Join industry visionaries Pete Flint, Spencer Rascoff, Ryan Serhant and more at Inman Connect New York, Jan. 24-26. Punch your ticket to the future by joining the smartest people in real estate at this must-attend event. Register here.
The Council of Multiple Listing Services offered its usual, highly-anticipated legal update at its annual conference Friday, and this one was a doozy.
Things are not looking good for the real estate industry in multiple, class-action antitrust cases currently pending in federal courts, according to panelist Chris Osborn, partner at Seattle-based law firm Stoel Rives and counsel for Northwest MLS.
Chris Osborn
“If you’re keeping score, what you will find at the end of this, is it’s zero for the good guys,” Osborn told the event’s 1,000 or so attendees.
“None of these cases — not one — has gone our way. Not one. To the contrary, things are moving forward pretty quickly, with pretty significant consequences.”
“It is going to be a wild ride,” he added.
The lawsuits are related to controversial National Association of Realtors’ rules including one that requires listing brokers to offer buyer brokers a commission to submit a listing to a Realtor-affiliated MLS. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is also currently investigating the rule and the Consumer Federation of America has published numerous studies condemning the rule.
The largest of the suits are Moehrl and Burnett (formerly Sitzer), called after their lead homeseller plaintiffs, whose defendants are NAR and real estate franchisors Realogy, Keller Williams, RE/MAX and HomeServices of America. Sitzer/Burnett recently won class-action status and Moehrl is currently seeking class certification.
Another suit, Nosalek (formerly Bauman), is also challenging the rule but has sued a broker-owned MLS, MLS PIN, rather than NAR, as well as the franchisors. Yet another suit Batton (formerly Leeder), is challenging the rule on behalf of homebuyers rather…