What realtors' websites must include: brokerage, team, logo

Realtors’ websites must include the brokerage’s name, placed where the state says, and any team name in the state’s format. Ohio wants the brokerage on every viewable page, Florida beside your phone number, Texas at least half the size of your largest contact details. Texas adds two notice links on the home page. The Equal Housing logo is not a federal website requirement, though your firm may want it.

Reviewed on October 11, 2026: every rule quoted here was read that day, in five states: Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, Texas and South Carolina. Other states were not checked. This is a map of where the rules sit on a page, not legal advice, and your managing broker has the last word on your firm’s ads.

Which pages need the brokerage name?

Treat every page as an ad, because the rules do. Ohio’s rule lists websites in its definition of advertising, and the other states tie the requirement to advertisements, or in South Carolina to team advertising. What changes from state to state is where the name sits and how big it is.

Pennsylvania’s section doesn’t mention the internet; the state REALTORS® association reads it as applying online because the law has no internet exception.

The practical answer is the same everywhere in that table: put the brokerage name in the header or footer that repeats on every page, next to the phone number, in type no smaller than your own name. The real estate agent guide covers California’s license-number rule, which this post does not repeat.

Does NAR add anything for members?

Yes. For members, the 2026 Code of Ethics applies on top of the state rules:

• Standard of Practice 12-5. No ad “without disclosing the name of that REALTOR®'s firm in a reasonable and readily apparent manner”. For electronic ads, a link to a display with the disclosures is allowed.
• Standard of Practice 12-9. Agent websites “shall disclose the firm’s name and that REALTOR®'s or non-member licensee’s state(s) of licensure”. A footer line such as “Licensed in Ohio” covers the second half.
• Standard of Practice 12-10. No deceptive metatags or keywords, no content written by someone else posted without attribution or permission, no misleading images.

12-10 reaches into search work. A page title or meta description that claims what you can’t back up is part of the ad, and so is a blog post copied from another site.

Your team name is not the brokerage

The risk with a team site is that the team’s logo grows, the brokerage shrinks into the fine print, and the site starts to read like an independent company. Two of the states read here have written rules for exactly this.

Texas. Under 22 TAC §535.154, the broker registers the team name with the Commission before anyone uses it in an ad. The name “must end with the word ‘team’ or ‘group’” and may not suggest the team offers brokerage services apart from its sponsoring broker. TREC adds that words like “brokerage”, “company” or “associates” are out.

South Carolina. The amended S.C. Code §40-57-360 takes effect May 15, 2027. The Real Estate Commission’s memo of June 17, 2026, says all advertising in place on or after that date must comply, and that changes made earlier will not draw discipline. The memo names websites, SEO, AEO and GEO among the formats covered. The rules:

1. Every team ad carries the brokerage’s full name.
2. Team members show they are directly connected to the brokerage.
3. The team name may be no more than twice the size, prominence or frequency of the brokerage name.
4. The team may not imply it is a separate entity. The memo’s example is “Smith Realty Company” as a team name.
5. The name is written “[team name] team at [name of real estate brokerage firm]”.
6. A team leader may not use owner, CEO or president for the team. “Team Leader” is fine.

The memo works through sizes: a 14-point team line over a 10-point brokerage line passes; 18-point over 8-point fails.

Is the Equal Housing logo required?

Not by federal law, for an agent’s website. The belief has a real origin, so here is the trail.

HUD once kept advertising guidelines in the Code of Federal Regulations, Part 109. In 1996 HUD removed Part 109 entirely, effective May 1, 1996, and said it would provide “this nonbinding guidance” through handbooks and other materials. Their wording lives on in state guidance: Virginia’s real estate regulator, citing the 1989 Part 109 appendix, says residential advertising “should contain an equal housing opportunity logotype, statement, or slogan.” Should, not must.

What does bind a brokerage is different:

NC REALTORS put it in one line in February 2026: “The fair housing logo is not required by federal law or the Code of Ethics, but it is recommended.” A November 2025 myth-versus-fact post from the Greater Albuquerque Association of REALTORS® adds that NAR never made it mandatory.

So use it anyway. It costs a line in the footer, NC REALTORS recommends it, and it tells agents to check whether their firm requires it as policy. But a logo in the footer does not make a page compliant if the copy says a neighborhood is “perfect for young couples”. The real estate agent guide has a table of what to write about a neighborhood and what to leave out.

Texas puts two links on your home page

Texas is the one state read here that tells you what to put on a specific page. Under 22 TAC §531.20 and §531.18, every license holder links to two TREC notices from the home page of each business website, “in a readily noticeable place”:

A business website, in §531.20, is one that is public, describes your brokerage services and whose content you control. The IABS link points to a completed form, not the blank one. The link may not sit in an email footnote or signature block.

For a logo, TREC says the broker’s name itself, “not the whole logo”, must meet the half-size rule.

Keep it current, and date it

Ohio adds a rule that a site template won’t handle for you. Paragraph (E) of 1301:5-1-02 says outdated or expired information on a licensee’s website must be updated within 14 days, and each licensee website shows the date it was last updated.

NAR’s Standard of Practice 12-8 says the same in softer words for members everywhere: reasonable efforts to keep website information current, and prompt correction once it isn’t.

What goes stale on an agent site:

• A listing shown as active after it closed.
• A brokerage name after you change firms. Ohio’s rule covers every page, including old blog posts.
• A team roster with someone who left.

The header and footer, written out

Here is one layout for an agent on a South Carolina team, using made-up names. It is written to the South Carolina team format and the NAR lines; check it against your own state’s table row and your broker’s policy.

Two checks before you publish:

1. Count the team name and the brokerage name on the home page. In South Carolina, the team may not appear more than twice as often.
2. Look at the page on a phone. The brokerage name has to survive the mobile menu, not hide behind it.

Start with the footer, because it is on every page: brokerage name, state of licensure, the Equal Housing line, and a date. Then fix the header to your state’s team rule. If you’d rather start from a site where the footer already repeats on every page, LocalBiz pricing shows what it includes.