If you clicked on a real estate agent’s name next to an online listing, don’t hold your breath waiting for a call. Nearly half of online property inquiries are simply ignored, according to new research from real estate analyst and consultant Mike DelPrete.

DelPrete wrote that the recent study's results "highlight significant areas of opportunity for brokerages and agents in the fundamentals of customer service."

But it should also show consumers that they shouldn’t expect too much from the agents they try to contact, whether electronically or face-to-face.

To test agent responses, 100 "secret shops" were conducted across the country. Secret shopping is often used to evaluate a business’s services and customer experience. It has also been used to uncover discriminatory practices.

In this case, a team of experts "used a standardized method conducted in a professional, repeatable manner to evaluate each brokerage," wrote DelPrete. The secret shoppers "inquired about specific, median-priced properties on individual brokerage websites," mostly via online forms. All of their inquiries were made during normal business hours on weekdays.

A whopping 47% of inquiries were flat-out ignored. Of those that got a response, the median time to hear back was a reasonable 39 minutes. The average time, though, was less reasonable: 8 hours and 17 minutes.

To test agents sitting at open houses, DelPrete writes that "secret shoppers walked into local, median-priced open houses across the nation and collected specific data points about their experience."

The result: These agents didn’t do much better than their online counterparts. To wit, 42% failed to ask for contact information from potential customers. And of the 58% of agents who did, a third of them never followed up.

DelPrete described the overall findings this way: “Most interactions were consistently inconsistent.”

“There was no rhyme or reason to the level and quality of follow-up -- or even if there was any follow-up at all,” he writes. “It was a roll of the dice each time.”

DelPrete’s bottom line: This study "lays bare the immense opportunity in simply getting the basics right: following up with people in a consistently structured way."

That’s how DelPrete sees it. But as I see it: Don’t expect too much from agents you meet along the way, and you won’t be disappointed.

Meanwhile, now that buyers are responsible for their share of the real estate commission, there’s a good chance they’ll be hunting not just for houses, but also for sellers willing to pay at least a portion of their fees.

Call it a new form of “steering” -- the term used to describe how agents take their clients only to houses offering the best commission split between them and the listing agents. Now, it looks like buyers will be in the driver’s seat.

According to a recent study from Inman Intel, the research arm of the Inman real estate news service, the process is “primed to become much more prevalent” when guided by buyers themselves.

In a survey of 611 real estate professionals, Inman Intel found that most buyer’s agents, directed in many cases by the buyer, will feel the need to confirm the portion of their commission the seller is willing to cover before making an offer on a house.

The survey found that 3 out of 5 agents plan to reach out to the listing agent to confirm the buyer-side commission before their clients make an offer, and 1 out of 4 plan to encourage their clients to submit an offer that requires the seller to cover the full commission just to learn the seller’s position as part of the normal negotiation process.

“Much more steering will happen, at the direction of the buyer, of course,” one agent responded. “I actually have not heard of any steering in the past due to (the) amount of commission being offered -- ever. Now, with the buyer directing (agents) to do so, it will happen every day.”

Finally, in other consumer news, the Federal Trade Commission now bans fake consumer reviews and testimonials, as well as celebrity tributes. Consequently, you should start seeing a lot fewer celebs endorsing outfits that peddle fix-and-flip investment schemes and programs to "protect" the title to your house, among others.

The consumer watchdog agency also now prohibits businesses from buying positive reviews, and forbids them from misrepresenting websites they control -- for instance, by implying a site provides independent reviews about products and services when it really doesn't.

The FTC bars businesses from using lawsuit threats, physical threats, intimidation or certain false public accusations to prevent someone from posting a negative review.

Homeowners considering adding solar panels to their rooftops should beware of crooked lenders who mislead customers about the terms and conditions of their financing. Shady lenders might also misrepresent the savings that solar energy will deliver, pile fees onto borrowers’ loan balances and misrepresent the impact of the federal solar tax credit.

