Sitzer/Burnett Plaintiffs Demand MLS Data — And the Silence Rule Is the Story

On July 23, 2026, plaintiffs in the Sitzer/Burnett and Gibson cases filed a motion asking Judge Stephen Bough to compel the release of listing and commission data from the 562 MLSs that opted into the National Association of Realtors settlement. The proposed mechanism is blunt: notify every opted-in MLS, give each one seven days to object, and treat silence as consent to release the data. If that sounds like administrative housekeeping, look closer. It isn't.

The immediate trigger is a vendor dispute. FBS, the company behind the Flexmls platform, declined to hand over data without explicit written permission from each individual MLS it serves — and has refused to identify which MLSs are holding back. The plaintiffs' response was to propose a rule that routes around that problem entirely. No response in seven days means yes.

What the Plaintiffs Actually Want From That Data

The data being sought isn't just a compliance checkbox. Listing records contain status histories, entry dates, the gap between when a seller signed a listing agreement and when the property appeared on the MLS, compensation figures, and who collected what. That is precisely the dataset a legal team would want if it were trying to determine whether the settlement's practice changes are holding in the real world — or whether agents and brokers have found informal workarounds.

Specifically, plaintiffs and their analysts could use the data to examine whether seller concessions are quietly performing the same function the old cooperative compensation structure did before the rule changes took effect. They could look for patterns suggesting listings are being steered around the MLS system. And they could cross-reference what was reported on paper against what the new buyer-agreement rules require.

Nearly three years after the original Sitzer/Burnett verdict, lead plaintiffs' counsel Michael Ketchmark's team is still active in Judge Bough's courtroom. Attorneys who have concluded their work do not keep a federal docket warm. That is the clearest signal available that this case is not over for the parties who won it.

The Four Practice Rules That Brokers Are Still Getting Wrong

The NAR settlement established four concrete requirements for agents working with buyers. A written buyer-agency agreement must be signed before any home tour — not at the offer table, not during the first showing, before. That agreement must state a specific compensation amount or rate, not language pointing to whatever the listing side happens to be offering. It must state plainly that fees are negotiable and are not set by law. And the agent cannot collect more than the written agreement specifies.

Two years into those requirements, compliance across the industry is uneven. Some agents are still getting agreements signed at the offer table. Some are still writing in open-ended compensation language tied to the seller's contribution. Some have not read the current form carefully. These are not isolated paperwork errors — they are patterns, and patterns are what plaintiff attorneys document and use.

The exposure in a pattern like that doesn't stop at the agent level. It travels up to the broker and the company. Antitrust damages under federal law are trebled automatically. Add both sides' legal fees and whatever your errors-and-omissions policy declines to cover, and a single office's loose compliance practices become a significant liability event.

Why Sellers Should Be Paying Attention to This Motion

If you are planning to sell your home, the legal machinery in this case directly shapes the transaction experience you will have. The agent your buyer brings to the table is required by settlement terms to have a signed, specific, compliant buyer-agency agreement in hand before they walked through your front door for the first time. If that didn't happen, the agent isn't in compliance — and depending on what was discussed and what was implied about compensation, your transaction could sit in the middle of exactly the kind of record the plaintiffs are now building.

More immediately: the compensation conversation between you and your listing agent matters more than it did before 2024. What you agree to pay, what you offer toward a buyer's agent fee, and how that is documented in the MLS — all of it is now data that can be pulled, analyzed, and compared across hundreds of thousands of transactions. The 562 opted-in MLSs represent most of the country's organized real estate market. When that dataset is released to plaintiffs' analysts, your listing's history may be part of it.

That is not a reason to panic. It is a reason to ask your agent direct questions. Ask to see the buyer-agency agreement the buyer's agent signed. Ask specifically what compensation is being offered to the buyer's side and confirm it is in writing. Ask whether the MLS record reflects exactly what was agreed. These are not aggressive demands — they are the questions the settlement was designed to make normal.

Sellers who are still weighing whether to list traditionally or explore a direct sale may want to consider getting a written offer as a baseline before committing to a full-market listing. Knowing your floor number changes how you evaluate every offer that follows. Local Home Buyers USA's instant-offer tool exists for exactly that purpose — no obligation, just a number to anchor your decision.

The Sitzer/Burnett litigation is not winding down. It is producing new filings in 2026, and the data those filings are designed to unlock will give plaintiffs a clearer picture of what is actually happening at the transaction level across the country. Sellers are participants in that picture whether they know it or not. The smart move is to know it.