Advertising rules

Real estate advertising rules by state: what your website must show

Every state regulates how a licensee advertises, and a website is advertising. These pages say what yours must carry — brokerage name, license number, team name limits — in plain English, read from each commission's own rules and dated.

Updated October 2026

The three rules that are the same everywhere

Read enough state rules and the same three ideas appear, in different words. A reasonable person must be able to tell they are dealing with a real estate licensee. The brokerage must be identifiable — usually by its licensed name, sometimes by the responsible broker’s name. And nothing may mislead, which is where team names get people: a name with “Realty” or “Properties” in it reads as its own company, and most states forbid that.

Everything else is detail that changes at the state line: whether your license number must appear and how small it may be, where the brokerage name has to sit relative to your phone number, what words a team name may include, and whether the rule names websites explicitly.

State pages

The website question, answered once

Licence exams like to ask what each page of an agent’s website must contain. The honest answer is “it depends on the state,” and the state pages above give the specifics. The practical answer is the same everywhere: put your name, your brokerage’s licensed name and your license number in a footer that appears on every page, next to your contact details, in type no smaller than the rest of the footer. That covers the core of the rule in most states, and it costs nothing to do everywhere. Some states add more, like Texas’s two TREC links or Michigan’s broker phone number or address; the state pages say which.

Questions people ask

Is a website considered advertising?

In every state we have read so far, yes — either by naming websites and electronic media directly (California) or by applying the advertising rule to internet advertising in the same terms (Florida). The same usually goes for social media profiles and email signatures.

What do the rules have in common?

Three things: the public must be able to tell they are dealing with a licensee; the brokerage's name must appear; and nothing may be misleading, including a team name that sounds like its own company. What differs is the detail — whether a license number is required, how large the brokerage name must be, and what a team name may contain.

Where do these pages get their information?

From the state commission's own rule or statute text, linked on each page with the date it was read. Nothing is written from memory, and a state page is published only once its sources are in.

Which states are covered?

All 50 states. The list below links each state's page, the most-searched states first.