William Raveis Real Estate, one of the last large independent brokerages to continue the fight against commission class-action lawsuits, struck a settlement deal yesterday, weeks after a judge denied the company’s request to enforce listing arbitration clauses.
Details of the agreement were not immediately available. The deal is still subject to court approval.
Connecticut-based William Raveis, which boasted over $15 billion in sales volume in 2023, was one of about 100 big brokerages that were not included in the settlement agreement that the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) negotiated with plaintiffs almost exactly a year ago. The vast majority of those companies either paid additional fees to “opt-in” to the NAR deal, or struck their own separate agreements over the past year.
Representatives from Raveis could not immediately be reached for comment.
The deal was negotiated in the Gibson case, the largest Burnett copycat filed by the same attorneys. Only two other brokerages are still fighting the case: Howard Hanna, which recently demanded the judge overseeing the case recuse himself based on alleged conflicts of interest, and Crye-Leike, which has argued it was improperly excluded from the NAR deal (the judge recently shot down this argument as well).
Additionally, two other companies (Weichert and eXp) that are defendants in Gibson struck settlement deals in a smaller commission case, and are currently embroiled in a controversy over whether the negotiation process was properly carried out, throwing those deals into doubt.
This is a developing story. Stay turned to RISMedia for updates.
