Copycat commission lawsuits continue as Illinois homebuyers take action

Homebuyers in Illinois have filed yet another commission lawsuit. The newest suit was filed Sept. 26 in U.S. District Court in Chicago by plaintiffs Dawid Zawislak and Michael D’Acquisto against Equity Realtors, HomeSmart International and Fathom Realty.

While the National Association of Realtors (NAR) was not named as a defendant in the suit, it was listed as a co-conspirator along with several Realtor-owned MLSs.

Zawislak purchased a home in Chicago in 2021 and D’Acquisto bought a home in Bartlett, Illinois, in 2022. Like the other commission lawsuits filed by both buyers and sellers, this suit accuses real estate industry players of taking part in “anticompetitive practices that harmed consumers and homebuyers by, among other things, increasing and artificially sustaining the commissions paid to real estate brokers as part of residential real estate transactions.”

Central to the suit is NAR’s Participation Rule, which required listing agents to make a blanket offer of compensation to buyer’s agents in order to list a property on a Realtor-affiliated MLS.

This rule is no longer in place due to the terms of NAR’s home seller commission lawsuit settlement, which went into effect in August.

In addition to the claims about artificially inflated agent commissions, the suit also alleges that NAR and its affiliated MLSs allowed agents to filter properties by commission amount, and that “NAR ethics rules allowed buyer-agents to show these filtered properties with higher commissions to buyers.”

The plaintiffs also claim that NAR’s policies limit “the ability of sellers and seller-brokers to change the commissions offered to buyer-agents after a purchase offer is made,” and that policies have allowed and encouraged buy-side agents to tell homebuyers that their services were free.

The suit is seeking class-action status for a nationwide class that is defined as all persons who purchased a residential property listing on a Realtor-affiliated MLS between 2002 and the present. It also proposes an Illinois subclass for all persons who purchased a residential property listed on a NAR-affiliated MLS in Illinois between 2022 and the present.

The plaintiffs are demanding a jury trial, as well as damages and a permanent injunction to prevent the defendants “from maintaining or reestablishing the same or similar anti-competitive rules, policies, or practices as those challenged in this action in the future.”