Sweeping changes have come to the complicated and expensive process of buying a house in the US, with the goal of making it slightly less complicated and expensive.

On Saturday, a class-action settlement with the National Association of Realtors (NAR) went into effect, ripping up the playbook on how real estate agents are compensated. The NAR was accused of artificially inflating commission rates, which have historically ranged from 5% to 6%, a higher fee than the rest of the world. Consumer advocates hope the new rules will lead to lower commissions, shift power away from agents, and add transparency into what’s been an opaque system.

How it worked before Saturday

The 5%–6% fee was shouldered by the home seller and split between the seller’s agent and the buyer’s agent. So, for a home that sold for $450,000, the seller would need to cough up $27,000 in fees for both brokers, per CNN.

How it works now

The most immediate change for anyone buying a home: You will have to sign a written contract with the agent representing you before they show you a house. That means the type of compensation your agent will receive is up to you and them to negotiate—it could be a commission as low as 1.5%, say, or a flat fee.

Because many buyers are new to negotiating with brokers and could be taken advantage of, consumer groups have created draft templates to simplify the process.

On the seller’s side, they still have the option to cover the commission of the buyer’s broker, which may lead to more and better offers.

What will happen next?

Housing experts say that if commission rates decrease due to the new rules, they’ll do so gradually and not suddenly (and they’ve already been creeping lower since the settlement was reached in March).

Meanwhile, this new dog-eat-dog system for brokers could push many of the “mediocre” ones to leave the industry, while the highest-performing agents will still get their bag, Axios reports.

One more thing: If you’ve sold a property in the last five years, you could be entitled to a slice of the settlement. See if you’re eligible here.—NF

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X closes operations in Brazil. Escalating a long-standing dispute, X CEO Elon Musk claimed Brazilian Judge Alexandre de Moraes secretly threatened one of X’s legal reps with arrest if it didn’t comply with orders to take down content from its platform, prompting Musk’s decision on Saturday to close up shop in the country. Earlier this year, Moraes ordered X to block certain accounts as part of an investigation into “digital militias” accused of disseminating fake news and hate messages during the administration of former President Jair Bolsonaro. Musk called the decision “unconstitutional,” but X eventually said it would comply with the orders. X remains available in the country, so the people of Brazil are still free to use Grok to create AI images of Shrek blowing smoke rings in the face of Donkey.

Disney is carrying the summer box office. Alien: Romulus unseated billion-dollar juggernaut Deadpool & Wolverine as the top movie in North America with an opening weekend haul of $41.5 million, which is great news for Disney since they are both made by Disney. Thanks to the success of these two films alongside Inside Out 2 ($1.6 billion worldwide) and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes ($397 million worldwide), Disney has grabbed 42% of summer box-office ticket sales in the US and Canada, according to Box Office Mojo. Last summer, Disney’s market share was just 27% and its moviemaking business was nearing crisis mode.

Hurricane Debby dropped ~$1.6 million of cocaine on Florida’s beaches. While that amount won’t impress regular viewers of HBO’s Industry, authorities felt it was large enough to report on social media. The US Customs and Border Patrol in Miami said it recovered 25 packages of cocaine worth ~$1 million on a beach in Islamorada, a village in the Florida Keys about 80 miles from Key West, on Aug. 4. A week later, the Collier County Sheriff’s Office found another $625,000 worth of cocaine floating near Everglades City. While the origins of the cocaine are unknown, smugglers have been known to ditch their packages in the water when their vessels encounter mechanical failures or law enforcement.

That losing 10-leg NFL parlay is coming at the expense of investments in the stock market, new research shows.

According to a July working paper, bears and bulls have become more inclined to bet on the Bears and Bulls since wagering on your phone was legalized in most states in the past six years. For every dollar put toward a sports bet, a household’s net investments drop by $2, the study found.

Siphoning money away from sound investments and toward what’s meant to be an entertainment product raises more concerns about the impact of online betting on personal finances.

• Since the Supreme Court overturned a federal law prohibiting sports betting in 2018, 38 states have legalized it. Americans spent $14 billion on sports wagers in January 2024, up from $1.1 billion in January 2019.
• Some of that is money not going into a Schwab account. Researchers found that in the two to three years that followed the legalization of sports betting in a state, net investments dropped 14%.

People in monetary distress are particularly susceptible. The study says financially constrained households are diverting more funds from stock portfolios to sports bets than others, perhaps looking for a get-rich-quick solution that doesn’t involve Roaring Kitty. “This finding underscores the potential for sports betting legalization to exacerbate financial vulnerability and hardship,” according to the authors.—DL

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Northeastern, the university whose archrival is somehow not Northwestern, has reached Ivy League admission rates. The Boston school accepted a mere 5.6% of applicants last year, down from 32% a decade ago, per the Wall Street Journal.

Why has it become so hard to get into Northeastern? Because of surging interest in the university’s “co-op” programs, which allow students to get up to 18 months of full-time paid work experience in addition to classes. These jobs aren’t the usual gigs at restaurants or the campus bookstore—employer partners include Google, Tesla, and local hospitals. The strategy aims to produce career-ready graduates, and that appears to be working: According to Northeastern, 95% of students reported being employed full time or in graduate school within nine months of graduation.

The DNC begins today in Chicago: At their national convention, Democrats will try to do what the Chicago Bulls have failed to accomplish since 1998—use the United Center as a springboard for a trip to the White House. President Biden and Hillary Clinton will speak tonight, Barack Obama takes the stage on Tuesday, and in the finale on Thursday, Kamala Harris will accept the Democratic nomination and outline her platform to a national audience. Chicago is preparing for thousands of protesters demonstrating against the war in Gaza, in support of abortion rights, and other social issues.

Powell to speak in Jackson Hole, WY: Later this week, central bankers will meet in the shadow of the Tetons for the Jackson Hole Symposium, an annual retreat for global economic officials to talk monetary policy and knock back a few whiskeys at the Million Dollar Cowboy Bar. The main event: Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s keynote speech on Friday, which investors hope will clarify the timing and pace of interest rate cuts.

Everything else…

• Negotiations for a cease-fire in Gaza will resume this week in Cairo. In an attempt to push an agreement across the finish line, Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel yesterday and will travel to Egypt on Tuesday.
• College football is back this Saturday with Week 0, the soft opening of the season before the full slate of games the following week.
• Burning Man, which had sold out every year since 2011 before this year, starts on Sunday.