Seeking a trial by jury, PLS.com has refiled its antitrust lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors® (NAR). According to the filing, the suit was paused early last year while NAR was in the midst of resolving the commission lawsuits. The lawsuit was refiled at 12:30 a.m. Tuesday morning and seeks treble compensatory damages.
An agreement to keep the lawsuit paused was in the process of being extended, but that changed last night, according to an NAR spokesperson.
“NAR and PLS were in discussions to extend this agreement until PLS ceased to engage. Last night, PLS refiled its suit,” they said. “NAR will respond directly to the plaintiff’s claims in court. The Clear Cooperation Policy promotes transparency and competition in the real estate marketplace while still providing home sellers and their agents the option to list their property as an office exclusive.”
The original lawsuit by PLS was filed in 2020, shortly after the adoption of Clear Cooperation, and claimed that NAR was using the rule to suppress competition from other listing services.
After a long court battle, in early 2024, PLS settled with several large MLSs (who are named as co-conspirators, but not defendants in the lawsuits). No policy changes were enacted as part of the agreement, according to CRMLS, one of the parties who settled, but other details of those deals have not been publicly revealed.
NAR, on the other hand, was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the PLS could theoretically refile the lawsuit. It was later revealed that NAR had struck a “tolling agreement” with the PLS, agreeing to extend the statute of limitations on the alleged illegal conduct.
According to a separate filing in the new lawsuit, the tolling agreement was designed to last from May 28, 2020 until the parties struck a settlement, a new lawsuit was filed or until June 30—yesterday.
PLS was an actual or potential competitor to every single NAR-affiliated MLS, and each MLS Conspirator named in the suit: California Regional Multiple Listing Service, Inc. (CRMLS), Bright MLS and Midwest Real Estate Data, LLC (MRED).
A Bright MLS spokesperson told RISMedia today, “Bright was previously dismissed with prejudice and has no further comment.”
“NAR and the MLS Conspirators are engaged in, and their activities substantially affect, interstate trade and commerce,” read today’s filing. “Billions of dollars flow across state lines in the mortgage market to finance the sales of residential real estate facilitated by NAR and the MLS Conspirators.”
Referring to NAR-affiliated MLSs, the filing states that, for decades, they have often been regarded as a “permanent, unavoidable and inevitable feature of the real estate brokerage industry.”
The PLS.com v. National Association of REALTORS®, first filed back in 2020, accuses NAR and big MLSs of conspiring on rules that hindered competition. Given the rise of pocket listings that PLS helped fuel, NAR and affiliated MLSs were allegedly threatened, according to the court filing.
“NAR-affiliated MLSs were aware of this competitive threat,” read the filing. “Competing MLS systems met together privately and through NAR to discuss this threat and formulated a common plan to eliminate that competitive threat.”
According to the court document, PLS operated the largest pocket listing network when NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy was adopted.
PLS: Before and after NAR’s CCP
According to the filing, PLS was formed to meet growing consumer demand for a pocket listing service. “By joining PLS, licensed real estate professionals could privately share pocket listings with other licensed real estate professionals while avoiding the exposure of those listings through the NAR-affiliated MLSs,” the filing reads. “NAR has frequently used its control over MLSs to exclude new and disruptive market entrants to the benefit of NAR members, and (to) the detriment of consumers.”
Formed in 2017 by celebrity real estate broker Mauricio Umansky, PLS was meant to be an alternative to the NAR-affiliated MLS system. It was designed and marketed as a national platform, and its fees were lower than NAR-affiliated MLSs.
Unlike the NAR-affiliated MLSs, with PLS, listings could include as much or as little information as a client desired, adding privacy and discretion.
Before PLS was launched, according to the court document, there was no place for licensed real estate professionals operating in separate brokerage firms to privately list, search, organize and share information about pocket listings.
Because of this, PLS was an actual or potential competitor to every single NAR-affiliated MLS and each MLS conspirator, the filing alleges. At the time CCP was adopted, nearly 20,000 licensed real estate professionals were using the platform.
After the CCP was adopted, PLS claims to have suffered injury and damages as a result of NAR and its conspirators, according to the filing.
“Adoption and implementation of the (CCP) had the natural and intended effect on PLS’s business operations,” read the court document. “Listings were removed from PLS and submitted instead to NAR-affiliated MLSs. Agent participation in PLS declined. PLS’s access to capital was constrained. PLS was foreclosed from the commercial opportunities necessary to innovate and grow.”
