With the addition of a $418 million payment by the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) agreed to last week, the industry has now agreed to pay out a total of $626 million to settle commission lawsuits filed by recent homesellers, who successfully argued to a jury in October that commissions were illegally fixed by real estate power players.
Plaintiffs in that case, however, are looking for more. In a filing yesterday, attorneys who represented the Burnett plaintiffs are asking a judge to confirm the final award in that case as well as triple the damages—which, after subtracting the settlement total, comes to $4.73 billion.
On top of that, the plaintiffs are also asking for 5.4% interest from the date of the verdict until the final settlement.
“The Settlements with Keller Williams, Anywhere and RE/MAX will not be finalized for at least two months, and the Settlement with NAR will take several more months. But there is no just reason to delay final judgment as to the HomeServices Defendants while the settlement process moves forward,” they wrote.
Chris Kelly, executive vice president of HomeServices, tells RISMedia via email the filing was “anticipated and aligns with the post-trial motion schedule that was mutually agreed upon with the Court.”
“We look forward to presenting our reply briefs later in April,” he says.
In their arguments, the plaintiffs note that HomeServices has already disputed that it would be appropriate to award interest in this scenario.
These endgame moves for Burnett come as the industry at large is still deep in the uncertainty of legal challenges. Despite the NAR settlement, buyer lawsuits and a Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation are far from any conclusion. Every settlement agreed to so far must also be approved by a judge, and the DOJ has already demonstrated that it is willing to intervene in these settlements.
Monetary judgments and settlement amounts have also sparked controversy. Although a nationwide class of sellers has not been certified, NAR and the companies that have settled so far say they believe their agreements will apply to any such class.
Even if the full judgment is eventually rendered and paid, after attorney’s fees are deducted, a member of that nationwide class of homesellers (anyone who sold a home in the United States over a four year period) would receive a check for only a couple hundred dollars—about $150 on the low end—based on Federal Reserve and NAR data on home sales and MLS usage.
Attorneys who represented plaintiffs in the Burnett and Moehrl cases—132 lawyers and paralegals across nine firms—have already requested one-third of the settlement funds for their own fees, though the judge is deferring any consideration of fees until the rest of the post-trial process plays out.
At the Burnett trial, damages were calculated as approximately $7,000 paid per seller in overinflated commissions.
