commissions in the Rockaways

We do house sales and Queens (more Northern Queens) and our experience has been brokers don't cooperate nearly as much as Manhattan and a good portion of Brooklyn.

I'll second what 30 said. It's an antiquated system, they're stuck in the 80's. Unfortunately this way of doing business only benefits the listing agent.

Curious what is the price range of the listing? Why not do sale by Owner if the listing agents are not to your friend’s liking.

Owner does not currently live at the property so sale by owner will not be an option unfortunately

The Rockaways and much of Queens in general is covered by LIBOR / Long Island MLS ... so you'll need to do a flat fee MLS listing:

https://www.hauseit.com/queens-flat-fee-mls/

Otherwise, agree with the comments above, a lot of Queens agents are notorious for getting owners to sign 6% agreements (because they must co-broke), but once they have the listing they refuse to co-broke, thus scamming their sellers.

It's pretty sad, but it's a rather undeveloped area tbh ...

In practice, do these non-cooperating brokers simply refuse working with represented buyers, agree to work with them but paying $0 commission, or simply ignore them without even notifying the seller?

Typically simply ignore, without notifying the seller. It's really a bad outcome for the sellers. Because then basically the seller is getting the same exposure as if they had just sold FSBO, by themselves without a broker.

This article gives some good examples of what these no cobroke types will say:

https://www.hauseit.com/tips-for-selling-your-home-for-sale-by-owner-in-queens-nyc/

I've sold in Queens and as others have mentioned it's a bit of the wild west. Some brokers offer 50% co-broke, some offer nominal co-brokes (1%, .5%, etc), others won't co-broke at all, and buyer's brokers are expected to collect their own commission via a buyer's broker agreement with their buyer. You want a LIBOR member so your listing ends up on the MLSLI which is the main MLS for Queens. The LIBOR exclusive listing agreement actually has a space for the co-broke commission and also explains that offering less than 50% co-broke can make the listing less competitive and result in a lower sales price. It should be straight forward. The seller should get referrals for listing agents, meet with several, ask specifically about co-broking, then insist on a 50% split and have it appear in the agreement. It depends on the price point but I've found that listing agents that spend on marketing costs like photography, mailers, staging, etc might be more likely to offer a competitive co-broke, while it's those that have crummy cell phone photos, or no photos, that don't spend a dime on marketing, that are also the ones trying not to, or flat out refusing to co-broke.