Pennsylvania Real Estate Email Signature Rules (Your Broker's Phone Number Is Required)
Pennsylvania is the only state in this series that requires your employing broker’s telephone number, not just their name — and case law says it must actually reach the brokerage. It also has no team advertising rule, despite a widely-circulated one that has sat unadopted since 2015.
Step by step
Include your employing broker's business name
49 Pa. Code § 35.305(c): an advertisement by an associate broker or salesperson “shall contain the business name and telephone number of the employing broker.” The brokerage itself must advertise only under “the business name designated on their license” (§ 35.305(a)).
Include the broker's telephone number — and make sure it reaches them
This is Pennsylvania’s distinctive requirement, and it has been litigated. The Commonwealth Court has upheld enforcement against advertisements whose listed number rang the agent rather than the brokerage. A number that reaches only you does not satisfy the rule.
Match the sizes exactly
§ 35.305(c) closes with: “The names and telephone numbers shall be of equal size.” Note the phrasing — equal, not ‘at least equal’. (See the drafting wrinkle below.)
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A verified negative: “license number” appears in Pennsylvania’s real estate regulations exactly once, in the rule governing broker price opinions, and once in the statutory counterpart. Nothing requires it in advertising.
Register your nickname before you advertise it
§ 35.305(b): licensees who wish to use and advertise a nickname for their first name “shall include the nickname on their licensure applications or biennial renewal applications.” Advertising an unregistered nickname carries a penalty of $250 for a first offence.
Do not style yourself above your licence class
RELRA § 301 makes it unlawful to “advertise or hold himself out as engaging in or conducting the business, or acting in the capacity of” a broker without being licensed as one. A salesperson may not present as a broker.
Claim only associations you belong to
RELRA § 604(a)(4) reaches “any misleading or untruthful advertising, or using any other trade name or insignia or membership in any real estate association or organization, of which the licensee is not a member.” That is the state-law hook on REALTOR® and similar marks.
Pennsylvania has no team advertising rule
You will find “Pennsylvania team rules” stating that a team must be named after a licensee on the team, that every member must be named in each advertisement, and that unlicensed staff may not appear as team members.
None of that is law. It comes from a proposed § 35.309 in an exposure draft circulated in 2015. Eleven years later it has still never been published as a proposed rulemaking and has never been submitted to the Independent Regulatory Review Commission — so it has not cleared even the first procedural gate.
The word “team” appears zero times in the whole of 49 Pa. Code Chapter 35 and zero times in the licensing Act. There is no § 35.309; the advertising sections run 35.301 to 35.308.
What actually governs a Pennsylvania team advertisement today is the ordinary set: the brokerage advertises only under its licensed business name, nicknames must be registered, the employing broker’s name and phone must appear at equal size, and nothing may be misleading.
The same unadopted draft is the source of another circulating error — that the broker’s name must be “at least as large” as the agent’s. The adopted regulation says “of equal size”.
A genuine inconsistency in Pennsylvania's own books
Worth knowing, because it cuts both ways. The regulation at § 35.305(c) says the names and telephone numbers “shall be of equal size”. But the Commonwealth’s civil-penalty schedule describes the same violation as failing to include the broker’s details “in at least equal size as” the licensee’s.
“At least equal” is a floor; “equal” is strict equality. The regulation controls — the schedule is a penalty table, not a source of the duty — and we found no adjudication resolving which is enforced in practice. Setting them the same size satisfies both readings.
Does an email signature count?
Here Pennsylvania is genuinely quiet, and it is worth being straight about that.
The Commission has published no guidance naming email. The Pennsylvania Association of REALTORS® reads the rule as reaching every medium — its guidance says the requirement applies “no matter where you are advertising” — and reports disciplinary action over a social media advertisement lacking the employing broker’s information. That is a well-informed trade-association reading, and it is the prudent one to follow. It is not a Commission statement, and anyone presenting it as one is overstating the source.
How old is this rule?
Older than most. The last substantive amendment to Pennsylvania’s real estate advertising law took effect on 20 August 2005. The 2024 statutory amendments people sometimes cite are about wholesaling and a cemetery-company exclusion; the December 2025 rulemaking added broker price opinions and amended definitions. None touched the advertising sections.
A general-revisions package that would add team rules and change “equal size” to “at least equal in size” is still working through drafting as of mid-2026. It is worth watching — but it is not law, and it has been not-law for over a decade.
State law vs. the NAR Code
Pennsylvania’s rule is enforced by the State Real Estate Commission against your licence, with civil penalties of $250 for a first offence and $500 for a second on each advertising provision. NAR’s Standard of Practice 12-5 is a membership obligation enforced by your association, and its “reasonable and readily apparent manner” standard neither adds the phone-number requirement nor the equal-size rule. Meeting Pennsylvania’s rule is the harder task.
Sources: 49 Pa. Code §§ 35.301, 35.304, 35.305 (last amended eff. 20 Aug. 2005), 35.501; 49 Pa. Code § 43b.8 (civil penalties); Real Estate Licensing and Registration Act, 63 P.S. §§ 455.201, 455.301, 455.604; Campo v. State Real Estate Commission, 723 A.2d 260 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1998); D'Alonzo v. State Real Estate Commission, 702 A.2d 1102 (Pa. Cmwlth. 1997); State Real Estate Commission minutes 2025–2026; NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against the Pennsylvania Code and Bulletin, 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.
Broker's name and number, at matching size
Pennsylvania wants your employing broker’s name and telephone number at the same size as your own — exactly the detail that collapses when 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.
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Does Pennsylvania really require my broker's phone number in my signature?
The rule requires an advertisement by an associate broker or salesperson to contain the employing broker’s business name and telephone number, at equal size to your own. The Commonwealth Court has upheld enforcement where the number listed reached the agent rather than the brokerage — so it must be a number that actually reaches the broker.
Does Pennsylvania have team advertising rules?
No. The rules widely attributed to Pennsylvania come from a proposed § 35.309 in a 2015 exposure draft that has never been published as a proposed rulemaking and has never reached the Independent Regulatory Review Commission. The word “team” does not appear anywhere in Chapter 35.
Does Pennsylvania require my license number in advertising?
No. The phrase appears in Pennsylvania’s real estate rules only in the broker-price-opinion provisions. There is no licence-number-in-advertising requirement.
Is my email signature an advertisement under Pennsylvania law?
The rule does not say. “Advertisement” is undefined, and email, internet, website and social media appear nowhere in the advertising sections — the rule is simply medium-neutral. The state REALTOR® association reads it as covering every medium, which is the prudent view, but the Commission itself has published nothing naming email.
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