Antitrust and Competition Counsel for Real Estate and Housing Markets

The commission rules, the MLS policy, the pricing software, the listing feed, the licensing board: in real estate, the rules of competition are written by committees of competitors — which is why no industry in America is generating more antitrust litigation and enforcement right now. Bona Law knows this terrain from every side: we have prosecuted an antitrust case over MLS access, counseled a realtor association on antitrust compliance, defended an individual in the government’s real-estate criminal antitrust investigations, stood up for rental property owners against government overreach, and built one of the nation’s leading practices on antitrust challenges to government and licensing-board conduct.

Consider the last two years. Realtor commission litigation has produced more than $1 billion in settlements, rewritten how buyer brokers are paid, and continued into a second wave of homebuyer cases. The Department of Justice and ten state attorneys general sued the maker of the industry’s leading rent-recommendation software, and the resulting consent decrees now function as a compliance code for every property manager that uses revenue-management tools. Four states and a growing list of cities have banned or restricted algorithmic rent-setting. A January 2026 executive order directs federal antitrust enforcers to prioritize coordinated housing pricing, and new federal legislation restricts institutional purchases of single-family rental homes. Listing portals, private listing networks, and MLSs are suing each other over access to listings, and the FTC is litigating a market-allocation case against two of the largest listing portals. Homebuilders face reported DOJ interest in their information-sharing practices. Every association rule, software decision, and data feed in this industry is now an antitrust decision.

Bona Law represents the companies and organizations that make those decisions: real estate brokerages and franchisees, realtor associations and multiple listing services, property managers and landlords, proptech and listing platforms, appraisers and licensing boards, homebuilders and developers, and housing investors. We counsel them on compliance before the rules change, defend them in government investigations and class actions when enforcement arrives, and prosecute antitrust claims when a dominant platform, association, or board shuts them out of the market.

Featured Analysis

Luis Blanquez’s algorithmic-pricing series — the analyses property managers, landlords, and proptech companies are actually reading on the RealPage and Yardi litigation, the Greystar settlement, and the new state statutes:

Representative Experience

San Diego Association of Realtors v. Sandicor, Inc., et al. (S.D. Cal.) — represented the Greater San Diego County Association of Realtors in a Sherman Act Section 1 conspiracy action against the regional multiple listing service and two competing realtor associations, alleging that the defendants withheld access to MLS data and used the MLS as a competitive weapon — and pursued an anticompetitive MLS merger. The court denied motions to dismiss in 2016 and again on later challenges, finding the association’s antitrust claims plausible.
Realtor-association antitrust counseling — antitrust counseling for a major realtor association on competition issues, including relationships with other real estate associations.
United States v. Guillory (Ninth Circuit) — appealed a criminal bid-rigging conviction arising from the Department of Justice’s investigation of real-estate foreclosure auctions in the San Francisco Bay Area, arguing that the jury was misdirected on the elements of a per se offense and that the evidence was insufficient.
Dean, et al. v. City of Winona (Minnesota Supreme Court) — amicus brief for an association of rental property owners challenging a municipal rental ban, at the intersection of constitutional property rights and local regulatory power. Read the firm’s discussion of the brief.
Defense of a property owner against the City of Santa Monica (2026) — defending a property owner in an enforcement action concerning residential leasing and medium-term and pre-furnished rental restrictions.
Thomason v. State of Alabama Home Builders Licensure Board (M.D. Ala.) — briefed Sherman Act claims for a homebuilder repeatedly denied an unlimited residential license by a licensure board dominated by competing builders — part of the firm’s leading practice on antitrust challenges to government and licensing-board conduct.
Trade-association and information-exchange counseling — antitrust counseling and compliance for associations and their members, including real-time antitrust support at association meetings, governance and rule reviews, and information-exchange and benchmarking protocols.
Property-rights litigation — additional experience representing property owners in eminent-domain and land-use disputes with municipalities, complementing the firm’s antitrust work at the government line.

