MLS PIN preliminary settlement approval hearing set for April

by Brooklee Han

After 16 months of back and forth, Judge Patti B. Saris has made it clear that she is ready to move on from the Nosalek commission lawsuit.

During a hearing on Monday, Saris announced that she was scheduling the preliminary approval hearing for the settlement agreement reached in June 2023 between the plaintiffs and MLS Property Information Network (MLS PIN) for April 4, 2025.

In the settlement, MLS PIN agreed to pay $3 million into a settlement fund, as well as business practice changes that include an end to the requirement for mandatory offers of buyer broker compensation in order to list a property on the MLS.

Despite Saris’s initial misgivings over the settlement, she granted preliminary approval in September 2023. But shortly after that, things derailed.

Later that month, the Department of Justic e (DOJ) filed an amicus brief claiming that it had “significant concerns” about the proposed settlement agreement. MLS PIN and the Nosalek plaintiffs went back to the drawing board to file an amended settlement agreement, which the DOJ also took issue with.

The DOJ also filed a statement of interest in the suit in February 2024, in which it called for the end to cooperative compensation.

“This is the slowest moving situation,” Saris said at the hearing, according to a report from RisMedia. “For me, a primary point of comparison will be the (National Association of Realtors (NAR)) settlement. I don’t have strong views on the differences as to what is better, but that’s something we can iron out in the preliminary hearing.”

Chris Bower, who attended the hearing on behalf of the DOJ, told Saris that it is still carefully considering the plaintiffs’ recent motion for a preliminary approval hearing.

Bower, who was part of the DOJ under the Biden administration, has not previously represented the DOJ in the Nosalek suit. But he did appear on behalf of the DOJ at the final approval hearing for NAR’s settlement.

Saris indicated that she is hoping to wrap up the lawsuit over the summer. She noted that she will most likely not give any more extensions, as she has done so in the past at the behest of the DOJ.

“I don’t want to wait 90 days and then another 90 days. This is so old at this point,” she said. “I don’t want another status report. I don’t want another round robin.”