SOLD OUT: HOW AMERICA’S REALTORS RIGGED THE HOUSING MARKET AND GOT AWAY WITH IT

Economic Rights| Business and Economy | Featured

October 12, 2025•6 min read

The Great American Real Estate Reckoning

How Decades of Hidden Collusion and “Standard Commissions” Cost Homeowners Billions

By Staff Writer | October 12, 2025

Editor’s Note

For more than a century, buying a home has stood as the cornerstone of the American Dream — a promise of stability, family, and a place to call one’s own. But a web of lawsuits and investigations has begun to unravel a shocking truth: behind that dream was an industry built on quiet coordination, inflated costs, and decades of unspoken collusion. What’s emerging is not just a lawsuit, but a reckoning that could permanently change how America buys and sells homes.

A Dream Paid for Twice

When Jared Breit signed the closing papers on his family’s home, he felt the kind of pride every first-time homeowner knows — until he reached the last line of the settlement sheet.

“Commission: $15,000.”

Half of it went to an agent he had never met.

“I didn’t understand it,” Breit said. “My agent told me, ‘That’s just how it’s always been.’”

That offhand phrase — just how it’s always been — lies at the heart of a multibillion-dollar class-action war that’s now shaking one of America’s most powerful industries to its foundation.

For decades, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) has governed the real estate industry with rules that quietly required home sellers to pay not only their own agent’s fee, but also the buyer’s agent’s commission — typically splitting 5% to 6% of the sale price between them.
It didn’t matter who the agent represented, or which side of the negotiation they stood on. Everyone got paid from the same check — and few questioned why.

The practice was so universal that generations of buyers and sellers came to accept it as the cost of doing business. But what the lawsuits have revealed is that this “tradition” wasn’t an accident of history — it was a design.

A System That Guarded Itself

Since its founding in 1908, NAR has positioned itself as the guardian of professionalism in real estate. Over time, that noble veneer concealed an intricate web of control.
By the 1980s, as suburban growth exploded and home prices soared, commissions had quietly standardized nationwide.

Realtors claimed these fees were “customary,” not mandatory — but consumers rarely saw a real choice. Even when technology made direct sales easier, the structure stayed locked in place. Those who challenged it risked losing access to multiple listing services — the essential databases that connect nearly every home sale in America.

“This is the largest structural reform to American real estate since World War II,” said Dr. Emily Carter, an antitrust scholar at the University of Chicago.
“For decades, consumers paid for competition that didn’t exist. Now, the illusion is breaking.”

The Lawsuit That Exposed the Illusion

The illusion began to unravel with Sitzer/Burnett v. National Association of Realtors, filed in Missouri in 2019. A class of home sellers accused NAR and several of the nation’s biggest brokerages — Keller Williams, RE/MAX, and Anywhere Real Estate — of colluding to keep commissions artificially high through mandatory “cooperative compensation.”

In 2023, a Missouri jury agreed. The verdict sent shockwaves through the market, finding that the system violated federal antitrust laws.

Facing potential damages that could reach into the billions, NAR and the brokerages settled for more than $418 million, and agreed to end the rule requiring sellers to pay buyer-agent commissions.

As of mid-2025, that rule is gone. Buyers can now negotiate directly with their own agents — or represent themselves.

To the casual observer, it’s a quiet administrative change. In reality, it’s a revolution.

“Consumers are finally seeing what they were paying for,” said former DOJ economist Thomas Regan.
“The lawsuits didn’t destroy real estate. They just exposed it.”

The Ripple Effect: From Agents to Inspectors

But while commission reform has stolen the headlines, the shockwaves are spreading into the industry’s lesser-seen corners — especially home inspections.

For decades, buyers have relied on inspectors to be the neutral safeguard between them and disaster. Yet in many markets, inspectors depend heavily on realtors for referrals — a relationship that can quietly shape what ends up in a report.

In Phoenix, first-time buyer Rachel Lopez thought she’d found the perfect home. Her realtor “highly recommended” an inspector who was “the best in town.”

Two weeks after closing, a burst pipe revealed black mold and water damage throughout the walls — none of which had been noted.

“It’s the same dynamic,” said consumer rights attorney Melissa Nguyen.
“Inspectors who play nice get business. Those who don’t — disappear.”

What began as a challenge to one industry rule has now opened a much larger question: how deep does this culture of quiet cooperation go? And how many systems, built to protect consumers, have been quietly serving those in control instead?

The Larger Indictment: A Culture of Self-Interest

The revelations aren’t just about money — they’re about trust.
For generations, Americans believed that real estate was a profession anchored in ethics, transparency, and fiduciary duty. But what’s emerging from courtrooms and whistleblowers paints a darker picture — one of a self-reinforcing ecosystem where loyalty to the system often outweighed loyalty to the client.

“It wasn’t a few bad actors,” said Professor Carter.
“It was an entire structure designed to protect itself.”

What makes the reckoning so profound is that it strikes at something larger than housing — it challenges a national mythology. The idea that homeownership, the very definition of the American Dream, has quietly become a mechanism for exploitation leaves many Americans asking a painful question: What else isn’t what it seems?

A Dream Rewritten

For Jared Breit, the Missouri homebuyer who helped ignite the case, the victory is personal — but bittersweet.
He and millions like him were told the same story: that realtors were trusted guides, that commissions were fixed for fairness, that the system was designed to protect both sides.

Now, he knows better.

“The American Dream,” Breit said quietly, “shouldn’t come with an asterisk.”

For the first time in a century, the veil is lifting. The real estate industry may survive this reckoning, but it won’t emerge unchanged. What began as a fight over commissions has become something far deeper: a demand for accountability in the one institution nearly every American touches.

The illusion of fairness may have been profitable — but the truth, finally, is priceless.