A Kansas City jury has found the National Association of Realtors, HomeServices of America and Keller Williams guilty of colluding to inflate or maintain high commission rates through NAR’s Clear Cooperation Rule, in the Sitzer/Burnett buyer broker commission lawsuit.
The defendants have been ordered to pay damages of $1.78 billion.
The jury reached its verdict after a little over two weeks of testimony from the plaintiffs and defendants. During their testimony, the home seller plaintiffs and their lead attorney Michael Ketchmark argued that despite the defendants having antitrust rules and regulations in place, the trade group and corporate brokerages knowingly violated their own rules in order to maintain high commission rates.
Judge Stephen Bough, who is overseeing the suit, still needs to issue his final judgement on the case, before the verdict is final.
The class action antitrust lawsuit, which was originally filed in 2019, also included RE/MAX and Anywhere as defendants, however the two reached settlements in this suit as well as the two other commission lawsuits, Moehrl and Nosalek, in September.
