Real opts into homebuyer commissions settlement
The brokerage has joined a $3.2 million agreement involving 11 other firms, including @properties and Baird & Warner, whose cases were consolidated in October.
Real Brokerage has reached a settlement in a commissions lawsuit brought by an Illinois homebuyer last year.
An agreement between Real and plaintiff Kevin Cwynar was announced in a motion filed Jan. 5 in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. The allegations in Cwynar are similar to those in the landmark Sitzer/Burnett and Gibson cases challenging agent commission fees, but it involves homebuyers rather than sellers — meaning any settlements reached in Sitzer/Burnett or Gibson would not necessarily apply to Cwynar and related homebuyer lawsuits.
Real previously agreed to pay $9.25 million to settle litigation brought by home sellers.
Terms of the latest deal were not disclosed in the filing, which was a motion to stay proceedings after Real opted into a larger, consolidated case. The settlement comes just a week after Real was pulled into an antitrust case involving Zillow and a handful of brokerage defendants.
One of several related cases: Real's settlement is tied to a separate commissions case known as Tuccori, a lawsuit filed more than two years ago. That case, brought by another Illinois homebuyer, originally named only At World Properties as a defendant. While the parties indicated they had reached a tentative settlement in June 2024, negotiations appeared to stall over the next year. In recent months, however, the case has seen renewed activity.
In October, six similar cases were folded into Tuccori, and a preliminary agreement was reached with nearly a dozen defendants, creating what the filing calls a "global settlement fund" of just over $3.2 million.
The Tuccori agreement enabled other brokerages to opt into the deal, allowing Real to join that settlement. Cwynar agreed to a motion to stay his case and is now listed as a plaintiff in Tuccori.
What other brokerages settled? The 11 defendants in the consolidated Tuccori case are At World Properties, Baird & Warner, Real Estate One, Silvercreek Realty Group, Equity Real Estate, NextHome, Realty Executives, Shorewest, Side, Engel & Volkers Americas and Engel & Volkers GMBH.
The move to consolidate the cases is being contested by two defendants, Fathom and HomeSmart.
Larger homebuyer case still looms: Batton, originally filed in 2021 by homebuyers, names many of the country's top brokerages as defendants. That case is currently seeking class certification that, if granted, would cover millions of buyers with potential damage awards in the tens of billions of dollars.
One challenge for the Batton plaintiffs is the question of whether homebuyers who also sold homes — and were covered under the Sitzer/Burnett and Gibson settlements — can be included in the class. The judge overseeing those cases previously ruled that such buyers would not be eligible, but the two settlements are currently being contested in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit.