The Sitzer-Burnett settlement brought many changes to the real estate industry, including a ban on compensation offers on multiple listing services (MLSs) and the requirement of written buyer agreements. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) created a resource that is updated regularly that attempted to answer the questions that followed the settlement.

In its “NAR Settlement FAQs,” NAR stated that its goal in entering the settlement was to “secure a release of liability for as many of our members, associations and MLSs as we could” and “preserve the choices consumers have regarding real estate services compensation.”

The release of liability from claims brought on behalf of homesellers related to broker commissions covered over one million NAR members, all state and local Realtor associations, all Realtor MLSs and all brokerages with a NAR member as principal whose residential transaction volume in 2022 was $2 billion or below.

Notably, the settlement also included a mechanism for nearly all brokerages that had a residential transaction volume in 2022 that exceeded $2 billion and MLSs not owned by Realtor associations to obtain releases if they chose to.

The settlement agreement implemented several policy changes beyond the ban of compensation offers on MLSs. These changes include:

• Defining “cooperation” for MLS participation;
• Requiring an MLS to not create, facilitate or support any non-MLS for participants, subscribers or sellers to make offers of compensation to buyer brokers or other buyer representatives;
• Prohibiting the use of MLS data or data feeds to directly or indirectly establish or maintain a platform of offers of compensation from multiple brokers or other buyer representatives.

To learn more about the policy changes that were precipitated by the settlement agreement, read the full story in the Adapting to NAR Settlement’s New Realities in-depth report, available  here as a free download.