A Kansas City, Mo., jury unanimously found Tuesday that the National Association of Realtors and other real estate organizations conspired to artificially inflate home sale commissions, in a case that could change how much home sellers pay real estate agents. The jurors on Tuesday awarded $1.8 billion in damages to about 500,000 Missouri home sellers. Since it is an antitrust case, the amount my be tripled.

The plaintiffs said a National Association of Realtor’s rule that required sellers to pay a 5% to 6% commission in order to list their homes on the National Association of Realtor’s database, the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, was anti-competitive. The database feeds widely used real estate sites including Zillow. If sellers do not agree to the commission terms, they go virtually unseen in the market.

Plaintiffs said the rule has stifled competition and has resulted in higher prices. They argued that if the rule were not in place, buyers would pay commissions to their own agents while buyers’ agents would have to compete by offering lower rates. The lawsuit pointed to countries whose total real estate commissions average 1 to 3 percent, such as the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium.

Analysts predicted in an October report that changes to the system could reduce the $100 billion consumers pay in commissions by 30 percent. “From a catalyst perspective, a court-ordered injunction could ‘unbundle’ commissions nationally by early 2024, eliminating the longstanding practice of listing agents and sellers setting and paying buyer agent commissions,” the report states.


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image of cardboard house with keys and a purchase documentMidwest home sellers may now be eligible to participate in a class action that was recently certified in a federal lawsuit in Kansas City. Originally filed in 2019, the lawsuit alleges that home sellers in Missouri who used the Multiple Listing Service system were unfairly required to pay commissions to brokers representing home buyers. Along with the National Association of Realtors (NAR), four broker franchisors, including Realogy Holdings Corp., HomeServices of America, Inc., RE/MAX Holdings, Inc., and Keller Williams Realty, Inc. are also named as defendants.

The allegations are that real estate brokerages and NAR conspired to force home sellers into paying broker fees with inflated amounts to those brokers representing home buyers. The suit alleges this is in violation of federal and Missouri antitrust laws as well as Missouri Merchandising Practices Act.


This blog is intended to provide information to the general public and to practitioners about developments that may impact Oregon class actions.

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A class-action lawsuit was filed last week by a Minnesota home seller that alleges that the big four multiple listing services have driven up costs to sellers and have stifled competition. The complaint claims that the multiple listing services conspired with the National Association of Realtors and required brokers to offer buyer broker compensation at inflated rates when listing a property on an MLS site.

“The conspiracy has saddled home sellers with a cost that would be borne by the buyer in a competitive market,” the complaint states. “Moreover, because most buyer brokers will not show homes to their clients where the seller is offering a lower buyer broker commission, or will show homes with higher commission offers first, sellers are incentivized when making the required blanket, non-negotiable offer to procure the buyer brokers’ cooperation by offering a high commission.”

The suit goes on to allege that the conspiracy has kept buyer brokers’ commissions in the 2.5-3% range despite their diminishing role in the transaction, as “a majority of homebuyers no longer locate prospective homes with the assistance of a broker, but rather independently through online services.”

The suit states that it will represent any sellers who paid a broker commission during the sale of their property in the last four years in areas covered by regional MLS sites, which includes sellers in Texas, Maryland, North Carolina, Ohio, Colorado, Michigan, Florida, Nevada, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Virginia, Utah and Washington, D.C.


This blog is intended to provide information to the general public and to practitioners about developments that may impact Oregon class actions.

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