Our Real Estate and Housing Antitrust Team

Jarod M. Bona (Founder, CEO, and Partner, San Diego) — led the firm’s MLS and realtor-association antitrust litigation; amicus counsel in Dean v. City of Winona; speaker on antitrust and real estate at the California Association of Realtors Legal Affairs Forum — and he knows the industry from the inside, having qualified for a real estate license and affiliated with residential brokerages.
Aaron Gott (Partner and COO, Minneapolis) — co-author of “Actionable Antitrust Advice for the Residential Real Estate Industry” (CPI Antitrust Chronicle) and the firm’s analysis of the $1.8 billion realtor verdict; Dean v. City of Winona; Chair, Minnesota State Bar Association Antitrust Law Section Council, 2026–27.
Luke Hasskamp (Partner, San Diego) — litigated the homebuilder licensure-board matter; leads the firm’s work on antitrust and government-created barriers to entry, the doctrinal home of realtor-board, appraiser-board, and builder-board disputes.
Joseph Trujillo (Partner, San Diego) — leads the firm’s defense of a property owner against the City of Santa Monica’s residential-leasing and medium-term-rental enforcement.
Luis Blanquez (Partner, San Diego) — author of the firm’s algorithmic-pricing series tracking the RealPage, Yardi, and Greystar matters and the new state statutes; former European Commission Merger Task Force.
Steven Cernak (Partner, Detroit) — designs antitrust compliance programs and counsels trade associations; more than twenty years as in-house antitrust counsel at General Motors; Chair of the ABA Antitrust Law Section, 2024–25.

Recent Developments

Real estate and housing antitrust is moving faster than any sector in the economy:

The commission cases passed $1 billion in settlements — and are not finished. The NAR settlement’s practice changes (no offers of buyer-broker compensation on the MLS; written buyer agreements before touring) have governed since August 2024, but the Eighth Circuit is still weighing objectors’ appeal, seller-case settlements received final approval in February 2026, and a second wave of homebuyer cases continues against major brokerages, with NAR’s own $52.25 million buyer-side settlement awaiting approval.
The Department of Justice keeps its hand in. DOJ filed a statement of interest in a homebuyer commission case in December 2025 arguing that trade-association rules are concerted action, has pointedly declined to bless the Clear Cooperation Policy, and NAR has since repealed the national policy tying MLS access to Realtor membership — making every MLS’s access rules a local antitrust decision.
Rent-pricing software now comes with a federal compliance code. DOJ and ten state attorneys general settled with RealPage (consent decree in Tunney Act review) and with four major property managers; private MDL settlements exceed $359 million; the case continues against non-settling landlords; and Duffy v. Yardi survived dismissal on a per se theory. State attorneys general from California to Arizona are bringing their own actions.
Legislatures joined in. New York, California, Connecticut, and New Jersey have enacted restrictions on algorithmic rent-setting, alongside cities including San Francisco, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and Seattle — a patchwork that makes multistate software compliance a live legal question.
Washington made housing a named antitrust priority. A January 2026 executive order directs the Attorney General and FTC to prioritize enforcement against coordinated pricing and vacancy strategies in rental housing markets, and July 2026 federal legislation bars large institutional investors from acquiring additional single-family rental homes. Press reports indicate DOJ is weighing an investigation of information sharing among major homebuilders.
The platforms are at war. Zillow, one of the nation’s largest brokerages, and the Midwest’s largest MLS are litigating over private listing networks and listing feeds; the FTC and a coalition of state attorneys general are litigating a market-allocation case against Zillow and Redfin over rental advertising; and the Ninth Circuit revived monopolization claims against CoStar in the commercial-listings market.

