Alabama Real Estate Advertising Rules — the Company Name Must Beat Everything Else
Alabama has the most concrete size test in this series, and it is defined in the statute itself: the company name must be in a font equal to or larger than any other name, text, or logo in the advertisement. Meanwhile your own name is not required at all.
Step by step
Include the qualifying broker's or the company's name
Ala. Code § 34-27-36(a)(15) makes it a violation for a salesperson or associate broker to advertise themselves as a real estate agent “without the name or trade name of the qualifying broker or company… appearing prominently on the advertising.” Either satisfies it.
Make it the biggest thing in the signature
“Prominently” is defined in the statute, and the test is strict: “using a font size that is equal to or larger than any other name, text, or logo, other than terms like ‘for sale’ or ‘for lease’… and situated and sized for the purpose of gaining the attention of consumers.” That means larger than your own name, your phone number, and your logo.
Use the company name exactly as licensed
The Commission’s guidance is unambiguous: advertise the company name “word for word exactly as licensed”. A logo showing only initials does not discharge the duty.
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§ 34-27-36(a)(6) separately makes it a violation to publish an advertisement “which fails to identify the person causing the advertisement to be placed as a licensed broker or salesperson.”
Your own name is optional — but if you use it, use your legal surname
Alabama does not require the licensee’s name in an advertisement at all; the Commission states that only the company or qualifying broker is required. But Rule 790-X-2-.05 requires a licensee to “use his/her legal surname in all licensed real estate activities and marketing”, with nicknames registered on the licence application.
Skip the license number
A verified negative: the phrase appears nowhere in the advertising statute, nowhere in the Commission’s advertising rule, and nowhere in its twenty-page advertising guidance. Of thirty-three states checked, only California and Nevada require one.
Team? Four requirements, one of them a permission
§ 34-27-39, effective 1 October 2025, requires team advertising to include the name of at least one team member, the name of the company, and the term “team” or “group” in the team name — and requires written authorisation from the qualifying broker to use the name at all.
The size test that moved — and got broader on the way
Alabama’s prominence definition has moved instruments twice in about a year, and the wording changed when it did:
- 14 February 2025 — a rule was created carrying the definition: equal to or larger than any other text or logo.
- 1 October 2025 — the definition was written into the statute, in wider terms: equal to or larger than any other name, text, or logo — with a carve-out for “terms like ‘for sale’ or ‘for lease’”.
- 14 February 2026 — the rule was repealed and replaced, the prominence language struck. The Commission’s own filing explains why: the amendment “strikes existing language that has now been added to statute”.
What Alabama does not require
Two absences worth stating, because both cut against the intuition:
- Your own name is not required. The Commission puts it plainly: a licensee’s name “does not have to be on their individual ad, just company or qualifying broker”. Alabama joins a small group — with North Carolina, Colorado and Washington — in requiring the firm but not the person.
- A qualifying broker is exempt from their own rule. A qualifying broker may use their own name larger than the company name, or without it.
And the duty runs both ways. The statute makes it a violation for a salesperson to advertise without the company name, and a separate violation for the qualifying broker to allow it. Your broker is exposed by your signature, not just you.
There is no advertising rule in the administrative code
A structural point that trips up almost everyone. Alabama’s licensee advertising requirements live in statute. Across all five of the Commission’s rule chapters, the only advertising provisions are the team rule, an out-of-state co-brokerage rule, a broker-supervision duty, and a rule governing real estate schools.
Two of those are scope traps that read like general rules:
- “In all advertising of real estate located in Alabama, the name of the Alabama qualifying broker shall appear” — this is confined to out-of-state co-brokerage agreements. It is not the general rule, and it is stricter than the general rule, which accepts the company name as an alternative.
- A rule titled “School And Instructor Advertising Regulations” governs real estate schools, not licensees — the same-board analogue of the appraiser and auctioneer traps found in five other states.
Email is not named anywhere
Alabama does nothing resembling Colorado’s or Tennessee’s naming of “email signatures”, or Louisiana’s enumeration of what must appear in a message. “Advertising” is not a defined term — the statute defines eighteen terms, including “team”, and advertising is not among them.
