The National Association of Realtors, which came to a landmark $418 million settlement last year over claims of a conspiracy to fix commissions, is facing another antitrust lawsuit — this time over who can control access to real estate listings.
Mauricio Umansky, a reality television star and a co-founder of the global brokerage The Agency, sued the trade organization in federal court on Tuesday morning. Recognizable to fans of “Buying Beverly Hills,” “Dancing With the Stars” and “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills,” Mr. Umansky has been at loggerheads with N.A.R. since 2020, when he first went to court, claiming that its policies for real estate listings were anti-competitive and had damaged a private database of off-market listings that he had created in Los Angeles. The named plaintiff in the lawsuit is Pocket Listing Service, the company that Mr. Umansky founded.
The suit was paused last year, when N.A.R. was dealing with its commission settlement. That pause on litigation expired at 12 a.m. Tuesday morning; Mr. Umansky had refiled his suit by 12:30 a.m.
The revival of Mr. Umansky’s claim is the latest in a flurry of litigation in the real estate industry, as agents and brokerages tussle over how and where homes for sale can be listed in the digital marketplace. Last week, Compass, which sells more homes than any of its competitors in the United States, sued Zillow, the country’s largest real estate site, which blocks any home that is not listed on its site within 24 hours from appearing there forever. Compass claims the “Zillow ban” breaks antitrust laws. Zillow’s policy echoes a long-held practice at N.A.R. that was recently relaxed.
N.A.R. has guided real estate rules in the United States for over a century, and in 2018, the Justice Department opened an investigation into its policies, including those involving listings. The federal inquiry signaled that N.A.R.’s so-called “clear cooperation” — which requires agents to enter any new home for sale into a public listing database within 24 hours of advertising it — could be considered anticompetitive.
“The Clear Cooperation Policy promotes transparency and competition in the real estate marketplace while still providing home sellers and their agents the option to list their property as an office exclusive,” an N.A.R. spokesperson said in a statement. “NAR will respond directly to the plaintiff’s claims in court.”
Agents rely on these public listing databases, called multiple listing services, or M.L.S. feeds, to see which homes are available for their clients. When a home is put on the market, an agent enters the information into the local M.L.S. feed, creating the digital equivalent of a “For Sale” sign in a front yard. Homes listed on the M.L.S. can be seen by nearly any Realtor.
In 2017, Mr. Umansky created an alternative to the M.L.S., designed for home sellers who wished to keep their listings more hush-hush. Such sales, called “pocket listings,” “whisper listings” or “private listings,” are popular among celebrity clients and high-income sellers because of the privacy they offer, but they have long been a source of contention among brokerages, because real estate listings are precious currency.
N.A.R. controls access to most M.L.S. feeds, which generally are run by local affiliates of N.A.R. and restricted for use by dues-paying Realtors.
In March, N.A.R. softened its policy slightly, declaring that each of the hundreds of M.L.S. databases around the country could set the length of time during which a home could be marketed privately. But listings must still be entered into the databases, or agents can face fines and disciplinary action. According to the complaint, N.A.R.’s policy “cements its ability to control competition in the market for residential real estate brokerage services.”
In his lawsuit, Mr. Umansky claims that N.A.R. considered his site, called the Pocket Listing Service, a formidable threat and created its clear cooperation policy to quash it.
The M.L.S. feeds “are the longest-standing monopoly in America,” Mr. Umansky said in an interview. “N.A.R. is operated and controlled by competing real estate agents who together through the M.L.S. can pass rules that govern the way in which real estate agents can compete with one another. And that’s the quintessential definition of a conspiracy under antitrust laws.”
Debra Kamin reports on real estate, covering what it means to buy, sell and own a home in America today.
The post Celebrity Agent Sues National Association of Realtors Over House Listings appeared first on New York Times.
