Indiana Real Estate Advertising Rules (876 IAC 8-1-8) — One Requirement, With a Safe Harbour
Indiana asks for one thing: the broker company’s name, clearly visible — not your managing broker’s. And it is the only state in this series to write the limited-display safe harbour into state law, where everyone else leaves it to NAR’s membership code.
Step by step
Include the broker company's name — not your managing broker's
876 IAC 8-1-8(a): any display, classified advertising, signs, Internet advertising or business cards carrying a broker’s name “must contain the name of the broker company with whom the broker is associated, and said broker company’s name must be clearly visible.” Nothing requires the managing broker to be named.
Use the licensed name or the publicly known name
(b) and (c) both allow the broker company’s name “either as it appears on the broker company’s license… or by its publicly known name.” That latitude is unusual — most states in this series require the registered name specifically.
Do not size anything — the standard is “clearly visible”
There is no font-size, ratio or percentage requirement for the broker company’s name. A size rule does exist elsewhere in the same administrative title — but it governs appraisers, not brokers.
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Download freeUnlock Pro — one-time, no subscriptionAdvertise under the broker company's supervision and name
The rest of (a): “All advertising shall be under the direct supervision and in the name of the broker company.”
Skip the license number
Verified: “license number” appears zero times in the whole of Indiana’s real estate licensing statute, and nowhere in the advertising rule. Of thirty states checked, only California and Nevada require one.
Do not let contact details be the whole advertisement
(e): “Advertising where only a post office box number, telephone number, or street address appears shall not be used.” And (d) bars advertising in a manner indicating the property is offered by a private party not in the real estate business.
Do not call yourself a salesperson
Indiana abolished the salesperson licence on 1 July 2014. Every individual licensee is now a “broker”, and “managing broker” is a role rather than a licence class. No rule bans the word — but since the class no longer exists, using it is inaccurate, and inaccurate advertising is separately actionable.
The safe harbour Indiana wrote into law
Most states in this series say nothing about cramped formats, and agents rely on NAR’s Standard of Practice 12-5, which exempts “electronic displays of limited information”. That is a membership standard, not law — and in Oklahoma, for instance, no such exemption exists in the state rule at all.
Indiana codified it. 876 IAC 8-1-8(c):
An email signature almost certainly does not qualify. It is not an electronic display of limited information in the sense the rule describes, it has no character limit to plead, and there is no obvious “linked display”. Put the broker company’s name in.
Where the licence-number myth comes from — and this is the closest call yet
876 IAC 3-2-9 sits in the same administrative title as the broker advertising rule. It is titled “Use of titles”, and it is literally a signature-block rule: an Indiana licensed or certified appraiser must include, with their signature on an appraisal report or correspondence about one, their designation and licence number.
It is an appraiser rule, limited to appraisal reports and related correspondence. It has nothing to do with broker advertising or with email generally. But it is the single most plausible source of a belief that “Indiana requires your licence number in your signature” — because for one profession, in one context, it does.
This is the fifth state in this series where the licence-number myth traces to a real rule one board over — and the first where that rule is about signature blocks specifically. Indiana adds a second vector too: auctioneers must post an on-site sign carrying every auctioneer’s name and licence number, and auctioneers may sell real estate at auction.
One more distinction worth keeping straight: Indiana does require your licence to be displayed at your place of business. That is a wall, not an advertisement.
The rule you were probably looking for was repealed
Indiana restructured its real estate rules effective 1 July 2014, and the advertising rule moved from 876 IAC 1-1-26 to 876 IAC 8-1-8. All of the old Article 1 Rule 1 is now repealed or expired.
Two traps follow. First, 876 IAC 1-1-25 — a number that circulates as the advertising rule — was never about advertising at all; it concerned the investigation of escrow and trust accounts, and it is repealed regardless.
Second, and worse: Cornell renders repealed Indiana rules as though they were live. We checked two. Both display full rule text with a plausible-looking history note and no section-level repeal marker — the word “Repealed” appears only on the parent breadcrumb, which is easy to miss entirely. A researcher landing on such a page has no signal that the rule ceased to exist twelve years ago.
Cornell’s text of the current rule, for what it is worth, is accurate.
Indiana has no team rule at all
The word “team” appears zero times in Indiana’s real estate licensing statute, and nowhere in the article governing broker company operations. It is the tenth state in this series with no team rule.
