that they were not doing then, and it happens at the very start of every buyer relationship.

It also gets explained badly, usually because two separate rules get folded into one. This page separates them, because the difference decides what you actually have to do.

The rule, stated plainly

Since August 17, 2024, an MLS participant working with a buyer must enter into a written agreement with that buyer before touring a home. The National Association of REALTORS describes the trigger in two parts: the agent has to be working with the buyer, meaning providing representation or arranging tours, and the trigger event is touring a home. Touring means the buyer goes inside, and a live virtual tour counts.

There is a real exception that people forget. A listing agent hosting an open house, or speaking with an unrepresented buyer purely on behalf of the seller, is not working with that buyer and does not need an agreement to have the conversation. The moment you start representing them, that changes.

The part that catches people: this is not Florida license law

Nothing in Chapter 475 was amended to create this. The requirement reaches you through the rules of the MLS you participate in, which adopted the practice changes that came out of the NAR settlement. That distinction is not academic. It tells you who enforces it, what the penalty looks like, and why the wording is about compensation rather than about agency.

Florida license law has its own written requirements and they are about something else entirely, which is the next section.

Florida already had a writing rule, and it is about the relationship

Under F.S. 475.278(1)(b), it is presumed that all licensees are operating as transaction brokers unless a single agent or no brokerage relationship is established, in writing, with a customer. That is the Florida default, and it is worth reading twice: transaction brokerage requires nothing in writing at all. It is what you get if you sign nothing.

If you want to be a single agent, F.S. 475.278(3)(b)(1) requires the duties of a single agent to be fully described and disclosed in writing before showing property or entering into an agreement, whichever comes first. The same logic applies to no brokerage relationship under subsection (4)(b). And moving a client from single agent to transaction broker mid relationship needs the principal's written consent under (3)(b)(2).

So Florida has always asked for a writing in some situations, but it asks about what you are to the buyer. The new rule asks what you get paid. Two rules, two subjects, both live at the same moment in the relationship. Florida Realtors puts it directly: the settlement does not change Florida brokerage relationship law.

What the agreement has to contain

The compensation terms carry most of the weight:

• The amount or rate of compensation you will receive from any source must be specifically and conspicuously disclosed, or the method for determining it must be.
• That amount must be objectively ascertainable and may not be open ended. A blank to be filled in later, or a promise to take whatever the seller offers, does not satisfy it.
• You may not receive compensation from any source that exceeds the amount or rate you agreed with the buyer. If the listing side offers more, the extra is not yours.
• The agreement must state conspicuously that broker commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable.

The third point is the one that changes behavior. Before, the number came from the listing and you found out what you were making when you opened the listing. Now the ceiling is set by a conversation you had with your buyer before you showed them anything.

What left the MLS

Offers of compensation are no longer published on the MLS. A seller can still choose to offer something to the buyer side, and that remains fully negotiable, but it is arranged off the MLS through negotiation rather than advertised as a field on the listing.

For a buyer agent this means the compensation on any given house is now something you find out by asking, not something you read. It is worth knowing this before you promise a buyer that their representation costs them nothing.

The Florida forms

Florida Realtors publishes three buyer agreement forms, and they sit at different points on the same spectrum:

• Property Pre-Touring Agreement. Disclosures and basic compensation information before you show property. The lightest of the three.
• Showing Agreement. Creates compensation tied to showing specific properties named in the agreement.
• Exclusive Buyer Brokerage Agreement. The full version, with an exclusive relationship, a retainer and buyer duties. It exists in four versions covering the different Florida brokerage relationships, which is where the two rule sets in this page finally meet on one piece of paper.

Form names and versions get revised, so check the current Florida Realtors library rather than the copy sitting in a folder from two years ago. That is a real operational risk and not a hypothetical one.

What this actually changed about the job

The mechanical answer is one more signature. The honest answer is that the hardest conversation in buyer representation moved to the front.

You used to be able to build rapport across three or four showings and discuss money once the buyer trusted you. Now you have to explain what you are worth to somebody who met you yesterday, before you have shown them anything, and get them to sign a number. Agents who were good at demonstrating value slowly have had to learn to state it quickly.

A side effect worth naming: a fair number of agents quietly stopped doing buyer work. Between the conversation and the paperwork, some decided listings were the simpler business. If you are evaluating brokerages right now, the volume of buyer side production in an office tells you something about whether its agents adapted or retreated.

What to ask a brokerage about it

This is an infrastructure question, and it belongs alongside the rest of what a brokerage actually provides. Four things are worth asking directly:

• Which forms does the office use as standard, and who keeps them current?
• Is there training on the compensation conversation itself, not just on the form?
• Who reviews a buyer agreement before it is signed, and are they reachable at seven in the evening when a buyer balks in the car?
• How does the office handle it when the listing side offers less than what your buyer agreed to pay you?

That last one is the practical bind of the new system, and the quality of the answer tells you a lot. It sits close to the questions in the ten questions worth asking before switching brokerages.

The adjacent things people conflate with this

Two more distinctions save arguments. Showing a property listed by another firm is governed by cooperation and access rules, covered in showing a listing from another brokerage. And how a listing agreement itself is structured, exclusive or open, is a separate topic covered in exclusive listing versus open listing in Florida.

Getting paid once the deal closes has not changed, and the mechanics of that are in how and when agents actually get paid after a closing. What changed is where the number comes from, not how it reaches you.

The short version

Written agreement before the tour, with a real number in it. That obligation comes from your MLS. Florida separately decides whether you are a transaction broker or a single agent, and it presumes the former unless you put something else in writing. Handle both and the paperwork is routine. Confuse them and you will spend an afternoon arguing about the wrong statute.

Since the compensation figure is now agreed up front, the moment to discuss reducing it has moved too. Florida also permits rebating part of your commission to the buyer, with disclosure.