New Hampshire Real Estate Advertising Rules — Your Email Address Triggers the Broker's Phone Number
New Hampshire has the sharpest email-signature rule in this series, and almost nobody states it correctly. An advertisement containing your email address must also carry the name and telephone number of your principal broker or brokerage firm. Since every signature contains your email address, the condition is always met.
That matters because the rule is on a clock. Rea 404.05 expires on its own terms, its readoption is pending and running late, and the pending proposal would renumber it — at which point every “Rea 404.05” citation online dies at once. The statute does not expire and will not be renumbered.
Step by step
Use your legal name, or a reasonable derivative of it
RSA 331-A:16, IV(a) requires “the broker’s or salesperson’s legal name or reasonable derivative thereof”. New Hampshire is more relaxed than states that demand the exact licensed name — “Mike” for “Michael” is a reasonable derivative, and no registration is needed.
Name the firm — not your principal broker, unless the firm is licensed that way
The same subsection requires “the regular business name of the firm or the principal broker’s name when licensed under an individual principal broker license”, and it must be “clearly identifiable”. Note the condition. The administrative rule states the alternative without it, which reads as though you may always substitute the broker’s name — the statute says otherwise, and the statute governs. Name the firm unless your brokerage genuinely holds an individual principal broker licence.
Add your principal broker’s telephone number — your email address triggers it
IV(b) is the provision that catches New Hampshire signatures. Any advertising containing a home number, cell number, direct office number, electronic mail address, “or any other means of contacting directly an individual salesperson or broker, or a team of such licensees”, must also include “the name and telephone number of the individual principal broker or brokerage firm”. A signature block always contains your email address, so this always applies.
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Download freeUnlock Pro — one-time, no subscriptionThe broker’s email address will not do — it must be a telephone number
The statute says telephone number. Substituting the brokerage’s email address or website does not satisfy it. This is a real difference from Connecticut next door, which accepts a phone number or an email address.
Label every number in the block
The closing sentence of IV(b): “All such advertising shall contain language clearly identifying each number included in the advertising.” So “Cell:”, “Office:”, “Fax:” — a bare list of digits does not comply. We have not found an equivalent duty in any comparable state.
Do not try to satisfy this with a link
IV(c) does allow a link to a compliant web page — but only for “limited electronic media”, which the statute defines as media allowing only limited amounts of information: thumbnails, short posts, text messages. Email is not limited electronic media — it is named separately in IV(a) as a full medium. The information has to be in the signature.
Business stationery is named, so there is no argument to have
IV(a) applies “to all categories of advertising including all publications, radio or television broadcasts, all electronic media including electronic mail and the Internet, business stationery, business and legal forms and documents, and signs and billboards”.
Email and business stationery both. In many states whether a signature block is advertising is a genuine question; in New Hampshire it is settled twice over in one sentence.
The rule expires — and it has lapsed once already
New Hampshire rules run on a ten-year statutory clock. Rea 404.05 took effect on 18 June 2017, so it expires 18 June 2027 unless readopted.
Readoption is under way and running late. A notice was filed in early 2026 and the hearing was held in April 2026, but no final proposal had appeared in any rulemaking register through early September 2026. Under New Hampshire’s rulemaking statute, missing the 180-day final-proposal deadline causes the existing rule to expire thirty days after that deadline rather than surviving to 2027.
This is not hypothetical for this rule. Paragraph (b) already expired once — on 22 October 2016 — and New Hampshire had no “prominently include the brokerage name” rule at all until an interim rule restored it in February 2017.
Why you should not worry very much. If Rea 404.05 lapses, RSA 331-A:16, IV survives untouched and carries essentially the whole duty. You would lose the word “prominently” and the anti-FSBO framing, and keep everything that actually shapes a signature. That is precisely why this page cites the statute first.
The citation is about to change
The pending proposal renumbers the advertising rule from Rea 404.05 to Rea 403.05, as part of shifting the whole part. If it is adopted, every “Rea 404.05” reference — on the major mirrors, in course materials, in every existing write-up — becomes wrong on the same day.
We mention it because this series has now seen four states renumber their rules and watched the internet fail to notice in every single case.
No guidance at all, and a broken link to the rules
The Commission publishes no advertising guidance. Its FAQ does not contain the word. It has published ten declaratory rulings — on electronic signatures, commission sharing, supervision and more — and none on advertising. Its nine standing orders likewise.
