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Crye-Leike Inc. is walking back figures it provided for a prominent industry ranking and alleging that it is therefore covered under the National Association of Realtors nationwide antitrust settlement.
The Feb. 5 legal filing is asking a federal court in Missouri to stay a case against Crye-Leike known as Gibson until all appeals of the NAR deal have been exhausted. The Gibson suit was the first antitrust commission suit filed after an October 2023 jury verdict in the Sitzer | Burnett case awarded billions to a class of homeseller plaintiffs in Missouri.
NAR reached a nationwide settlement of Sitzer | Burnett, Gibson and other, similar suits last year and member brokerages whose total residential home sales volume did not exceed $2 billion in 2022 were covered under the deal.
In its 2022 Annual Report, Crye-Leike touted the company’s $8.5 billion in sales volume.
Now, Crye-Leike is challenging the metric used under the settlement to decide whether a member brokerage is covered or not: the T360 Real Estate Almanac. The terms of the settlement explicitly say that “The ‘Sales Volume’ reflected in the T360 Real Estate Almanac shall serve as an irrebuttable presumption of a Person’s ‘Total Transaction Volume.’”
Harold Crye
According to Crye-Leike’s filing, the Almanac’s sales volume for “Crye-Leike Realtors,” includes the total sales volume for six brokerages 100 percent owned by Harold Crye but which are independent corporations.
Since the Gibson suit named Crye-Leike Inc. as a defendant and Crye-Leike Inc. itself only closed $1.75 billion in residential sales in 2022, the firm says it is covered…
