At Inman Connect Las Vegas, July 30-Aug. 1, 2024, the noise and misinformation will be banished, all your big questions will be answered, and new business opportunities will be revealed. Join us.
Several real estate brokerages remain in limbo a month after a June 18 deadline for firms seeking to opt into the National Association of Realtors’ $418 million commission settlement agreement, Inman has learned.
JohnHart Real Estate in California, ARC Realty in Alabama and Nebraska Realty all confirmed with Inman that they had been included in a court-approved list of brokerages with $2 billion or more in residential sales transaction volume in 2022 following their inclusion in the 2023 Real Estate Almanac, an annual report compiled by the firm T3 Sixty that tracks various real estate metrics.
In conversation with Inman, brokerage leaders described being trapped in a legal maze after it was ruled this year that sales figures published in the Almanac would be considered an “irrebuttable presumption” of the brokerages’ total transaction volume for 2022. The legal term describes a set of facts deemed in the eyes of the court to be true, even if contradictory evidence emerges later on.
“We weren’t even at the $2 billion” threshold, JohnHart Real Estate General Counsel Brittany Porter told Inman. Porter couldn’t explain the discrepancy with the data but said T3 Sixty told her Wednesday it would issue a correction.
The fallout stems from a decision in March made shortly after NAR came to a settlement agreement with homesellers in which all parties agreed to the $2 billion threshold in an effort to determine which brokerages would be covered by the settlement and which would have to mediate on their own.
According to the agreement, brokerages that transacted less than $2 billion in residential sales volume in 2022 would be covered legally. The more than 90 firms that closed in excess of $2 billion would need to opt into the settlement, opening themselves…