A sweeping antitrust settlement involving the National Association of Realtors (“NAR”) is having real-world effects on the residential real estate market. NAR is the nation’s largest real estate trade organization, with over 1.5 million individual members, and only official NAR members can refer to themselves as Realtors. NAR functions as both a professional organization and a powerful industry lobbying group whose rules have long shaped how residential real estate transactions are conducted across the country.
In 2023 and 2024, a series of antitrust class action lawsuits targeted NAR and real estate brokerages and brought NAR’s rules and practices under scrutiny. These lawsuits alleged that NAR’s industry practices and rules unlawfully restrained competition and inflated costs for home sellers. In a federal case in Missouri, Burnett v. NAR, a jury held unanimously that NAR and the defendant brokerages “knowingly and voluntarily” engaged in a conspiracy with the goal of “raising, inflating, or stabilizing broker commission rates paid by home sellers” by following and enforcing NAR’s “Cooperative Compensation Rule.”