Not all lenders are so dastardly. But if yours jams unnecessary fees into your loan, it could boost the cost of your solar panel financing by 30% or more above the cash price, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

This comes at a time when solar energy is gaining popularity in mainstream communities, not just in affluent markets. The industry owes much of that growth to declining costs and larger incentives from Uncle Sam.

"The average residential solar project costs $25,000," reads the CFPB report, "and federal tax credits currently cover approximately 30% of the installation cost."

Last year, nearly 3 out of every 5 homeowners who opted for solar panels financed their projects. As the number of lenders in the field increases, some of them opt to partner with solar installers. The solar companies then employ a variety of marketing and sales tactics, including going door-to-door, to convince homeowners to go solar -- and to finance the project with their lending partner.

But the watchdog agency found that the rapid rise of nonbank lenders partnering with solar salespeople is raising the potential for illegal behavior and consumer harm. The report states: “Many homeowners are discovering they are being duped and misled into contracts with inflated principals, ballooning monthly payments and electricity savings lower than promised.”

The CFPB found four particularly significant risks: hidden markup fees that are often "baked into" the loan's principal; misleading claims, such as assumptions that the federal investment tax credit is a sure thing (it is not guaranteed); ballooning monthly payments, which could kick in if the tax credit is denied; and exaggerated claims that solar panels will eliminate their monthly energy bills.

The tax deduction for mortgage interest isn’t as popular as it used to be, thanks to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in 2017.

From 2017 to 2021, the number of itemized returns dropped from 30.9% to 9.6%, according to an analysis by economists at the National Association of Home Builders. “Taxpayers who do not itemize their tax returns claim the standard deduction instead, and thus do not directly benefit from deductions such as the (Mortgage Interest Deduction),” reported NAHB.

Some 11.5 million returns claimed the mortgage interest deduction in 2021, and the total amount of mortgage interest deducted was $143.5 billion.

Per TaxPolicyCenter.org, the Jobs Act "increased the standard deduction from $6,500 to $12,000 for individual filers, from $13,000 to $24,000 for joint returns, and from $9,550 to $18,000 for heads of household between 2017 and 2018." That, coupled with a new limit of $10,000 on the write-off for state and local income taxes, started the trend toward less itemization.

Even with the McMansion-building spree of recent years, the good ol' U.S. of A. does not have the largest houses in the world. According to a meta-analysis from decor company The Perfect Rug, Australia ranks first in home size, followed by New Zealand. The U.S. takes the bronze.

In Australia, the average house clocks in at 2,303 square feet. In neighboring New Zealand, it's 2,174 square feet, while in the States, it's 2,164 square feet.

The average household size in all three countries consists of roughly 2.5 people.

According to a report from The Builder's Daily (part of Builder Magazine), the leaders of 21 publicly owned American homebuilding companies took home an average of $11.5 million in compensation last year. Each.

The range is significant: Stuart Miller of the Lennar Corp. earned the most on the list at $34.3 million, while Eugene Bredow of NVR earned the least, at $1.8 million.

And you wonder why housing prices are so high.

Certainly, these officials have delivered some of their organizations’ highest earnings in what could have been several down years. But still -- holy smokes.

"Real estate is a high-churn business," writes industry analyst Mike DelPrete on his blog: He says that roughly 144,000 agents switched brokerages between this June and last. That’s 10% of the entire realty workforce, he points out.

According to DelPrete's analysis, the agents newest to the job were the most likely to switch agencies.

In 2021, about 3.3% of adults aged 30 and over -- roughly 6.7 million people -- lived with their grandchildren, according to new figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. And about one-third of those living with grandkids under the age of 18 were responsible for their care.

Attention, buyers: How are you going to pay your share of the sales commission on the house you want to buy?

Under the terms of the gigantic $418 million antitrust settlement with the National Association of Realtors, commission splits have now been uncoupled, meaning each side is responsible for their share of the fee.

