Key Details:
- Within hours of the New York Times announcement of the NAR settlement, Wall Street reacted, with stock values tumbling for several real estate companies.
- Zillow saw the steepest drop when markets closed at the end of Friday, with stock values dropping by nearly 7.5 points, a decline of over 13%. Meanwhile, CoStar stock rose by more than six points.
- The numbers show how investors are feeling about how well real estate companies are positioned now that MLSs—those covered by the settlement as well as those that choose to settle—can no longer include any reference to buyer agent compensation.
On Friday morning, March 15, 2024, The New York Times broke the news that the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) to a $418 million settlement in commission lawsuits. In addition, NAR agreed to a new rule prohibiting offers of buyer broker compensation on the MLS.
Within hours, the stock market reacted as investors made bets on how the settlement would impact the biggest players in the real estate industry.
Zillow saw the steepest decline in investor confidence as stock values dropped by nearly 7.5 points by the time the market closed at 4 pm Eastern Time.
On the flipside, CoStar stock values climbed more than six points on Friday and have risen even higher as of 12 pm ET on Monday, March 18th. That’s despite the fact that CoStar’s transaction volumes for 2022 put the company well outside the umbrella of NAR’s settlement terms.
We’ll update these charts as news surrounding the NAR settlement develops.
For the most part, real estate stocks across the board have taken a hit from the NAR settlement news. It probably doesn’t help, either, that many of them are not included in the settlement that covered brokerages with total transaction volumes of $2 billion or less in 2022.
Take a look at stock performance for four of those brokerages:
- Real Brokerage
- eXp
- Redfin
- Compass
RE/MAX and Anywhere, both of which reached settlements of their own before the Sitzer/Burnett trial, also saw stock value declines on Friday.
Stay tuned for more. We’ll update this as we track real estate stock performance throughout the week.
