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As of last week, 491,450 people had submitted claims for a portion of the settlement in the Sitzer litigation, with six months left before a May 2025 deadline, according to a Wednesday filing by plaintiffs who asked a judge to grant final approval of the case that upended the real estate industry.
The National Association of Realtor, HomeServices of America and some of the biggest players in real estate have agreed to pay just under $700 million to settle the lawsuits that alleged an illegal conspiracy to inflate commissions. That amount is aside from over $300 million from other companies like RE/MAX, Keller Williams and Anywhere.
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The plaintiffs’ attorneys are set to collect a third of the NAR and HomeServices settlement amounts, or about $233 million plus $16.5 million in expenses. That leaves about $450 million for the class members.
If it was split evenly between all the class members who have filed a claim as of last week, that would leave about $913 per homeseller, a number that is likely to continue falling ahead of the May 9 deadline for homesellers in the class to file a claim.
“The Settlements provide significant financial recoveries to the Settlement Class in light of the strengths and weaknesses of the case and the risks and costs of continued litigation, including potential appeals, and taking into account the Settling Defendants’ financial resources,” the plaintiffs wrote in the filing.
“The Settlements also include meaningful changes to the Settling Defendants’ policies that are likely to benefit consumers for years to come through lower commissions,” they added.
If approved, the settlement amounts wouldn’t change and would be distributed to class members who filed claims regardless of how many opt-outs or claims were made.
The bulk of the settlement comes from settlements by the National Association of Realtors ($418 million) and HomeServices of America ($250 million), with other brokerage settlements totaling $30,587,754.
The case, which is separate from other so-called copycat lawsuits, is set to have a final hearing next week. A number of opponents to the proposed settlements have signaled they intend to attend the hearing to ask that the settlements not be approved.
A call to reject objections
The plaintiffs called on the judge to reject the objections made by opponents, including a law professor named Tanya Monestier, who wrote that the case risked being overturned on appeal due to a previous ruling by the judge.
Monestier said that Judge Stephen Bough’s order compelling objectors to appeal in person at the final hearing was “unconstitutional” and a “glaring appellate issue.”
In Wednesday’s filing by the plaintiffs, attorneys said Monestier’s objection relied “entirely on anecdote and conjecture.”
“Despite her voluminous criticisms, Prof. Monestier fails to offer any realistic and constructive alternative to the NAR Settlement practice changes that would create a better and more competitive marketplace,” the attorneys wrote.
“Instead, she advocates for returning to the “old” system — even though a jury deemed that system anticompetitive and found that the brokers enforcing and operating under it had overcharged consumers by more than a billion dollars in Missouri alone.”
They didn’t address Monestier’s claim that Bough’s order was unconstitutional.
They wrote that the NAR settlement dealt with a particular set of issues in the real estate industry and acknowledged that “it cannot and will not cure every ill in the entire real estate industry.”
They denied Monestier’s claim that the practice changes brought about by the settlement agreements had no enforcement mechanism. They said that there is evidence that commissions are already declining and that it would take time before the full impact of the changes would be felt.
“Professor Monestier’s objection is based on the unrealistic expectation that the full force of practice changes to an anticompetitive system that has been in place for many decades will be felt immediately,” the attorneys wrote.
They said other objectors either lacked standing, didn’t like the result of the case, or were attorneys who filed similar lawsuits after the Sitzer verdict.
Notifying the class
Final approval would end litigation with the National Association of Realtors, Realtor-owned multiple listing services and brokerages that transacted less than $2 billion in sales in 2022. Larger brokerages can use a pathway to negotiate their own settlements.
The plaintiffs’ attorneys wrote that 15 million postcards and 24 million emails were sent to members of the class, in addition to other digital campaigns. They wrote that between the notifications, campaigns and news articles written about the settlements, they reached 99 percent of class members.
So far, 39 class members opted out of the settlements, the plaintiffs’ attorney wrote. A handful of objections have been filed.
The plaintiffs wrote that “every significant Realtor MLS in the country — in total, 547 Realtor MLSs” had opted into the settlement, along with an additional 15 MLSs that aren’t owned by Realtor organizations.
