Massachusetts Real Estate Advertising Rules (254 CMR 3.00(9)) — Salespeople May Not Advertise Alone
Massachusetts has the shortest advertising rule in this series — three requirements, no size rule, no team rule. It also has the bluntest prohibition: salespeople may not advertise under their own name, full stop. And the Board’s own guidance cites its own regulation by numbers that do not exist.
Step by step
Include the real estate broker's name
254 CMR 3.00(9)(a), and this is the whole affirmative requirement: “All advertisements shall include the name of the real estate broker.”
For an incorporated brokerage, use the entity name
The Board’s own interpretation goes further than the text: where there is a corporate entity, that entity or its properly filed d/b/a must appear. Naming only the broker of record for a licensed entity “runs afoul of this rule.” Note this is Board interpretation rather than regulation text.
Disclose affirmatively that you are a broker
The same subsection: no broker may advertise “unless he/she affirmatively discloses that he/she is a real estate broker.” As in Michigan, it must be stated, not merely implied.
Or skip the manual setup
Autograph designs the signature on your Mac and installs it into Apple Mail in one click — images hosted at permanent URLs, assigned to the right account, and re-applied automatically when a macOS update or iCloud sync wipes it.
Download freeUnlock Pro — one-time, no subscriptionNever let contact details be the whole advertisement
The blind-ad prohibition names email directly: no broker shall advertise “where only a post office box number, telephone, facsimile, electronic mail number or street address appears.”
Salespeople: do not advertise under your own name
3.00(9)(b) is titled “Salespersons Prohibited From Advertising” and reads: “Salespeople are prohibited from advertising the purchase, sale, rental or exchange of any real property under their own name.” Blunter than any equivalent in this series — and 3.00(6) adds that a salesperson “shall not conduct his own real estate business.”
Skip the license number
Verified: “license number” appears in the regulation three times — reporting affiliates to the Board, and on the agency disclosure and dual-agency consent forms. Never in advertising.
Do not size anything — there is no rule to satisfy
Unusually, Massachusetts imposes no prominence or size requirement at all. The words “prominent”, “font” and “size” do not appear in the advertising subsection, and “conspicuous” appears only in the rules on displaying your licence in the office and on open-house agency disclosure.
The Board miscites its own regulation
The rule is 254 CMR 3.00(9) — subsection (9) of section 3.00. There is no such thing as “254 CMR 3.09”.
Yet the Board’s own FAQ and guidance letter cite “254 CMR 3.09(a) and (b)”, “3.10(a)”, “3.04”, “3.08” and “3.11(d)” — every one treating a subsection as a separate section. One page manages “254 Code Mass. Regs. § 3.0010(c)”.
And the Board’s escrow policy statement cites “252 CMR 3.10(a)” and “262 CMR 3.10” — two different wrong titles. 252 CMR is Landscape Architects. 262 CMR is Allied Mental Health.
The quoted language in the Board’s guidance is accurate. Only the citations are wrong — and because they propagate, “254 CMR 3.09” now appears across the trade press as though it were a real provision.
No team rule — and the Board says so itself
The word “team” appears zero times in the Board’s regulations and zero times in the governing statute. Unusually, we do not have to infer the negative — the Board states it on its live FAQ:
“Currently there are no rules or regulations specifically pertaining to ‘Teams’ and advertising requirements. Many states have begun introducing laws and regulations specific to teams as it is becoming a more prevalent practice.”
What does reach a team is indirect but firm: a team is not a broker, so team-branded advertising must still carry the brokerage’s name, and the salesperson prohibition still applies.
There is no one-click rule in Massachusetts
Several states in this series allow a link to satisfy disclosure where a medium is cramped — Georgia, Ohio, Colorado and Illinois all have versions of it. Massachusetts does not. A Board-approved continuing-education course on advertising compliance states it flatly: “There is NO one click rule.”
The “one-click” and “reasonable and readily apparent” formulations people cite here come from NAR’s Standard of Practice 12-5 — a membership standard, not Massachusetts law. The Board was asked about linking and declined to endorse it.
Does an email signature count?
