Two weeks ago, the National Association of Realtors said it would pay $418 million to settle a commission lawsuit. T3 Sixty said the rankings will be reinstated after the lawsuit is resolved.
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This week, prominent real estate advisory firm T3 Sixty announced it would not publish its prestigious Mega 1000 list, and the National Association of Realtors’ large commission lawsuit settlement continues to reverberate throughout the industry in unexpected ways.
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Jack Miller
The company announced the move in an email from President and CEO Jack Miller. “Due to current and pending litigation, and at the request of the numerous private brokerage firms involved in these lawsuits, T3 Sixty has decided not to publish the 2024 Mega 1000 rankings of the 1,000 largest brokerage firms in the United States,” Miller said in an email. . Miller added in a statement to Inman that the decision was made “in response to the agent’s request to be excluded from the rankings.”
“We decided to do this rather than publish an incomplete list because T3 Sixty has worked hard to include the most complete brokerage rankings since 2018,” Miller said in a statement.
Regarding the future of the Mega 1000, Miller told Inman, “We have every intention of releasing this industry intelligence once the current litigation issues are resolved.”
The company also said it would not publish a list of “the country’s largest real estate companies, franchise brands and franchisees.” The review appears to be a reference to the T3 Sixty Real Estate Yearbook.
T3 Sixty, on the other hand, is moving forward with a variety of other listings, such as those that rank multiple listing services and Realtor associations.
T3 Sixty’s decision to hold the Mega 1000 comes less than two weeks after NAR agreed to settle multiple commission lawsuits. The lawsuits – the most prominent of which went to trial in October – challenge the way agents are compensated and accuse NAR and major real estate companies of conspiring to drive up costs for consumers. At the end of the trial in October, a jury agreed with the home sellers’ plaintiffs that major industry players were involved in the conspiracy.
NAR’s settlement, which still requires court approval before it can be finalized, includes an agreement to pay $418 million and a commitment to make various policy and rule changes.
But the settlement also doesn’t cover lawsuits filed by homebuyers. While many large brokerages and franchisees, including Anywhere, Keller Williams and Compass, have reached settlements of their own, HomeServices of America and its subsidiaries are still fighting in a case called Moehrl, which is currently expected to A trial is scheduled for early next year.
All of which suggests commission litigation is likely to continue for the foreseeable future.
However, it’s worth noting that in this case, NAR’s settlement excluded more than 90 of the larger brokerage firms. Brokerages included in the settlement are brokerages with NAR members as principals and 2022 residential transaction volume of $2 billion or less, according to the T3 60 Real Estate Yearbook.
In the two weeks since NAR announced the settlement, the highly regarded yearbook has been widely used as a reference material to determine which companies will and will not be covered.
However, as of Thursday, the yearbook’s Page lists brokers Portions not covered by the settlement also appear to have been dismantled. Inman has asked T3 Sixty about the page and will update this story with any information the company provides.
Mega has been a widely respected and prestigious measure of success in the real estate industry for over 1,000 years. The rankings are based on brokerage firm sales data, and firms at the top of the list often share that fact prominently in their marketing materials.
While T3 Sixty plans to restore the ranking in the future, its disappearance this year highlights the unintended consequences that NAR’s settlement and various ongoing lawsuits continue to have on the industry as a whole.
Email Jim Dalrymple II
