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Keller Williams agrees to pay $70 million to settle real estate agent commission lawsuits nationwide

LOS ANGELES (AP) — One of the nation’s largest real estate brokerages has agreed to pay $70 million as part of a proposed settlement to resolve more than a dozen lawsuits across the country over agent commissions.

The agreement, filed Thursday with federal courts overseeing lawsuits in Illinois and Missouri, also calls on Keller Williams Realty Inc. to take several steps aimed at providing homebuyers and sellers with more transparency over the commissions paid to real estate agents.

“We think it’s a tremendous victory for homeowners and homebuyers across the country,” said Michael Ketchmark, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs in the lawsuits.

The central claim put forth in the lawsuits is that the country’s biggest real estate brokerages engage in practices that unfairly force homeowners to pay artificially inflated agent commissions when they sell their homes.

In October, a federal jury in Missouri found that the National Association of Realtors and several large real estate brokerages, including Keller Williams, conspired to require that home sellers pay homebuyers’ agent commission in violation of federal antitrust law.

The jury ordered the defendants to pay almost $1.8 billion in damages. If treble damages — which allows plaintiffs to potentially receive up

National Association of Realtors Settlement Will Reverberate Throughout the Real Estate Industry

New rules — and a monster settlement — could start saving homebuyers and sellers thousands of dollars in lower commissions while increasing competition among brokers as soon as this summer.

While the changes work their way across the industry, the National Association of Realtors, the country’s largest trade group, has agreed to a $1.8 billion fine over four years to settle charges that the industry conspired to keep agent commissions among the world’s highest by requiring sellers to pay the selling and purchasing agent commissions, which nationally often was 5 to 6 percent. Some estimates call for an annual consumer savings of $20 billion to $50 billion due to the upcoming changes as the anti-trust case has the potential to change the way homes have been sold for generations. The early forecast is that these adjustments will provide significant changes in how real estate brokers are compensated, especially with lower commissions.

In October, a federal jury ruled that NAR had conspired to artificially inflate commissions. The ruling originated with a 2019 anti-trust suit brought by a group of Missouri homesellers arguing the industrywide practice violated anti-trust laws. As a result, buyer brokers will no longer be able to select the