Massachusetts does not define “advertising” anywhere in these regulations, and no binding text or Board advisory addresses email signatures.
Two things point toward coverage. The Board’s FAQ states that the prohibition on salespeople advertising “includes web pages”. And a Board-approved CE course lists “eMail & Text Message Marketing” among the methods of advertising covered by the rule. Neither is binding — the second is a private provider’s outline that the Board approved for credit, not an advisory.
So: a marketing email is advertising on any sensible reading and must carry the brokerage’s name. Whether a signature block on ordinary correspondence is one is not something Massachusetts has answered.
A rule from 2005, and a revision that never landed
This is one of the oldest rules in the series — the current version dates from 25 March 2005.
The Board approved a set of revisions in July 2025, described in its minutes as business-friendly changes across five of its regulations. But approval by the Board is only the internal step. A sweep of the Secretary of the Commonwealth’s public-review notices — 558 notices from January 2023 to August 2026 — found no notice for 254 CMR at all, while sibling licensing boards do appear there. The revisions were never put out for public review, and the Board’s own site still links the 2005 text.
So if you read that Massachusetts “recently revised” its advertising rules: it did not. And one genuine 2025 change — the broker-fee law effective 1 August 2025 — contains no advertising provision whatsoever.
An exception worth recording, after five states where it was stale or corrupted: Cornell’s copy of this rule is accurate, and renders the subsection numbering correctly as (9).
State law vs. the NAR Code
Massachusetts law here is genuinely minimal, so most of what agents believe they must do comes from elsewhere. The firm-name-in-a-“reasonable and readily apparent manner” standard and the state-of-licensure-on-websites requirement are NAR Standards of Practice 12-5 and 12-9. Equal Housing Opportunity logo sizing is HUD, under federal advertising guidance — the Massachusetts rule bars discriminatory advertising but mandates no logo. One thing that is state law: under M.G.L. c. 112 § 87CCC, advertising that you are a broker or salesperson without a licence is punishable by a fine.
Sources: 254 CMR 2.00, 3.00 (Professional Standards of Practice, current version dated 25 Mar. 2005), 6.00, 7.00; M.G.L. c. 112 §§ 87PP–87DDD½ (esp. §§ 87RR, 87VV, 87CCC); Board of Registration FAQ and policy statements; Board minutes of 16 July 2025; Secretary of the Commonwealth notices of public review, Jan. 2023–Aug. 2026; NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against the regulation text published by mass.gov, 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.
In the broker's name, as it should be
Massachusetts requires advertising to go out in the brokerage’s name — and salespeople may not advertise under their own. Autograph builds the signature once with the brokerage properly named, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and sets up your iPhone by QR code.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
Can a salesperson advertise under their own name in Massachusetts?
No. The regulation’s own heading is “Salespersons Prohibited From Advertising”, and the text says salespeople “are prohibited from advertising the purchase, sale, rental or exchange of any real property under their own name.” A separate provision adds that a salesperson may not conduct their own real estate business. Advertising goes out in the broker’s name.
Is it 254 CMR 3.09 or 254 CMR 3.00(9)?
3.00(9). There is no section 3.09. The “3.09” form appears throughout the trade press because the Board’s own FAQ and guidance use it — along with several other miscitations, including two that point at entirely different CMR titles. The quoted language in that guidance is accurate; the citations are not.
Does Massachusetts have team advertising rules?
No, and the Board says so on its own FAQ: “Currently there are no rules or regulations specifically pertaining to ‘Teams’ and advertising requirements.” Claims that Massachusetts bans certain words in team names are misattributed — that material is not in the Board’s FAQ.
Is there a size rule for the brokerage name?
No. Massachusetts imposes no prominence or size requirement in advertising at all — the words “prominent”, “font” and “size” do not appear in the advertising subsection. That makes it one of the least prescriptive states in this series, and it is also why your brokerage’s own policy will usually be the real constraint.
The Apple Mail Signature Fix Kit
A free checklist: why Apple Mail signatures vanish after macOS updates, the iCloud sync gotcha that wipes them, and how to make your images render in Gmail and Outlook. Straight to your inbox.