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The entire US housing market is about to get remodeled, and the end product could come with a big perk: cheaper home prices.

ThatÔÇÖs due to a $418 million settlement the National Association of Realtors announced Friday with groups of homesellers.

The settlement, which is still subject to a judgeÔÇÖs approval, will eliminate the long-standing standard 6% commission paid by the seller. Those fees, however, are often baked into the listed price of the home. Lower commissions could therefore lower home prices, experts say.

And at a time when elevated housing costs are driving inflation across the country, reining in home prices could help bring price increases back to levels Americans experienced before the pandemic.

But none of that will happen overnight.

For starters, a judge still needs to sign off on the settlement, which also would put in place a slew of new rules. Among those, buyersÔÇÖ agents showing homes that were listed on local centralized listing portals, known as multiple listing services, wonÔÇÖt have prior knowledge of the commissions theyÔÇÖll receive if their clients end up purchasing it.

The NAR, which represents more than 1 million agents, declined to comment on whether home prices will fall as a result of the settlement. However, the president of the NAR, Kevin Sears, said Friday in a statement that ÔÇ£the benefits it will provide to our industry are worth that cost.ÔÇØ

The settlement comes months after a federal jury in Missouri found the NAR and two brokerages liable for $1.8 billion in damages for conspiring to keep agent commissions artificially high. The NAR was the last of the three parties to settle.

Decoupling commissions from home prices ÔÇ£will allow them to be removed and negotiated down, lowering both housing prices and overall consumer costs,ÔÇØ said Stephen Brobeck, a senior fellow at the Consumer Federation of America, an umbrella group of non-profit consumer organizations.

He estimates that in a typical year (unlike the past one when home purchases dropped to nearly a 30-year low), Americans pay $100 billion in commission fees. Home buyers could stand to save anywhere between a quarter to half of that if the settlement is finalized.

Even if a judge signs off on the settlement ÔÇ£the industry is likely to use informal mechanisms to try to hold the line on 5 to 6% commissions,ÔÇØ Brobeck told CNN. For instance, listing agents will likely continue to tell sellers that their homes will be sold faster if they pay for the buyerÔÇÖs agentÔÇÖs fee. That would increase how much theyÔÇÖre compensated since the total fee ends up getting split between listing agents and the buyerÔÇÖs agents. On top of that, the buyersÔÇÖ agents┬áÔÇ£will simply refuse to negotiate their commission.ÔÇØ

Tomasz Piskorski, a real estate professor at Columbia University, is skeptical the settlement will move the needle on home prices at all.

ItÔÇÖs ÔÇ£a step in the right directionÔÇØ in terms of increasing transparency for homebuyers who may have a limited understanding of how a seller arrived at their listing price given the commissions worked out behind the scenes, he told CNN.

But since the commissions act like a tax, lowering them could end up incentivizing more would-be-renters to buy homes. In turn, that may very well offset any price savings to be had from the new system, Piskorski said.

NAR settlement or not, factors such as housing inventory, mortgage rates and consumer savings rates will ÔÇ£play much larger roles,ÔÇØ said Brobeck.