In unsealed recent legal filing, Realogy states that NAR’s rule that requires agents listing properties for sale in Realtor-affiliated MLSs provide a compensation offer to agents who bring a buyer be “rescinded.” Realogy separately clarified its position that it wants offers of cooperative compensation to be optional rather than mandatory. Realogy, along with NAR, RE/MAX, Keller Williams Realty and HomeServices of America, are defendants in several large class-action antitrust lawsuits that center on the issue of sellers being required to pay buyers’ agent commissions under the current NAR policy. The U.S. Department of Justice is also investigating this policy. NAR has amended its rules to provide public transparency for buyer agent commissions, but Realogy, the nation’s largest real estate enterprise, now is publicly asking NAR to drop the requirement. This is significant, given Realogy’s industry scope and power, and while Realogy exec M. Ryan Gorman made clear in an op-ed that this stance does not mean the company doesn’t think buyers agents are valuable and Realogy believes in cooperative compensation, this could push the industry into a new way consumers pay for real estate agent services.

REX Real Estate, which provides a residential real estate marketplace outside of the MLS system, sued NAR and Zillow in March 2021, alleging that Zillow’s application of a NAR rule that prevents the commingling of MLS listings and non-MLS listings disproportionately impacts REX listings and thus is anticompetitive. A judge recently dismissed a request from NAR and Zillow to dismiss the case. This lawsuit marks another ongoing suit that could change the way MLSs operate, in this instance, how their participants display IDX listings on their websites.