A lawsuit filed Oct. 21 in San Bernardino County, wherein REcore Solutions LLC—the vendor who provides licensing services for California Regional Multiple Listing Service (CRMLS) and other MLSs—claimed breach of contract relating to failed payment against Homes.com and its parent company CoStar Group, has been dismissed with prejudice, meaning CRMLS cannot file a new lawsuit on the same claim.
In an email to members obtained by RISMedia, CRMLS wrote:
CoStar Group and CRMLS are happy to announce that they have renewed their long-term agreement under which Homes.com will continue to receive CRMLS listings. An action filed Tuesday by REcore concerning such listings is being dismissed with prejudice. CoStar Group and CRMLS are delighted to continue their long-standing relationship with no interruption in the flow of CRMLS listings to Homes.com.
In an email to RISMedia, CRMLS confirmed that the companies had reached a “successful resolution.”
According to a release issued at the time of the lawsuit filing, REcore stated that Homes.com and CoStar signed a REcore license agreement, which became effective January 2024 and “included a fee structure requiring licensees who monetized the MLS data, rather than using it to obtain buyer and seller clients, to pay for those usage rights.” The agreement stated that Homes.com would pay approximately $2 per MLS listing record displayed on its portal, and according to the filing included a “capped Monetization Fee of $500,000 per year if the listings were used for commercial advertising purposes.”
REcore alleged that CoStar has failed to pay the full amount agreed to.
“After more than a year of REcore’s efforts to negotiate a resolution, the company was left with no choice but to protect MLS data and the listing brokers who supplied it by filing a lawsuit against Homes.com and CoStar,” the release stated.
Also named in the suit was Delaware-based corporation TEN-X, Inc., which is a licensed California real estate broker owned by CoStar. Despite being a licensed broker, which would preclude the firm from paying a licensing fee, REcore alleged in the filing that Ten-X “has not represented any buyer or seller in any real estate transaction utilizing the CRMLS database, and as a result Ten-X has not contributed in any way to the network effect for the benefit of CRMLS.”
This story will be updated with any new information.
