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The National Association of Realtors’ big commission lawsuit settlement continued to reverberate through the industry in unexpected ways this week when prominent real estate consulting firm T3 Sixty announced it would not publish its prestigious Mega 1000 list.
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Jack Miller
The firm announced the move in an email from president and CEO Jack Miller. In the email, Miller said that “due to current and pending lawsuits, and at the request of numerous privately owned brokerage companies involved in those lawsuits, T3 Sixty has decided not to publish the 2024 ranking of the U.S.’s 1000 largest brokerages in the Mega 1000.” In a statement to Inman, Miller added that the decision was made “based on requests from brokers to be excluded from the rankings.”
“We decided to do this rather than publish an incomplete list, as T3 Sixty has strived to include the most complete list of brokerage rankings since 2018,” Miller said in the statement.
Regarding the future of the Mega 1000, Miller told Inman that “we have full intention to publish this industry intelligence once the current litigative matter is resolved.”
The company also said it would not publish its list of the “nation’s largest real estate enterprises, franchise brands and franchises.” The comment appears to reference the T3 Sixty Real Estate Almanac.
On the other hand, T3 Sixty is moving ahead with various other lists, such as those that rank multiple listing services and Realtor associations.
T3 Sixty’s decision to hold the Mega 1000 came just shy of two weeks after NAR agreed to settle multiple commission lawsuits. The suits — the most famous of which went to trial in October — challenged the way agents get paid, and accused NAR and major real estate companies of conspiring to keep consumer costs high. The October trial concluded with a jury agreeing with homeseller-plaintiffs that major industry players had engaged in a conspiracy.
NAR’s settlement — which still requires court approval before becoming final — includes an agreement to pay $418 million, as well as the promise to make various policy and rule changes.
But the settlement also doesn’t cover lawsuits filed by homebuyers. And while many large brokerages and franchisors such as Anywhere, Keller Williams and Compass have forged their own proposed settlements, HomeServices of America and its subsidiaries are still fighting in a case known as Moehrl, with a trial currently expected early next year.
All of which is to say that commission lawsuit litigation is likely to drag on for the foreseeable future.
Significantly in this context, however, NAR’s settlement excluded more than 90 larger brokerages. The brokerages that are included in the settlement are those with a NAR member as principal that had a residential transaction volume in 2022 of $2 billion or less, per the T3 Sixty Real Estate Almanac.
For the two weeks after NAR announced its settlement, the well-regarded Almanac has been widely used as a reference material to identify which companies would and would not be covered.
However, as of Thursday, the Almanac’s page listing brokerages that aren’t covered in the settlement also appeared to have been taken down. Inman has asked T3 Sixty about the page and will update this story with any information the company provides.
The Mega 1000 has for years been a widely respected and prestigious metric of success in the real estate industry. The ranking is based on brokerages’ sales numbers, and the firms that took top spots often prominently shared that fact in marketing materials.
While T3 Sixty plans to bring the ranking back in the future, its disappearance this year highlights the way NAR’s settlement and the various ongoing lawsuits are continuing to have unexpected consequences across the industry.