What the Commission applies instead is a functional test, stated in its own guidance: “Anything indicating you are a licensee is considered advertising.” An earlier legal note put it as “any tweet, post, photo or comment that is promoting a product, service, or event”.
The Commission's own newsletter states the opposite of current law
Alabama is the seventeenth state in this series with official material at odds with its own law — and it has five separate problems, the worst of which is unusually direct.
A newsletter written by the Commission’s General Counsel states: “There is no longer a size or ratio requirement, only that the name be prominent.”
A size requirement was reinstated by statute effective 1 October 2025, and it is now the strictest in this series. The newsletter remains published.
Three others, briefly: the Commission’s FAQ describes a superseded version of one of its own rules; its official summary of the 2025 Act lists the team provisions but omits the prominence change entirely — the single most operationally significant thing in the Act; and its guidance deck drops the statutory “for sale or for lease” carve-out from the size test.
Cornell is serving the repealed rule as live
The second confirmed instance of this failure mode after Indiana. Cornell renders the rule number as “Advertising”, carrying the old prominence definition and dated “Effective February 14, 2025” — the version repealed exactly a year later. There is no repeal marker and no currency date, and Cornell’s chapter index still lists the section under its former title rather than “Advertising Teams”.
A researcher landing there would take away a size test in the wrong instrument, in narrower terms than the law now uses.
How current is this?
The advertising statute was last amended by the 2025 Act effective 1 October 2025; the team rule took effect 14 February 2026. Two bills in the 2026 session amend the same statutory section but reproduce the advertising subsection verbatim and unchanged, so the advertising law is unaffected either way.
State law vs. the NAR Code
No Alabama rule restricts designations such as GRI, CRS or ABR, or the term REALTOR®. Those are association and trademark matters, enforced by contract rather than by the Commission.
Sources: Ala. Code §§ 34-27-2(a), 34-27-3, 34-27-36(a)(6), (a)(15), 34-27-39 (added by Act 2025-380, eff. 1 Oct. 2025); Ala. Admin. Code rr. 790-X-1-.05(2), 790-X-1-.15, 790-X-2-.05, 790-X-3-.15(12), 790-X-3-.16 (Advertising Teams, repealed and replaced eff. 14 Feb. 2026); Alabama Real Estate Commission advertising guidance (Nov. 2025), legal note of June 2019, Act summary, FAQ and newsletters; NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against the Alabama Legislative Services Agency's published administrative code and the Legislature's enrolled act text, September 2026.
What does your state actually require?
Pick a state. Every answer is taken from the current rule text and checked against that state’s own statute and regulations — not from a template, and not from the regulator’s summary of its own rules, which is wrong in twenty-six jurisdictions.
Company name, bigger than everything else
Alabama wants the company name larger than your name, your number and your logo — a proportion that quietly breaks the moment a signature is retyped on a phone. Autograph builds it once, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and sets up your iPhone by QR code so the sizes hold.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
How large does the company name have to be in Alabama?
Larger than everything else. The statute defines “prominently” as a font size “equal to or larger than any other name, text, or logo” in the advertisement — so bigger than your own name, your phone number and your logo — with a carve-out only for terms like “for sale” or “for lease”. It is the strictest concrete size test in this comparison.
Do I have to include my own name?
No. Alabama requires the company or qualifying broker’s name, not yours. The Commission states that a licensee’s name “does not have to be on their individual ad”. If you do include it, you must use your legal surname, with any nickname registered on your licence application.
Does Alabama require my license number in advertising?
No. The phrase appears nowhere in the advertising statute, the team rule, or the Commission’s twenty-page advertising guidance.
Which rule governs Alabama advertising?
None — it is a statute, § 34-27-36(a)(15). There is no general licensee advertising rule in the administrative code; the only advertising rule there governs teams. And the size test that used to sit in a rule was moved into the statute in October 2025 and the rule repealed, so citing the rule for it is now doubly wrong.
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