In its lawsuit, filed in August, Zea alleges that the defendants engaged in a “concerted scheme” to limit consumer choice and maintain high prices, which damaged its brokerage model. According to Zea, buyer agents associated with the defendants are diverting clients from properties that offer lower or non-existent buyer agent commissions. In his complaint, he states that this direction is the result of the fact that NAR and the other defendants do not enforce their own rules.
The rules at issue involve the mandatory display of a listing broker’s contact information on the listing page in an IDX display, the mandate for commission lawsuits for buyer agency agreements, and the prohibition on MLS platforms from allowing users to search or filter search results by the name of the listing broker or agent, or by the amount of compensation offered. By allegedly refusing to enforce these rules, Zea claims that the defendants have competitively disadvantaged its discount brokerage. Therefore, he asks the court to force the defendants to enforce their own rules.
In his reportfiled earlier this month, Magistrate Judge William Matthewman wrote that the motion “should be denied first on the grounds that Plaintiff waited nearly a year to file it after he began communicating with Defendants about their alleged rule violations.”
Judge William Dimitrouleas, who is overseeing the trial, wrote in his ruling Thursday that he agreed with the magistrate judge’s analysis and conclusions.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for NAR wrote that the trade group “promotes a fair, transparent and competitive real estate market.”
“Steering is a prohibited practice under NAR policies and the Code of Ethics for Realtors. The Code of Ethics is enforced by state and local real estate agent associations, and enforcement of the MLS rules is handled by each MLS. NAR has filed a motion to dismiss this case and agrees with the court’s decision to deny plaintiff’s request for a preliminary injunction,” the spokesperson added.
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