You’ll know what your agent expects in the way of compensation when you sign the buyer representation agreement. This agreement is what you’ll be asked to sign before you actually set foot in a house that’s for sale. But how you pay is up to you, your seller and your agents.

First, though, you don’t have to actually sign anything with an agent, at least not a contract that binds you to them while you are house-hunting. And the Consumer Federation of America suggests caution. “Understandable agreements have the ability to empower buyers and transform their relationship to agents,” says CFA’s Steve Brobeck.

If you must sign a contract, sign one without any financial obligation, at least not until you actually settle on the place you intend to purchase. Toward that end, Zillow has produced so-called touring agreements for two dozen states that allow agents to work with buyers while meeting the requirements of the NAR’s class-action settlement.

Described as introductory contracts that allow agents to explain the services they provide and their compensation models, the pacts permit agents to still show potential buyers houses without tying them to each other. The pacts expire in seven days, at which time you can sign a binding buyer-agent contract or walk away.

“To put it simply, most people want to date before becoming exclusive,” Zillow explains. “This approach lets you and the buyer enter the first showing with a signed limited services agreement that satisfies requirements outlined in the NAR settlement.”

Now, about how you are going to pay your agent: Start by asking the seller to reduce their price by the amount of your share of the commission. Since most sellers bake the cost of the total sales commission into their asking prices anyway, that shouldn’t be especially difficult.

According to Redfin, buy-side commissions have been falling since the NAR settlement and now stand at 2.55%. But the CFA believes buyers should shoot for 2% at most.

Next, you have to decide how you are going to come up with the extra cost. Buyers and sellers can still negotiate who pays what between themselves. And while listing agents are now prohibited from posting on their multiple listing services what share of the sale’s fee they will part with, they can still post that information on their own websites and those of their companies.

Listing agents can also take the full commission and then rebate the buy-side agent’s share at closing. Or sellers can offer cash concessions at settlement to their buyers equal to the buy-side agent’s fee, with that amount paid to the buyer’s agent at closing.

Buyers also have the option of paying cash to their agents. Or they can finance the fee as part of the mortgage.

No choice is ideal. For example, it’s tough enough to come up with the money for a down payment. But it could be prohibitive if you have to pay your share of the commission out of your own pocket. Consequently, financing the charge may be the best way to go.

Here’s an example, using for simplicity purposes a $300,000 sales price with a 6% commission. The total commission would be $18,000, with each agent taking half, or $9,000. If you figure on making a 10% down payment -- $30,000 -- nine grand more is a lot of extra money most buyers don’t have.

With 10% down, your mortgage would be $270,000. But if you add your $9,000 share of the commission, you’d be borrowing $279,000. The difference in payments for those two amounts is $54 more a month -- $1,619 vs. $1,1673 -- which works out to $648 more a year or $6,480 over 10 years.

It would take almost 14 years to reach your breakeven point. After that, you’d be paying more than the original $9,000 fee. Any time before that, though, you’d come out ahead.

But there’s a lot more to the financing equation than just money.

For one very important thing, the two quasi-government secondary market outfits that keep the mortgage money flowing by purchasing loans from primary lenders and rolling them into securities for sale to investors worldwide have yet to say whether they would buy loans that include commissions.

If Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac decide against making an exception for commission amounts, over half of all mortgages including the charge would be ineligible for purchase. And since most lenders follow Fannie and Freddie’s guidelines, a lot more loans than that will fall by the wayside.

Then there’s the question of your loan-to-value ratio. If the loan amount includes the commission, your LTV will be higher, which could kick you into another mortgage program with a higher interest rate and would require an even larger down payment. You might even be required to pay a higher mortgage insurance premium.

(For the uninitiated, mortgage insurance is required on all loans in which the borrowers put less than 20% down. The insurance protects the lender in case you fail to make your payments, but you pay for it.)