Its only appearance in the Commission’s rules is as a teaching topic in the managing-broker curriculum — “team concept”, covering compensation and the potential for confusion regarding agency. That is a required course subject, not a requirement on team names.
You will see it said that “teams are not recognised by Indiana licence law”. That is directionally right but it is a characterisation of silence, not a citation: no provision recognises teams and none prohibits them. What actually constrains an Indiana team name is the ordinary rule — the broker company’s name, clearly visible, with all advertising in the company’s name and under its supervision.
Does an email signature count?
Indiana neither names email nor excludes it. The word appears zero times in the licensing statute, and — unusually — there is no definition of “advertising” anywhere in the Commission’s rules. The rule names display, classified advertising, signs, Internet advertising, business cards, television and radio, and then thumbnails, text messages and tweets in the safe harbour. Email is in none of those lists.
The nearest official signal is indirect: the managing-broker curriculum requires an hour on advertising covering “personal advertising by agents and disclosure of relationship with managing broker/company” and “Internet advertising using websites, social media, widgets, apps, etc.” — a broad conception of self-promotion, but email is still not listed.
A state where there is no guidance to be wrong
In ten of the thirty states in this series, the regulator publishes guidance that contradicts its own rules. Indiana is the first where the regulator publishes no advertising guidance at all — no FAQ, no newsletter, no handbook, and no agency-guidance documents on file for this rule.
That cuts both ways. There is no wrong official gloss to correct — but there is also nothing official to lean on, and questions the rule does not answer stay unanswered. Your managing broker’s policy will usually be the operative document.
Three rules in the same title are called “Advertising”
Worth knowing before you search: Indiana’s administrative title contains an advertising rule for brokers (876 IAC 8-1-8, yours), one for real estate schools, and one for appraisers. Only the first governs licensee advertising.
How current is this?
876 IAC 8-1-8 has not been substantively amended since it took effect on 1 July 2014. It was readopted in 2020 and again in 2024, but readoption under Indiana’s rule-review process does not change the text. Nothing pending touches it — the live rulemaking in this title concerns appraiser rules, a licence-renewal fee, and a disclosure form.
The genuinely new 2024–2026 obligations lie elsewhere: written listing and buyer-agency agreements with a definite expiration date (from July 2024), and a 2026 duty on a broker company to disclose potential referral compensation in writing at the time of a referral. Neither is an advertising or signature requirement.
Sources: 876 IAC 8-1-8 (Advertising requirements; name of broker company; prohibitions; eff. 1 July 2014, readopted 2020 and 2024), 876 IAC 3-2-9, 876 IAC 5-2, 876 IAC 6-5-4, 876 IAC 7-3-3; Ind. Code §§ 25-34.1-1-2, 25-34.1-3-4.1, 25-34.1-4-2, 25-34.1-10-18, 25-34.1-12, 25-1-11-5(a)(1)(C); 812 IAC 1-1-39 (auctioneers, for contrast); NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against the Indiana General Assembly's published statutes and the 2026 Indiana Administrative Code, 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 company name, clearly visible
Indiana asks for the broker company’s name where a reader will see it — and the safe harbour for cramped formats does not stretch to an email signature. Autograph builds it once, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and sets up your iPhone by QR code.
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Whose name has to appear — my managing broker's or the company's?
The broker company’s. 876 IAC 8-1-8(a) requires the name of the broker company you are associated with, clearly visible. Nothing in the rule requires your managing broker to be named personally. You may use either the name on the company’s licence or its publicly known name.
Does Indiana require my license number in advertising?
No. The phrase appears nowhere in the licensing statute or the advertising rule. The likely source of the confusion sits in the same administrative title: an appraiser rule that requires a licence number in the signature block on appraisal reports. It is a different profession and a different context.
Is there an exemption for short posts or thumbnails?
Yes, and unusually it is in state law rather than NAR’s code. Where including the broker company’s name “is not practical in electronic displays of limited information (such as thumbnails, text messages, and tweets)”, it may be omitted — provided the display links to one that includes it. An email signature almost certainly does not qualify: no character limit, no linked display.
Does Indiana have team advertising rules?
No. The word “team” appears nowhere in the licensing statute or in the article governing broker companies — only as a teaching topic in the managing-broker curriculum. A team name is constrained by the ordinary rule: the broker company’s name must be clearly visible, and all advertising must be in the company’s name and under its supervision.
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