Arkansas Real Estate Advertising Rules (Rule 10.5) — Where the Rule Ends and the Guidance Begins
Arkansas’s advertising rule is three subsections long and mandates exactly one element — the firm’s name. Its trigger is also narrower than any other state’s: it attaches to advertising a property or displaying a sign, not to every communication. Nearly everything else you will read as an “Arkansas requirement” is guidance phrased in should.
Step by step
Include the firm's name when advertising a property or posting a sign
Rule 10.5(a): a licensee may not advertise any property — including their own — for sale or rent, or display a real estate sign, “without including in that advertisement or sign the name of the firm with whom that licensee is licensed.”
Use the exact name the principal broker is licensed under
Rule 10.5(b): a principal broker and their licensees “shall not advertise or otherwise conduct real estate brokerage business under any name other than the name in which the principal broker’s license has been issued.” No abbreviations, no informal versions.
If you use your own name or number, make the connection obvious
Rule 10.5(c) is the provision that actually reaches a signature block: a principal broker “should not permit licensees to use individual names or telephone numbers, unless the licensee’s connection with the broker is obvious in the advertisement.”
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Verified: “license number” appears zero times anywhere in the Commission’s rules. Of thirty-one states checked, only California and Nevada require one in advertising.
Do not size anything — the rule has no size test
There is no prominence, relative-size or proximity requirement in Rule 10.5. Every such requirement circulating about Arkansas comes from the Commission’s best-practices guide, which uses “should” rather than “shall”.
Nothing else is mandated — not your name, not a phone, not an address
The firm name is the whole affirmative requirement. Arkansas does not require your own name, a telephone number, an address, or the principal broker’s personal name.
The narrowest trigger in the country
Every other state in this series writes its advertising duty around a medium or around advertising generally. Arkansas writes its around a property.
Rule 10.5(a) attaches when a licensee advertises any property for sale or rent, or displays a real estate sign. It does not say “all advertising”, and “advertising” is not defined anywhere in the Commission’s rules or in the licensing statute.
Read strictly, an email signature that mentions no property is not within 10.5(a) at all. What does reach it is 10.5(b) — you may not conduct business under any name but the licensed one — and 10.5(c), which asks that your connection with the broker be obvious wherever your individual name or number appears.
The practical answer is unchanged: put the firm’s name in your signature. But it is worth knowing that Arkansas’s rule is built differently, and that a good deal of advice about it assumes a breadth the text does not have.
Guidance is doing most of the work — and it goes further than the rule
Arkansas is the fifteenth state in this series where the regulator’s published guidance and its own rules do not match. Here the gap is unusually wide, and unusually easy to measure: the Commission’s advertising guide uses “should” 62 times and “shall” 17 times.
The rule (10.5(c)) says a principal broker “should not permit” licensees to use individual names or telephone numbers “unless the licensee’s connection with the broker is obvious”.
The guide says advertising “may not include a licensee’s name, telephone number, or other contact information unless the real estate firm name and contact information are also clearly included and displayed”.
Two changes, both material. A hortatory should becomes a prohibition — and a requirement for the firm’s contact information appears, which has no basis in the rule at all. The rule requires the firm’s name, nothing more.
The same guide is the source of the “equal or greater prominence” and “close proximity” standards attributed to Arkansas. Both are written as should. Following them is sensible; describing them as Arkansas requirements is not accurate.
Arkansas has no team rule
The word “team” appears zero times in the Commission’s rules — in the current edition and in the proposed one. Arkansas is the twelfth state in this series with no team rule.
What exists is a single line of guidance: team names, personal names and DBA names “should not be displayed in such a manner that they could be construed as a real estate firm name”. Sound advice, and consistent with 10.5(b) — but it is not a rule.
A renumbering that has not happened
Arkansas is moving its rules into the Code of Arkansas Rules format, under which Rule 10.5 becomes § 220-1004. The substance is unchanged apart from adding property management to the rule’s scope.
Two “advertising” provisions that are not yours
- Rule 15.4, “Auction advertisements” — requires auction advertisements that include real estate to disclose the firm’s name. It is the auctioneer rule, and it sits in the same rulebook.
- A subchapter of the Arkansas Code literally titled “ADVERTISING” — covering the filing of advertising materials and prohibited advertising. It is time-share law, in an entirely different title, and has nothing to do with licensee advertising.
Both are easy to land on and easy to misattribute. This is now the sixth state in the series where an adjacent regime supplies a plausible-looking but wrong advertising rule.
Cornell is unusable for Arkansas
Elsewhere in this series Cornell has been stale, corrupted, duplicated, or rendering repealed rules as live. Arkansas produces a new failure: it files the advertising rule under a 1996 filing docket number rather than its rule number, with no “current through” date at all. There is no way to tell from the page whether what you are reading is current. Use the Commission’s own published rulebook.
What the statute adds
Very little, and no content requirement. The licensing statute makes “advertising in a false, misleading, or deceptive manner” a ground for discipline, enforceable by citation with a $250 penalty. Every affirmative requirement is in the rule, not the statute.
State law vs. the NAR Code
No Arkansas rule restricts how a principal broker, executive broker or salesperson describes themselves in advertising. The only title-adjacent rule governs the physical office sign, which must bear “real estate”, “realty”, “REALTOR®”, “REALTIST” or another approved word. NAR’s Article 12 and your MLS’s attribution rules are contractual obligations enforced by those bodies, not by the Commission.
Sources: Arkansas Real Estate Commission Rules 7.3, 10.5 (Advertising), 10.6, 15.4 (auctions); Ark. Code Ann. §§ 17-42-103, 17-42-311(a)(10), 17-42-312(d); AREC Advertising Best Practices Guide (July 2025) and 8-and-10 Quick Reference Guide; proposed 17 CAR § 220-1004 (comment closed 11 May 2026, not adopted); NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against the Commission's own published rulebook, 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.
The firm's name, in the licensed form
Arkansas wants the firm’s name exactly as the principal broker is licensed — no abbreviations, no informal version. Autograph builds the signature once with it set correctly, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and sets up your iPhone by QR code.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
Does Arkansas require the firm's name in my email signature?
The rule requires it when you advertise a property or display a sign. An email signature that mentions no property is arguably outside that trigger — but Rule 10.5(c) separately asks that your connection with your broker be obvious wherever your individual name or telephone number appears. Including the firm’s name settles both, which is why we recommend it.
Does the firm's name have to be a certain size or near my name?
Not under the rule. Rule 10.5 contains no prominence, size or proximity requirement of any kind. The “equal or greater prominence” and “close proximity” standards come from the Commission’s best-practices guide, which is written in “should” — it uses that word 62 times against 17 uses of “shall”.
Does Arkansas require my license number in advertising?
No. The phrase appears nowhere in the Commission’s rules. The only licence number in the statute belongs on a citation the Commission issues to a licensee — a disciplinary document, not an advertisement.
Does Arkansas have team advertising rules?
No. The word “team” appears nowhere in the rules, current or proposed. There is one line of guidance saying a team name should not be displayed so as to be construed as a firm name — sensible, and consistent with the rule that you may not operate under any name but the licensed one, but not itself a rule.
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