The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) may spend the holidays in court, as the association is being accused of failing to pay a former employee promised retirement based on the financial strain of previous legal issues.
John Pierpoint—NAR’s former and long-time chief financial officer, who was succeeded by Matthew Cendella in 2025—filed a lawsuit against NAR in the Circuit Court of Cook County in Chicago on Wednesday, Nov. 11. He claims that NAR has refused to pay him a retirement benefit that the association regularly provides to retiring senior executives.
According to a release from Pierpoint’s attorneys, NAR “improperly withheld one year of salary in retirement compensation despite having recorded the anticipated payment in its own financial records for more than a decade.”
The release also points out that NAR has maintained the executive retirement compensation practice for approximately two decades, and pays retiring senior executives a year’s worth of their base salary.
In 2024, Pierpoint received over $872,000 for his role as CFO, according to NAR’s 2024 990 form.
But the complaint outlines the amount Pierpoint was to receive for his retirement was about $541,000, or his base salary.
While the Burnett settlement burdened NAR with a $418 million payment, Pierpoint’s attorneys claim that retirement compensation is held in reserve, specifically set aside for those payments.
“NAR agreed in 2024 to a settlement requiring it to pay $418 million over approximately four years, with a first installment of roughly $200 million due in February 2025. NAR responded by looking for ways to save money,” the complaint added. “Six days before he left, NAR informed (Pierpoint) that it could not ‘verify any consistent practice’ of paying retiring executives a year of salary and would not pay him.”
The complaint alleges that the retirement reserve practice would be found in NAR’s own ledger, payroll records and audit files, and that it was applied to all of Pierpoint’s retired predecessors.
But, it also states that NAR “directed its finance staff to write the Compensation Reserve off its books, eliminating a liability of several million dollars from its balance sheet during the period in which it was funding its antitrust settlement obligations.”
“Pierpoint helped guide NAR through an extraordinarily challenging period in its history, including the financial consequences of the antitrust litigation,” David Fish, an attorney representing Pierpoint, stated. “After nearly four decades of service, he expected the organization to honor the same retirement compensation practice it had followed for other senior executives. We believe the evidence will establish that the financial pressures following the antitrust verdict did not relieve NAR of its obligation to pay compensation earned by its employees.”
Overall, Pierpoint’s complaint accuses NAR of violating the Illinois Wage Payment and Collection Act and various forms of breach of contract.
NAR had not yet commented on the lawsuit at press time.
Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Friday, Nov. 13 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Time with information from the original complaint.
This is a developing story. Stay tuned to RISMedia for updates.
