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The National Association of Realtors has agreed to pay $418 million in damages to settle the real estate commission lawsuits. The trade group has also agreed to abolish the “Participation Rule” that required sell-side agents to make an offer of compensation to buyer brokers.

Taken together, the settlement and multiple rule changes will reshape how millions of sellers and buyers transact, and how their representatives get paid.

Some analysts and experts say the changes could wipe out billions in agent commissions in the coming years while accelerating a decline in the number of working real estate agents.

A U.S. jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and some residential brokerages, including units of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway
, liable to pay $1.78 billion in damages for conspiring to artificially inflate commissions for home sales.

The verdict by a federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, could upend decades-old practices that have allowed real estate agents to boost commissions as home prices and mortgage rates rise, hurting consumers by making housing transactions more expensive.

Plaintiffs in the class action included sellers of more than 260,000 homes in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois between 2015 and 2022, who objected to the commissions they were obligated to pay buyers’ brokers.

The verdict followed a two-week trial, and the damages award can be tripled under U.S. antitrust law to more than $5.3 billion.