Where Antitrust Risk Arises in Real Estate and Housing

Commission and compensation practices — steering, commission-setting, compensation communications, and post-settlement compliance for brokerages and agents in the new buyer-agreement era.
MLS rules, access, and data — membership requirements, listing-access policies, private listing networks, feed and syndication decisions, lockbox and technology rules: association rules are concerted action, and every rule needs an antitrust rationale.
Realtor association governance — membership, discipline, and board decisions by committees of competitors, where the $1.8 billion verdict reset the stakes.
Algorithmic and revenue-management pricing — rent-recommendation software, shared data inputs, and the consent-decree and state-statute rules that now govern them — theories pled as hub-and-spoke conspiracies — for both landlords adopting tools and vendors building them.
Information exchange and benchmarking — market surveys, association statistics, and data-sharing programs among builders, brokers, and operators.
Platform dominance and exclusion — listing portals, data platforms, and marketplaces that control access to customers, from residential syndication rules to commercial listing databases, including tying and refusal-to-deal theories.
Licensing boards and government barriers — realtor, appraiser, and builder licensing boards controlled by active market participants; rental bans and municipal restrictions — where the firm maintains one of the nation’s leading state-action practices.
Investor and operator conduct — institutional single-family-rental strategies, shared analytics, and the new federal restrictions on coordinated housing pricing, including the regulatory and legislative response.
Mergers and consolidation — merger review for brokerage roll-ups, MLS consolidations, and proptech acquisitions.

How We Help Real Estate and Housing Clients

Antitrust compliance for associations and MLSs — rule audits, governance counseling, meeting protocols, and real-time antitrust support, informed by having litigated MLS-access claims and counseled a realtor association ourselves.
Post-settlement brokerage compliance — buyer-agreement practices, compensation communications, steering risk, and training for brokerages and franchisees.
Pricing-software and information-exchange counseling — translating the RealPage and Yardi consent decrees and the state statute patchwork into practical guidance for property managers, landlords, and proptech vendors.
Government investigation defense — for companies and individual executives facing DOJ, FTC, or state attorney general inquiries, including criminal antitrust matters.
Antitrust class-action defense — for brokerages, associations, landlords, and platforms named in follow-on litigation.
Affirmative antitrust litigation — for brokerages, agents, platforms, and property owners excluded by dominant MLSs, portals, associations, or boards.
Challenges to government and licensing-board conduct — antitrust and constitutional claims against boards, municipalities, and agencies that restrict competition, and defense of property owners against regulatory overreach.
Appellate litigation — antitrust and property-rights appeals.

Recent Analysis from Bona Law

More at The Antitrust Attorney Blog — see the Real Estate and Algorithmic Pricing archives.

Why Bona Law for Real Estate and Housing Antitrust

We litigated the MLS questions before they were headlines. Bona Law prosecuted a federal antitrust case over MLS access and governance for a major realtor association years before the commission verdicts made those rules front-page news — and has separately counseled a realtor association on the compliance side of the same questions. When we advise an association or MLS board today, the advice comes from having built these claims ourselves.
The government-conduct edge. Realtor boards, appraisal boards, builder boards, rental bans, and municipal enforcement all sit where antitrust meets government power — and Bona Law maintains one of the nation’s leading practices on exactly that line, from licensing-board litigation to Supreme Court amicus work.
A boutique with a strong bench. Former in-house antitrust leadership from General Motors, a former European Commission Merger Task Force lawyer, and ABA Antitrust Law Section leadership — at boutique economics that fit regional brokerages, associations, mid-size property managers, and proptech companies.
Current authority, not archived alerts. Our attorneys publish the analyses that brokerages, associations, and property managers are actually reading on the commission cases, algorithmic pricing, and homebuilder enforcement — on a blog that has covered real estate antitrust for more than a decade.
Recognition. Bona Law is recognized in the Chambers Spotlight 2026 guides for Antitrust in both California and New York.

Contact Us

Bona Law represents brokerages, realtor associations, multiple listing services, property managers, landlords, proptech platforms, homebuilders, investors, and property owners on antitrust compliance, investigations, litigation, class-action defense, and merger review across real estate and housing markets.

Real Estate and Housing