So there is no guidance contradicting the rule here. There are two defects on the Commission’s own page, though. Its link to the rules chapter lands on a table of contents with no rule text and no links — a licensee following the regulator’s own link never reaches Rea 404.05. And a second entry is labelled with an effective date two adoptions out of date.
New Hampshire against Massachusetts and Connecticut
We read both neighbours’ rules and rejected the obvious candidates first. Naming email in the rule is not distinctive — Connecticut names it in both statute and regulation. Nor is a one-click allowance: Connecticut’s is stronger and applies to email itself. Nor is a team rule — Connecticut has a full team-registration regime where New Hampshire has one clause. What survives:
- The broker’s telephone number, specifically. Connecticut requires the supervising licensee’s “phone number or email address” — disjunctive, so an email address alone complies. Massachusetts requires no contact number at all; its only number rule runs the other way, forbidding advertisements showing only a box number, telephone, fax, email or street address.
- The labelling duty. Neither Massachusetts nor Connecticut requires you to identify what any number is.
One caution in the other direction, because agents crossing that border assume it applies: Connecticut has a font-size rule and New Hampshire does not. Connecticut requires the supervising licensee’s information in the same size font or larger. New Hampshire has no size or proportion requirement anywhere — only “clearly identifiable” in the statute and “prominently” in the rule.
What the internet gets wrong about New Hampshire
- “Naming your broker is enough.” The single most-missed requirement is the broker’s telephone number, and the second is labelling each number. Even the better write-ups state the name requirement accurately and omit both.
- “You must include your licence number.” False. The phrase appears nowhere in the advertising statute or rule. In the rules it turns up only on the licence certificate, the letter of good standing and application forms — documents, not advertising.
- “Just link to your website, like on social.” The link substitute is confined to limited electronic media as statutorily defined. Email is expressly a full medium.
- “Rea 404 — Advertisements and Surety Bonds.” That title comes from a 1993 filing and has been dead for years; the part contains no surety-bond section.
- The mirrors present Rea 404.05 as settled with no notice of the pending renumbering or the expiry exposure — though one of them does, unusually, report the June 2027 expiration date correctly, which is more than most sources manage.
It is enforced
Two recent Commission matters turned on this. One 2026 final order took as an issue for hearing whether the respondent violated RSA 331-A:16, IV(b) — arising from a rental advertisement on a social marketplace. In an earlier matter the respondent “admitted that the allegation of failing to include necessary broker info on an advertisement was regrettably accurate”. This is not a dormant provision.
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.
Broker's name, broker's number, every label
New Hampshire wants your firm’s name, your principal broker’s name and telephone number, and every number in the block labelled — all because your signature carries your email address. Autograph builds it once and installs it into Apple Mail in one click.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
What must a New Hampshire agent’s email signature contain?
Four things: your legal name or a reasonable derivative of it; your firm’s regular business name; and — because your signature contains your email address — the name and telephone number of your principal broker or brokerage firm. Fourth, every number in the block has to be labelled by type, so “Cell:” and “Office:” rather than a bare list of digits.
Why does my email address trigger the broker’s phone number?
Because the statute says so in terms. RSA 331-A:16, IV(b) lists the things that trigger the duty — a home number, cell number, direct office number, electronic mail address, or any other means of contacting you directly — and provides that such advertising “shall also include the name and telephone number of the individual principal broker or brokerage firm”. Since a signature block always carries your email address, the trigger is always pulled.
Can I use the brokerage’s email address instead of its phone number?
No. The statute specifies a telephone number, and there is no alternative. This is a real difference from Connecticut, which accepts the supervising licensee’s phone number or email address — so a signature built for Connecticut will not satisfy New Hampshire.
Does New Hampshire require my licence number?
No. The phrase appears nowhere in the advertising statute or the advertising rule. Licence numbers show up in New Hampshire’s rules only on the licence certificate, on a letter of good standing, and on application forms — documents you file or hold, not something you display in advertising.
I heard the New Hampshire advertising rule is expiring. Is that right?
The administrative rule is, yes — New Hampshire rules run on a ten-year clock and Rea 404.05 reaches its date in June 2027, with readoption pending and behind schedule. It has lapsed once before, in 2016. But this matters less than it sounds: RSA 331-A:16, IV is a statute, it does not expire, and it carries essentially the whole duty. That is why this page cites the statute first. The pending readoption would also renumber the rule, which will break every existing citation to it.
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