file photo by Boyd Loving
the staff of the Ridgewood blog
Ridgewood NJ, on Tuesday, a federal jury in Missouri found the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and several major brokerage firms guilty of conspiring to artificially maintain high real estate agent commissions, leading to nearly $1.8 billion in damages. The lawsuit was brought by around 260,000 home sellers in Missouri, Kansas, and Illinois, who claimed that the NAR and prominent brokerages like Keller Williams, Anywhere, Re/Max, and HomeServices of America had conspired to inflate commissions paid to real estate agents, impacting the cost of home transactions for both sellers and buyers. The verdict holds the defendants responsible for the damages, which could be tripled to over $5.3 billion under U.S. antitrust law.
