Ann Arbor’s real estate community continues to be split on the reasons and value of administrative brokerage fees charged on home sales, even as the use of those fees garners national attention after a spring court ruling.

That case was in Alabama, where a federal judge ruled that charging an “administrative brokerage commission” fee of $149 per transaction violated RESPA laws.

The Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act details all charges and payments during a home sale on a form received by buyers and sellers as part of the settlement process.

So is that administrative fee - also called a transaction fee - a violation of RESPA?

No court affecting Michigan has said that, leaving individual real estate offices the leeway to make their own decisions about whether customers are charged the fees in addition to the sales commission.

In the Ann Arbor area, brokerages charge from zero to $295. The reasons range from concern that they’ll end up overturned in courts here to a need to fund administrative services in an industry that increasingly must adhere to regulation and documentation.

“We’ve considered (transaction fees),” said Ed Surovell, owner of Edward Surovell Realtors, which has about 100 agents in Washtenaw County.

Surovell doesn’t charge the fee. He said he’d see no added service to customers if the fee was added, since the transaction would be identical.

“The real issue,” he said, “is are they fees or are they commission?”

The benefit to the broker is that the fees go straight to the brokerage’s overhead and don’t come under the commission split that the broker would pay with an agent.

For an office that participates in 1,000 transactions sides over a year, for example, the added revenue could range from $149,000 to $295,000.

“They have a very strong logic to them,” Surovell said. “What we’re concerned with at the moment is what happens to (the Alabama lawsuit) after it gets into the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court. I have the opinion that the plaintiff in this case is going to prevail.”

Many real estate offices in Washtenaw County have downsized in recent years as annual home sales and values have fallen.

Data from the Ann Arbor Area Board of Realtors from June shows that the $85 million in that month’s sales is down 42 percent from June 2006, even as the overall sales volume for the year is only down 26 percent. The fall in dollar volume means that there’s less money paid in commissions.

“(The transaction fee) all goes right to the bottom line, which frankly we all need these days,” Surovell said. “Real estate brokerage is rough these days. … In many areas, including most in Michigan, it’s hard for brokerages to continue to provide services.”

Continuing an established level of service is the reason that the Charles Reinhart Co. started charging its $295 administrative fee in July 2008.

“The reason we went to this kind of a fee was in response to the collapsing conditions in the marketplace,” said president Dave Lutton. “In 2008 we closed two offices and laid personnel off and reduced salaries and renegotiated leases and cut costs 50 other ways.

“And we still faced revenue shortfalls, so we went to the system of charging a transaction fee in order to sustain ourselves through this remarkably challenging market.”

Lutton said the fees are common across the U.S.

And his company - which he said is gaining local market share among its 150 local agents- is not experiencing fallout from consumers.

“It would be no good to consumers to make radical changes,” Lutton said. “And any further cuts would change shape and quality of our company and the services we could deliver.”

All of the Real Estate One offices in Michigan charge $149 per transaction side, said Jeff Stabnau, manager of the Ann Arbor office.

The company levies it as a compliance fee, Stabnau said, after launching it about eight years ago.

“Our company deals with … approximately 45-50 local laws, ordinances and rules that govern the sale of a home,” he said. “And that’s an ever-increasing sector of the business that didn’t exist 10 years ago. … We have an inhouse attorney that helps us monitor and comply with all of those ordinances, and that’s additional expense that we pass through to the public to make sure that we comply and they comply.”

Stabnau is noticing the use of the fees increasing, particularly with brokers that deal with bank-owned properties that, thanks to bargain pricing, push the average commissions on those properties even lower than on market-rate homes.

Considering the impact of the traditional commission structure - where payment for both the brokerage and the agent on both the selling and listing sides is based on the sales price - is also part of the Real Estate one fee, Stabnau said.

“Our traditional commission rates have not appreciably changed in decades, while the marketing sophistication and technology advances have steadily advanced and increased our costs …. There are additional costs that are heaped upon us that we simply pass through (to consumers),” he said.

Advocacy groups give similar advice. Gregory McClelland, attorney for the Michigan Association of Realtors, recently wrote that the market can dictate the administrative fees in this state, since the Supreme Court hasn’t ruled on them.

And Walter Maloney of the National Association of Realtors says the bottom line is disclosure.

“We say you have to disclose the compensation - you’ve got to clearly indicate that (the payment is for service provided), not just a blanket fee,” he said.

Meanwhile, Prudential Snyder & Co. Realtors in Ann Arbor also doesn’t charge the fee on its transaction sides.

The company’s 30-some agents make a point of telling customers that, and broker Sharon Snyder has, like Surovell, including that fact in marketing materials.

“It’s just a business decision on my part,” she said.

But it’s something that some brokers may keep available as an option, said Laura Dykstra, a manager at Surovell.

“Hopefully we won’t need to go there,” she added. “Hopefully things are improving … and we’ll be heading out of (this down market) sometime soon.”