A Kansas City Jury Finds Realtors Liable for Inflating Commissions and Awards $1.78 Billion in Damages

A U.S. jury on Tuesday found the National Association of Realtors and some residential brokerages, including units of Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway, liable to pay $1.78 billion in damages for conspiring to artificially inflate commissions for home sales.

The verdict by a federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, could upend decades-old practices that have allowed real estate agents to boost commissions as home prices and mortgage rates rise, hurting consumers by making housing transactions more expensive.

Plaintiffs in the class action included sellers of more than 260,000 homes in Missouri, Kansas and Illinois between 2015 and 2022, who objected to the commissions they were obligated to pay buyers’ brokers.

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