NAR antitrust cases net sellers another $42M

Real estate brokerages will shell out another $42 million to home sellers and their attorneys to settle lingering antitrust litigation related to the massive National Association of Realtors case.

A federal judge last week granted final approval to settlements by eight brokerages, funds which could reach upwards of 2.6 million consumers, according to court filings. The agreements come in two cases known as Gibson and Keel, concurrent class action complaints to the Sitzer/Burnett commissions case, which netted consumers $418 million from the trade group.

The settlements will satisfy homeowners who over the past decade sold a home on a Multiple Listing Service and paid a commission to a real estate agent. The deals have already forced NAR and the real estate industry at large to change the way they do business, mainly in prohibiting offers of compensation to be made on MLSes. 

In OKing the settlements last week, U.S. District Judge Stephen Bough dismissed the claims with prejudice, meaning they cannot be refiled. Besides the NAR deal, other leading brokerages have also ended similar litigation in recent years for eight- and nine-figure sums, resulting in over $1 billion for aggrieved home sellers. 

A spokesperson for Windermere declined to comment Monday, while other representatives for the settling brokerages didn't respond to requests for comment. 

The numbers behind the settlements

The parent company of Howard Hanna Real Estate Services is paying the largest sum among the recent deals, at $32 million. The other companies include national brands and regional players. Those settlements are:

• William Raveis, for $4.1 million
• Exit Realty, for $1.5 million
• Windermere Real Estate and Lyon Real Estate, for $2.1 million
• Charles Rutenberg Realty in Long Island, for $750,000
• Tierra Antigua Realty in Arizona, for $400,000;
• West USA Realty in Arizona, for $950,000;
• My Home Group Real Estate in Arizona, for $987,500.
  

The latest batch of settlements totals $42,787,500. The deals cover different classes of home sellers, but will pay some consumers who paid commissions as early as 2017 in a dozen states, and others nationwide who paid commissions since 2019.
The exact payouts to individuals are yet to be determined. But case filings say 2,698,327 claims have been submitted. An alliance of attorneys who spent over 124,000 hours working the cases will get a third of the final payout, according to court records. They'll also be reimbursed for the $17.4 million of their own money they spent toward the combined litigation. 

Industry has paid over $1 billion to consumers

After NAR, Homeservices of America recorded the second-biggest settlement stemming from the antitrust litigation, agreeing in April 2024 to pay $250 million to resolve commissions claims. Other companies which settled ahead of the industry's defeat in the Sitzer/Burnett trial include Anywhere Real Estate ($83.5 million), Keller Williams ($70 million), Compass ($57.5 million), and Re/max ($55 million). 

Separately, Keller Williams last week also agreed to a $20 million settlement with home buyers in a separate lawsuit, in which plaintiffs accuse the brokerage, NAR, Anywhere and Re/max of conspiring to inflate home prices to offset commissions. The other companies in that complaint are still fighting the accusations. 

While the industry predicted shifts to both home buying behavior and industry employment because of the landmark NAR case, much of that change has yet to materialize. Commissions have hardly nudged in the past year-and-a-half, with a December Redfin report finding they've risen slightly since changes went into effect in August 2024.