The NAR lawsuit update for anyone buying or selling a home is this: a $1.78 billion antitrust verdict in October 2023 forced the National Association of Realtors into a $418 million nationwide settlement that, as of August 17, 2024, ended the practice of posting buyer-agent commission offers on the MLS and now requires buyers to sign a written agreement with their agent before touring a home. Appeals are still working through the Eighth Circuit, a separate Department of Justice investigation is still open, and settlement checks have not yet gone out to class members.1No citations were present in the research file.
Where the Case Stands Now
The trigger was the Sitzer/Burnett verdict on October 31, 2023. A federal jury in the Western District of Missouri found NAR, Keller Williams, and HomeServices of America liable for conspiring to inflate commissions and awarded $1,785,310,872 to a class of Missouri sellers. Under Section 15 of the antitrust laws, that number could be trebled to roughly $5.36 billion, and plaintiffs asked the court to do exactly that against HomeServices, which had not settled.
The trebling math is what drove everyone else to the table. Anywhere Real Estate (parent of Coldwell Banker and Century 21) paid $83.5 million. RE/MAX settled for $55 million in September 2023, before the trial even started. Keller Williams agreed to $70 million after the verdict. The court gave final approval to those three settlements on May 9, 2024.
NAR’s own nationwide settlement, valued at $418 million, received final approval on November 26, 2024. It resolves NAR’s liability in Sitzer/Burnett, in the parallel Moehrl case in the Northern District of Illinois, and in related suits. Total settlement value across NAR, HomeServices, and other defendants has passed $1 billion.
One important caveat: some class members objected to the settlements and appealed to the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals starting in May 2024. Until those appeals are resolved, settlement funds are frozen and no payments can be distributed. There is no set timeline.
What Changed on August 17, 2024
Two structural changes took effect that day, and they apply nationwide.
No More Commission Offers on the MLS
Every MLS listing used to include a field showing what the seller would pay a buyer’s agent. That field is gone. MLS platforms can no longer display, communicate, or convey any offer of compensation to buyer agents. The ban covers listing remarks, external document links, and other workarounds.
Sellers can still offer to pay a buyer’s agent, but that conversation has to happen off the MLS entirely: phone, email, text, or in person. Enforcement is not symbolic. A first violation triggers a warning, a second draws a $1,000 fine against the agent, and a third means a $1,000 fine to the broker plus a 60-day MLS suspension.
Written Buyer-Agent Agreements Before Any Tour
An agent working with a buyer must now have a signed representation agreement in place before showing a single home. The agreement has to spell out the agent’s compensation in a specific form: a flat fee, a percentage, an hourly rate, or zero. It cannot be left open-ended or defined as “whatever the seller offers.” It must also state clearly that broker fees are fully negotiable and not set by law.
If You’re Selling
You are no longer required to offer any commission to the buyer’s agent through the MLS. Funding the other side’s representation is now a negotiation point rather than an automatic cost of listing. In competitive markets, many sellers still choose to offer buyer-agent compensation through their listing agent, communicated outside the MLS, because it can widen the pool of interested buyers. In slower markets, you have more room to skip that offer or negotiate it down.
If You’re Buying
Expect a written agreement in front of you before you tour anything. Read it. The compensation figure you sign to is a ceiling on what your agent can collect on the deal, no matter what the seller separately offers. If the seller agrees to cover your agent’s fee, your agent still cannot take more than the amount in your agreement.
You can negotiate that number. You can shop agents who offer different fee structures. You can pay your agent yourself, ask the seller to pay through a concession, or split the cost. You can also proceed without an agent.
What Commissions Actually Look Like Now
Industry tracking in the months after the rules took effect showed buyer-agent commissions averaging roughly 2.4 to 2.6 percent and listing-agent commissions around 2.7 percent. That is down from the combined five to six percent that held for years, though some analysts observed commissions drifting back up toward pre-settlement levels within months.
Three payment patterns have emerged in practice. Sellers sometimes still offer to cover the buyer’s agent as a concession negotiated outside the MLS. Buyers sometimes pay their own agent directly, either out of pocket or by negotiating a lower purchase price to offset the fee. And in many deals the cost is split, with the seller covering part and the buyer funding the rest.
Mortgage Rules to Know
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have clarified that when a seller pays the buyer’s agent commission, that payment does not count against the caps on seller concessions for conventional loans.
For VA loans, veterans can now pay their own buyer-broker fee directly, but it must be paid in cash at closing and cannot be rolled into the loan. If the seller pays the buyer’s agent on a VA transaction, that payment does not count toward the four-percent VA seller concession cap.
Other Litigation Still Moving
The Moehrl case in the Northern District of Illinois covered sellers across twenty NAR-affiliated MLS systems. NAR’s nationwide settlement resolves NAR’s liability there, though claims against other defendants may continue.
The Gibson case, filed in the Western District of Missouri right after the Sitzer/Burnett verdict, swept in brokerages that were not defendants at trial. Nine of them settled, with final court approval on November 4, 2024. Compass paid $57.5 million, Redfin $9.25 million, Douglas Elliman at least $7.75 million with up to $10 million more contingent, and several others between $3.75 million and $9.25 million.
Copycat suits filed around the country prompted a motion in late December 2023 to consolidate them into a single multidistrict proceeding, MDL No. 3100. The Judicial Panel on Multidistrict Litigation denied consolidation, finding it unnecessary given the volume of settlements already in place, but left room to revisit the question later.
The DOJ Investigation
Separate from the private lawsuits, the Department of Justice has an open civil antitrust investigation into NAR that began in 2018. Subpoenas have targeted two rules: the Participation Rule (the mandatory compensation offer) and the Clear Cooperation Policy, which requires agents to submit listings to the MLS within one business day of public marketing. A court has confirmed that the DOJ retains the right to pursue the investigation. Any enforcement action it takes could add requirements on top of what the private settlements already impose.
The Bottom Line for 2026
The appeals pending at the Eighth Circuit could still disturb the settlement framework, but most of the industry expects the core changes to hold. The DOJ investigation and unresolved litigation keep the possibility of further rule changes on the table. What is settled is the practical reality on the ground: the fixed, invisible commission built into every home sale is gone, buyers see their agent’s fee in writing before they walk through a door, and both sides of a transaction have to actually negotiate what representation costs.