“I don’t think they’ll see anything different,” she said. “This lawsuit never had anything to do with commission rates, or discount brokerages.”

She added that the lawsuit and the settlement arose from misunderstandings about the way the Realtors’ association works. “This was a five-year education of the Department of Justice, unfortunately, and the real estate industry had to pay for that education,” she said.

Since the 1990s, online real estate brokers have offered a popular and cheaper alternative to the bricks-and-mortar variety. But such brokers, known in the industry as “virtual office Web sites,” complain that the industry’s practices have denied them the chance to make full use of the multiple listing services to determine what homes are for sale.

The agreement between the Justice Department and the Realtors’ association must be approved by a federal judge, probably this summer. As now structured, the deal bans the Realtors’ association from treating online brokers as different from traditional brokers or discriminating against them, and it ensures that they will not be excluded from membership in the listing service based on their business model.

In one instance, the Justice Department said an unnamed online broker was forced to shut down its Web site because all the traditional brokers on the local listing service, in response to the national association’s policy, had withheld their listings from the online broker.

After the Justice Department sued the Realtors’ association in 2005, the group suspended the exclusionary policy. Officials said the settlement would ensure that online brokers are given full access and that its policies are made uniform.

“For us, it’s a great result,” said Pat Lashinsky, chief executive of ZipRealty in Emeryville, Calif., which offers online users rebates of up to 20 percent off standard sales commissions. “We think it’s a great result for consumers.”