NAR, brokerages dismissed from Homie commission lawsuit

The suit initially named Utah-based Wasatch Front Regional MLS (WFRMLS) and Keller Williams as defendants, but both were previously voluntarily dismissed from the suit with prejudice by Homie.

The defendants filed their motions to dismiss the suit back in October 2024 and oral arguments for these motions were held in mid-February 2025.

Originally filed in mid-August 2024, the lawsuit alleges that Homie was harmed by the anticompetitive practices of NAR and the brokerage defendants. In the complaint, Homie claimed it filed the suit to “recover the damages … suffered as an excluded competitor foreclosed by the Defendants’ conduct from effective competition in the relevant market.”

Homie charged sellers a flat fee to list their property on the MLS. While Homie sellers typically offered buyer agent compensation, the firm said these amounts were usually lower compared to offers by sellers working with traditional brokers. Due to this, Homie alleges that local brokers and agents boycotted Homie and its listings, contributing to some of its financial distress.

Through its lawsuit, Homie challenged five rules including NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy (CCP) and now defunct Participation Rule.

According to the ruling, the court found Homie’s claims to be time-barred, as the statute of limitations on each of the claims is four years and the causes of action arose more than four years prior to the complaint being filed. 

“Homie alleges that the Challenged NAR Rules were adopted as early as 1996, and the most recent Rule—the Clear Cooperation Policy—was adopted in 2019. Thus, the Complaint acknowledges that all the Challenged NAR Rules were adopted more than four years prior to this lawsuit,” the ruling states. “Here, Homie alleges to have entered the market in 2015. All but one of the Challenged NAR Rules were already in place as of that time, and thus, to the extent those rules acted to exclude Homie from the market, their impact would have been felt immediately. And the last allegedly anticompetitive rule at issue was adopted in 2019, also more than four years before the filing of this action.”

However, even if the claims were not time-barred, the suit would still face dismissal as judge found that “Homie has failed to state a federal or state antitrust claim because it has not plausibly alleged an antitrust injury, and Homie has failed to state a claim for tortious interference with economic relations.” 

The judge argues that Homie has not “plausibly pleaded an antitrust injury based on some sort of market foreclosure, exclusion, or barriers to entry; and it fails to allege specific facts that establish that it sustained an antitrust injury from the alleged boycotts because it fails to allege that Defendants participated in these boycotts in any way.”

According to the ruling, Homie allegedly decided to enter the market due to the elevated commission rates it says were caused by the alleged conspiracy.

“Once Homie launched its business, it intentionally charged commissions slightly below the levels it now claims to have been imposed as a result of NAR’s policies. According to Homie, its clients would ‘commonly make an offer of compensation to buyer-brokers that was somewhat below the [commission] offered by sellers represented by traditional brokers.’ Thus, Homie intentionally set its prices just below the allegedly inflated commission rates caused by NAR’s policies to attract more business,” the ruling states. “By its own account, this strategy succeeded. Homie, as a competitor to the members of the alleged conspiracy, took advantage of the elevated prices it attributes to the conspiracy and experienced durable commercial success for several years. That means Homie has not suffered an antitrust injury flowing from the NAR policies that allegedly inflated brokerage commissions”

The ruling also addresses the alleged boycott of Homie. The evidence of this boycott presented in the complaint included text messages and Facebook groups where buyer’s agents told Homie agents that they would not show their listings due to the low commission rate being offered. Despite these messages, the court argues that Homie does not allege that the defendants named in the suit participated in any boycott. 

“Homie’s alleged boycotting harms flowed from the independent actions of local real estate agents — not Defendants,” the ruling states. “None of these actions is alleged to have been committed by Defendants. Homie does not allege that any Defendant directly commented on Homie or otherwise boycotted Homie. Nor has Homie alleged that the actions of any local real estate agent in Utah that purportedly boycotted Homie was controlled by any Defendant.”

In an emailed statement a spokesperson for NAR said the trade group was pleased with the ruling.

“NAR will continue to facilitate local real estate marketplaces that provide fair and equal access to property information, foster competition, and empower NAR members to serve clients on their homebuying and selling journeys,” the spokesperson added.

Chris Kelly, the CEO of HomeServices shared a similar sentiment via email writing, that he and his firm believe the court reached the correct decision.

“We don’t believe the facts and underlying circumstances ever supported the claims asserted by the plaintiff,” Kelly wrote. “We will continue to defend against claims that misrepresent how we and our agents serve our consumers and operate within the real estate industry.”

Spokesperson at both Anywhere and RE/MAX also expressed their firm’s pleasure at the dismissal of the suit, stating that they felt that the suit lacked merit.

Homie did not return a request for comment.