The company traces its roots to AmerUs Home Services Inc.
In 1998, AmerUs Home Services was acquired by MidAmerican Energy Holdings Company.[1][2][3]
In 1999, MidAmerican renamed its brokerage business HomeServices and acquired Semonin Realtors, operating in Louisville, and Long Realty, operating in Arizona.[4][5]
In 2006, the company acquired Atlanta-based real estate brokerage Harry Norman Realtors.[8][9]
In 2012, the company acquired real estate brokerage firms from Prudential and Real Living and rebranded Prudential Real Estate to Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices.[10][11]
In August 2013, the company acquired Prudential Fox & Roach, Realtors®/Trident Group.[12][13][14]
In November 2013, the company acquired Prudential Rubloff Properties, operating in the Chicago area.[15]
In July 2015, the company acquired Prudential Centennial Realty, operating in Westchester County,[19] and First Weber, the largest residential brokerage in Wisconsin.[20][21]
In January 2017, the company acquired Houlihan Lawrence, the largest residential brokerage in Westchester County.[22][23]
In April 2017, the company acquired Gloria Nilson & Co. Real Estate, a residential brokerage in New Jersey.[24][25] The company also formed a strategic alliance with Juwai.com, China's largest overseas property portal, offering access to high-net-worth individual Chinese buyers looking to purchase homes.[26][27]
In June 2017, Robert Moline, president of the company, retired.[28]
On November 1, 2023, a federal jury in Kansas City, Missouri, found Berkshire Hathaway and the National Association of Realtors liable to pay $1.78 billion in damages.[35][36][37] The verdict came as the Warren Buffett–led brand, Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, along with the National Association of Realtors, were found guilty of manipulating and artificially inflating the commissions on numerous home sales.[38][39][37]
According to the jury in Kansas City, the manipulation resulting in inflated commissions caused an artificial rise in mortgage rates and property prices in the housing market.[37][40]
The number of plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit included sellers of over 260,000 homes in Illinois, Missouri, and Kansas.[37][41] They raised concerns about the high commissions they were obligated to pay to the home buyers' brokers between 2015 and 2022.[41] The trial lasted two weeks, after which the jury awarded the plaintiffs $1.78 billion in damages.[35] The defendants in the lawsuit included Berkshire-owned HomeServices of America and its two subsidiaries, along with Keller Williams Realty.[35][42]
Warren Edward Buffett is an American investor and philanthropist who currently serves as the chairman and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. As a result of his investment success, Buffett is one of the best-known investors in the world. As of October 2024, he had a net worth of $147 billion, making him the eighth-richest person in the world.
Berkshire Hathaway Inc. is an American multinational conglomerate holding company headquartered in Omaha, Nebraska. Originally a textile manufacturer, the company transitioned into a conglomerate starting in 1965 under the management of chairman and CEO Warren Buffett and vice chairman Charlie Munger (1978–2023). Greg Abel now oversees most of the company's investments and has been named as the successor to Buffett. Buffett personally owns 38.4% of the Class A voting shares of Berkshire Hathaway, representing a 15.1% overall economic interest in the company.
A multiple listing service is an organization with a suite of services that real estate brokers use to establish contractual offers of cooperation and compensation and accumulate and disseminate information to enable appraisals. A multiple listing service's database and software is used by real estate brokers in real estate, representing sellers under a listing contract to widely share information about properties with other brokers who may represent potential buyers or wish to work with a seller's broker in finding a buyer for the property or asset. The listing data stored in a multiple listing service's database is the proprietary information of the broker who has obtained a listing agreement with a property's seller.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is an American trade association for those who work in the real estate industry. As of December 2023, it had over 1.5 million members, making it the largest trade association in the United States including NAR's institutes, societies, and councils, involved in all aspects of the residential and commercial real estate industries. The organization holds a U.S. trademark over the term "Realtor". NAR also functions as a self-regulatory organization for real estate brokerage. The organization is headquartered in Chicago.
Lee Enterprises, Inc. is a publicly traded American media company. It publishes 77 daily newspapers in 26 states, and more than 350 weekly, classified, and specialty publications. Lee Enterprises was founded in 1890 by Alfred Wilson Lee and is based in Davenport, Iowa.
Berkshire Hathaway Energy (BHE) is a holding company and wholly-owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that, along with affiliates, generates, transmits, stores, distributes and supplies energy.
Move, Inc. is a real estate listing company based in Santa Clara, California. The company operates the Move Network of real estate websites, the largest of which is Realtor.com. Move has a longstanding partnership with the National Association of Realtors, the real estate industry's largest trade association, for operating Realtor.com.
GMAC Real Estate was a real estate franchised broker. It had 13,000 agents. In 2008, it was acquired by Brookfield Asset Management and in 2012, it merged into HomeServices of America.
Long & Foster Real Estate is part of The Long & Foster Companies, a subsidiary of HomeServices of America, a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate. HomeServices is the nation’s largest real estate brokerage by transaction sides and one of the largest providers of integrated real estate services.
Marmon Group is an American industrial holding company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Founded by Jay Pritzker and Robert Pritzker in 1953, it has been held by the Berkshire Hathaway group since 2013.
Douglas Elliman is an American real estate company.
Edina Realty Home Services, based in Edina, Minnesota, is a Berkshire Hathaway affiliate and a wholly owned subsidiary of HomeServices of America, Inc. Edina Realty is the largest real estate company in Minnesota by sales volume and transaction sides. In 2023, the company conducted over 18,000 real estate transactions and $7.4 billion in sales volume.
Realtor.com is a real estate listings website operated by the News Corp subsidiary Move, Inc. and based in Santa Clara, California. It is the second most visited real estate listings website in the United States as of 2021, with over 100 million monthly active users.
NeighborCity was a residential real estate information and service company that rated real-estate agents in the United States, offering a way for buyers and sellers of homes to compare and evaluate agents. It was based in San Francisco.
Purplebricks Canada is a Canada-based real estate brokerage and a subsidiary of Desjardins Group.
RealtySouth is an Alabama-based real estate company comprising over 1,000 sales associates in 27 locations across Alabama. It is a member of the Berkshire Hathaway family of companies.
Compass, Inc. operates a residential real estate brokerage in the United States. It has approximately 29,000 agents, who are generally independent contractors, on its platform.
Michael Scott Ketchmark is an American civil trial attorney based in Leawood, Kansas. He is the president of Ketchmark & McCreight, P.C., a law firm which specializes in personal injury cases.
Burnett v. National Association of Realtors is a class-action lawsuit challenging the fees charged by real estate agents in the United States. The case was filed against the National Association of Realtors and some of the largest brokerages in the country. At trial, a federal jury found that they violated antitrust law by conspiring to force home sellers to pay inflated commissions to real estate agents.
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