NAR Settlement: Who Gets the Money and How Much?

If you sold a home during the class period, filed a claim by the May 9, 2025 deadline, and paid a buyer’s agent commission at closing, your NAR settlement payout will most likely fall between $13 and $50. The headline figure across all defendants tops $1.049 billion, but attorney fees, administrative costs, and division among potentially millions of claimants shrink the individual check dramatically.¹ The court granted final approval on November 27, 2024, but no money is moving yet. Appeals are pending, and there is no announced timeline for when payments will go out.²

Why the Check Is So Small

NAR agreed to pay $418 million. HomeServices of America agreed to another $250 million.³ Anywhere Real Estate, RE/MAX, Keller Williams, and a group of regional brokerages settled separately, bringing the combined total above $1.049 billion.¹

That money gets carved up before any of it reaches a seller. Courts in class actions of this size commonly approve plaintiffs’ attorney fees of up to a third of the total recovery, which on these numbers runs into the hundreds of millions. Administrative costs — the claims portal, mailed notices, staff processing every submission — come out of the fund as well. What remains is divided among every seller who filed a valid claim, and millions of home sales fell inside the covered period. Analysts who have looked at the claim numbers place individual payments in the $13 to $50 range. On a home where you paid, say, $15,000 to the buyer’s brokerage, the recovery is a small fraction of a percent. The court still has to approve the final distribution plan, and that approval cannot happen until the appeals are cleared.²

Who Is in the Class

The class covers anyone who sold a home listed on a covered MLS and paid a commission to the buyer’s agent during the eligible window. That window depends on which MLS carried the listing, because different regional databases were pulled into the litigation at different times.⁴

Heartland MLS, MARIS, Columbia Board of Realtors, and Southern Missouri Regional MLS: April 29, 2014 through August 17, 2024.
Bright MLS, Stellar MLS, Miami MLS, Northstar MLS, and about a dozen other named systems: March 6, 2015 through August 17, 2024.
MLS PIN (Massachusetts): December 17, 2016 through August 17, 2024.
Sales in Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Vermont, Wisconsin, or Wyoming not covered by one of the named MLSs above: October 31, 2017 through August 17, 2024.
Any other MLS in the United States: October 31, 2019 through August 17, 2024.

Sales through non-participating brokerages, and sales where no buyer-side commission was paid, are outside the class.⁴

If You Missed the Claim Deadline

The deadline for the NAR and HomeServices settlements was May 9, 2025. A later group of settlements involving smaller brokerages including William Raveis, Howard Hanna, EXIT Realty, and Windermere closed on December 30, 2025. Both are now past.⁵

The official settlement website still accepts late claims, but there is no guarantee one will be honored. To try, go to realestatecommissionlitigation.com and select “File a Claim,” or download a paper form and mail it to the settlement administrator.⁶ You will need your Closing Disclosure or HUD-1 Settlement Statement showing the exact commission paid to the buyer’s brokerage, along with the property address, closing date, and MLS name.⁷ If you no longer have those documents, the title company or settlement agent that handled your sale is usually the best source; brokerages retain files for a limited period that varies by state.

If you did nothing before the deadline and did not opt out, you get no payment. You also gave up the right to sue NAR or HomeServices separately over the same commission practices. The opt-out deadline was October 28, 2024, and that was the only route that preserved independent claims.²

When Payments Will Actually Arrive

Final approval came on November 27, 2024, after a hearing the day before.² Appeals were filed, and the settlements cannot become final or pay out until those are resolved. As of early 2026, no timeline has been announced.

Once the appeals close, payments will go out by check or electronic transfer to the address or account each claimant specified on the claim form. The official settlement website at realestatecommissionlitigation.com is where litigation status and expected payment dates will be posted.⁵

Taxes on Your Payment

Settlement payments from this litigation will likely be treated as taxable income. The IRS treats all income as taxable unless a specific code section excludes it, and the exclusion for physical injuries under IRC Section 104 does not apply. What controls is what the payment replaces, and here it is allegedly overpaid commissions, which is not an excluded category.⁸

For the 2026 tax year, the threshold for issuing a Form 1099-MISC is $2,000, up from the earlier $600 threshold. Payments in the estimated $13 to $50 range fall well below that, so most claimants will not get a 1099. That does not make the money tax-free. The IRS still considers it reportable regardless of whether a form arrives.⁹ The tax impact on a payment of this size is negligible, but the amount belongs on your return.

The Rule Changes That Matter More Than the Check

The structural changes that took effect in August 2024 affect anyone buying or selling a home now, and for most people they matter more than the payout ever will.

MLSs can no longer include offers of compensation to buyer’s agents in property listings. The commission field that once told any agent bringing a buyer what the seller would pay is gone, and MLSs are also barred from creating or supporting a workaround platform to carry those offers.¹⁰

Agents working with buyers now have to sign a written agreement before touring homes. It must state exactly how much the agent will be paid, cannot be open-ended, and must include a clear statement that broker fees are not set by law and are fully negotiable. An agent cannot receive compensation from any source that exceeds the amount in that written agreement.¹⁰

On the listing side, agents must disclose in writing any payments a seller will make to a buyer’s representative, including the amount or rate, and the seller must authorize those payments before they happen. Listing agreements and buyer agreements both have to carry conspicuous language stating commissions are fully negotiable.¹⁰

The practical effect: buyers now negotiate their agent’s fee directly instead of having it built quietly into the sale price. A seller can still offer to cover the buyer’s agent as a concession, but that conversation happens outside the MLS and with everyone seeing the numbers.

Watch for Scams

A billion-dollar headline draws scammers. The only legitimate website for this settlement is realestatecommissionlitigation.com, with claims filed through secure.realestatecommissionlitigation.com.⁵ No one connected to the settlement will ask for your Social Security number, bank login credentials, or a processing fee to release your payment. Calls, texts, or emails asking you to “verify” your claim by handing over sensitive information or paying a fee should be ignored. The settlement administrator communicates through the official website and through mail from the claims processing center.

1
Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro LLP. Real Estate Commissions Antitrust
2
Residential Real Estate Broker Commissions Antitrust Settlements. Home – National Association of Realtors
3
Residential Real Estate Broker Commissions Antitrust Settlements. HomeServices Long Form Notice
4
Residential Real Estate Broker Commissions Antitrust Settlements. NAR Long Form Notice
5
Residential Real Estate Broker Commissions Antitrust Settlements. Welcome Page
6
Residential Real Estate Broker Commissions Antitrust Settlements. Claim Form Landing
7
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. HUD-1 Settlement Statement
8
Internal Revenue Service. Tax Implications of Settlements and Judgments
9
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Publication 1099
10
National Association of Realtors. Summary of 2024 MLS Changes