Editor’s note: The COURT REPORT is RISMedia’s weekly look at current and upcoming lawsuits, investigations and other legal developments around real estate.
Zillow sues Compass, MRED; Claims Compass engaging in “illegal conspiracy”
On May 12, Zillow filed a federal lawsuit, claiming that, early this month, Chicago-based MLS MRED “demanded that Zillow reinstate Compass private listings in states hundreds of miles outside MRED’s territory.” This came only shortly after Compass launched a partnership with MRED to take its platform—and private listing network—nationwide.
“The message to Zillow was clear: display Compass private listings everywhere in the United States, or MRED will withhold all Chicagoland listings from consumers on Zillow,” Zillow wrote in a blog post.
Zillow is also asking the court to block MRED from cutting off its listing feed, claiming that Compass is engaging in an “illegal conspiracy” to promote its private listing and undermine Zillow.
According to the lawsuit, on May 8, Compass “terminated—on behalf of itself and ‘every’ Compass ‘brokerage entity or subsidiary’—all direct listing feeds with Zillow nationwide,” the lawsuit says.
“MRED and Compass are colluding to hide home listings from buyers—and conspired to punish Zillow for not going along with it,” the company said.
Court filing reveals buyer settlement amounts ahead of hearing
As buyer commission lawsuits—which make broadly the same allegations as Burnett and the seller suits—appear to be resolving, a filing in the Tuccori copycat case revealed a somewhat comprehensive list of how much companies paid to resolve these secondary claims, as plaintiffs will seek final court approval in the coming months.
In the filing on May 18, plaintiffs said that the total amount paid by brokerages and NAR in their case stands at $120.3 million.
Combined with a $20 million agreement Keller Williams struck in the related Batton case and the $8.5 million REMAX agreed to, the total settlement amount stands at $148.8 million—far less than the approximately $1.1 billion paid out in the seller cases.
“Adverse conditions in the real estate industry—coupled with the significant payments already committed to the (seller) settlements—have put a strain on virtually all real estate brokerages, introducing significant ability-to-pay issues that limited the resources available to fund a settlement like the one here,” the Tuccori plaintiffs wrote.
Plaintiffs in the Batton case are expected to object to these settlements, based on what they have described as an “end-run” by NAR and brokerages who settled in Tuccori, allegedly to get better deals.
Here is the list of companies that settled in Tuccori:
HomeSmart International, LLC — $600,000
Fathom Realty, LLC — $250,000
Realty ONE Group Inc. and Kempa and Associates LLC — $500,000
Umro Realty Corp — $300,000
Douglas Elliman Inc. — $2 million
Hanna Holdings, Inc. — $8.25 million
HomeServices of America, Inc., BHH Affiliates, LLC, and HSF Affiliates LLC — $30 million
National Association of REALTORS® — $52.25 million
eXp World Holdings, Inc. — $4.3 million
Compass, Inc. — $7.3 million
United Real Estate Holdings, LLC — $487,500
Anywhere — $10.78 million
Others (including @properties) — $3.2 million
Rocket sues UWM in $100M suit over alleged breach of contract
On May 14, Rocket Mortgage filed a lawsuit against United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) for allegedly breaching a non-solicitation agreement tied to mortgage servicing rights purchases.
The lawsuit centers on three bundles of mortgage servicing rights that Mr. Cooper Group—which Rocket acquired in October 2025—purchased from UWM for $773 million between January and June 2024. The deals involved approximately 182,000 mortgages with an unpaid principal balance of roughly $65 billion.
As part of the purchase agreements, UWM contractually agreed to refrain from soliciting borrowers to refinance the acquired loans during their lifetime. Rocket claims UWM systematically violated the agreement through a coordinated campaign involving three separate programs.
The most aggressive initiative came in March 2025, after Rocket announced its acquisition of Mr. Cooper. UWM Chairman and CEO Mat Ishbia introduced “Refi Shield 100,” offering brokers a 100-basis-point interest rate reduction specifically for loans sold to Mr. Cooper. In a weekly video to brokers, Ishbia stated he would “lose money just for fun” to prevent the loans from going to Rocket and explicitly told brokers to target Mr. Cooper’s servicing portfolio.
NWMLS accuses Compass of refusing to produce documents
In a court filing in federal court in Washington on Sunday, May 17, Northwest MLS (NWMLS) is accusing mega-brokerage Compass of promising, then failing to produce documents, datasets and communications in a lawsuit over private listing rules, as both parties have accused each other of anti-competitive practices.
In the latest filing, NWMLS is asking a judge to force Compass to produce documents—everything from communications regarding its marketing strategies to datasets used to study the efficacy of pre-marketing—that it claims the brokerage promised to provide more than two weeks ago.
“In what appears to be an attempt to prejudice NWMLS by withholding outstanding material until the eve of the current discovery cutoff, Compass engages in bad faith litigation tactics. Such conduct is inexcusable,” NWMLS’s lawyers wrote.
NWMLS is also asking Judge Jamal Whitehead, who is overseeing the case, to force Compass to pay its legal costs related to the delay—adding to what has been a bitter dispute amid industry-wide conflict over pre-marketing practices.
Lawyers sue competing class counsel over settlement fairness in buyer commission case
Ryan Eisner—a named plaintiff in the Batton antitrust case against real estate brokers—has sued the lawyers representing the settlement class in the parallel Tuccori case.
Eisner alleges these class counsel breached their fiduciary duties by negotiating what he characterizes as an inadequate settlement that undervalues claims against two brokerages, describing it as a “reverse auction” designed to secure attorneys’ fees with minimal work.
Back in March, on consecutive days in court, Judge Lindsay C. Jenkins and Judge LaShonda Hunt denied the Batton plaintiffs’ motions to intervene in Tuccori, reassign the cases and obtain a preliminary injunction, with both judges indicating the plaintiffs had an adequate remedy through objections at the hearing.
