Back to Basics – Check your Website

When I started teaching about advertising rules many years ago, online advertising was usually an add-on for agents who did most of their outreach through other, more traditional methods. It was new, different and weird, and many practitioners made the same types of mistakes on the web. 

Today, of course, many brokers and agents are heavily invested in their online presence as a primary method of marketing their services and connecting with consumers. And yet practitioners are making some of the same basic mistakes that were being made 20+ years ago. So, let’s get back to basics about one “simple” rule regarding brokerage information. 

Ignore the gurus, not the rules: Your brokerage is not optional. 

Section 305 of the Pennsylvania State Real Estate Commission regulations says that “an advertisement by an associate broker [or] salesperson…shall contain the business name and telephone number of the employing broker. The names and telephone numbers shall be of equal size.” 

I can’t tell you how many websites we’ve seen that either minimize broker information or omit it altogether. And in many of those instances, we’ll hear something like,“My marketing advisor says I should build my own brand and not promote the broker so much.” Sure … but the regulations are not optional, which means that the brokerage name and phone number must be in your online advertising, and they must be equal in size or larger than the relevant agent information.  

“But the internet is different, right?” 

No, no, it’s not — at least not in the way many agents might say these words. Online advertising and marketing are covered by the relevant rules that cover all advertising and marketing, unless there’s some sort of a carveout that explicitly says, “You can do it differently online.” And… spoiler alert — that language doesn’t exist in Pennsylvania law or regulation. If there’s a rule you need to follow in print, then you need to follow that rule online. 

Where the internet is different is in how easy it is for you to get caught. If you make a mistake online, more people can see it — including those who were not the intended audience — and it tends to stay around longer. Many of the advertising-related disciplinary cases in front of the State Real Estate Commission are partly or wholly brought over online violations — websites, social media profiles and the like. And violations are starting to get much more expensive, with several recent cases involving fines of $3,000-$5,000. All of which is to say that “I thought I could just skip that step because it was online” is rarely going to be a winning defense. 

Trust, but verify. 

During a recent PAR Legal Hotline call, I mentioned to the caller that her website had no brokerage information at all. As soon as I started the sentence, she immediately said something like, “Oh no! I paid someone to update the site a while ago, and I haven’t even looked at it since then.” The mistake wasn’t deliberate (and it was fixed within a few days), but “The IT person screwed that up” is also not going to be a great defense when you get caught with a non-compliant site. If you haven’t done so recently, take some time to review your websites and social media profiles for compliance and update anything that needs to be fixed. 

Where am I? 

After you go through the sites you can remember, search your name and take a peek at other locations you may have forgotten — or not even consciously known about. If you’ve been around for a few years, you may have lingering out-of-date profiles on flash-in-the-pan social media sites that haven’t been touched for years, some of which may have old information listed if you’ve switched brokerages over time. Sometimes, an old broker may have even forgotten to take down your contact page from their brokerage site. 

Many agents will also find things like automatically created profiles on search portals. Or groups like a local Chamber of Commerce may publish member pages that don’t list your broker at all. To the extent possible, update and/or delete whatever you can find that’s clearly not compliant. 

Everything else … 

True to the “basics” theme, this article focuses on just one rule about brokerage information, but there are many other aspects of advertising (online and otherwise) to consider. Please remember that the PAR Legal Hotline cannot provide legal advice that approves/disapproves any particular advertisement or marketing concept. If you have specific questions, please consult your brokerage (and perhaps brokerage counsel) to be sure they feel comfortable, since brokers are often fined for non-compliance alongside their agents.