Virginia Real Estate Email Signature Rules — Rewritten 1 April 2026 (What Changed)
Virginia replaced its entire advertising regulation on 1 April 2026. The one-click rule, the city-and-state disclosure, the business-card rule and the list of prohibited acts were all struck. What replaced them is short — and unusually, it hands much of the detail to your broker.
Step by step
Display your firm's licensed name, clearly and legibly
18VAC135-20-190.A: all advertising must be “under the direct supervision of the principal broker or supervising broker, in the name of the firm… The firm’s licensed name must be clearly and legibly displayed on all advertising.” The licensed name — a fictitious or trade name has to be registered with the State Corporation Commission first.
Add the advertising disclosure: firm name plus office contact information
18VAC135-20-190.B.1: all advertising by a firm or affiliated licensee must contain “a clear, legible, and conspicuous advertising disclosure, which must include (i) the firm’s name and (ii) the office contact information.”
Ask your broker what “office contact information” means — genuinely
This is what makes Virginia different. The same subsection continues: “The office contact information and any additional required information will be specified by the principal or supervising broker in the firm’s written policies.” The regulation does not fix the content. Your broker does.
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 subscriptionKnow what counts as contact information
The definition bounds the discretion: “Contact information” means “telephone number, email address, or web address of the firm or branch office, or a digital link thereto when used in digital advertising.” So in an email signature a link to the firm’s details is expressly contemplated.
Skip the license number
A verified negative. “License number” appears in Virginia’s real estate regulations and statutes only in reinstatement, termination-reporting and branch-office-renewal contexts. Nothing requires it in advertising.
Advertise under your broker's policies
B.2: “All advertising by an affiliated licensee must be done under the policies of a principal or supervising broker.” Since “affiliated licensee” is defined to include a real estate team, this reaches team branding too.
Keep property information current
B.3 and B.4 require property information to be consistent with the property’s condition and current contract status, and updated in a timely manner on any material change — and where a third party controls the advertising, you must make a timely written request for changes.
What was repealed on 1 April 2026
The old 18VAC135-20-190 was detailed and prescriptive. It was struck in its entirety and replaced with performance standards. These requirements no longer exist:
- The “one click away” rule. The old subsection C required electronic advertising viewable as a separate unit — it named “email messages and web pages” — to carry disclosure on the main page or no more than one click away. Repealed.
- The city-and-state requirement. The old definition of “disclosure” for electronic media required the firm’s licensed name plus the city and state of the office. Repealed.
- The business-card rule and the for-sale sign rule, each specifying required contents. Repealed.
- The list of five prohibited advertising acts. Repealed.
The Board’s own final statement describes the change as replacing requirements “specific to electronic media advertising, signs, and business cards, with less prescriptive performance standards.”
Note carefully: repealed from the advertising rule is not the same as gone. The duty to disclose in writing that you are a licensee when you own the property, for instance, survives separately in the Code of Virginia as a disclosure to the parties — it is simply no longer an advertising requirement.
The most authoritative-looking source is the wrong one
DPOR’s own downloadable regulations PDF still contains the repealed text. It is stamped “Last Updated October 1, 2022” and still carries the one-click rule, the “Viewable page” definition and the business-card requirements.
Cornell’s Legal Information Institute serves the November 2015 version.
This is the trap: the agency’s own handout looks more authoritative than anything else you will find, and it is currently five months out of date. Use Virginia’s official law publisher, and check that the historical note reads “Volume 42, Issue 14, eff. April 1, 2026.”
Is an email signature advertising in Virginia?
Yes, though there is no longer a rule aimed at email specifically. The definition — also new on 1 April 2026 — is broad and simple: “Advertising” means “all communication disseminated through any medium to consumers for any purpose related to licensed real estate activity.”
So the analysis is: your signature is advertising; it must show the firm’s licensed name clearly and legibly, plus a clear, legible and conspicuous disclosure of the firm’s name and office contact information — in whatever form your broker’s written policy specifies.
Teams need a licence, not just a name
Virginia is stricter than most here, and it is statutory rather than regulatory. A real estate team is defined in the Code as two or more individuals who work together as a unit within the same firm, hold themselves out to the public as one unit, and designate themselves by a fictitious name. And § 54.1-2106.1(D): no such group “shall act as a real estate team without first obtaining a business entity salesperson’s license from the Board.” The fictitious name must also be registered with the State Corporation Commission.
What we could not find is any rule on team-name composition — no relative-size requirement against the firm name, and no banned words. The Code does direct the Board to establish naming standards for business entity salespersons, but we could not locate such a standard in the current regulations. Treat that as an open gap rather than as settled permission.
State law vs. the NAR Code
Virginia’s rule is the enforceable one, and it is now unusually deferential to your brokerage. NAR’s Standard of Practice 12-5 separately requires REALTOR® members to disclose the firm’s name in any medium “in a reasonable and readily apparent manner” — owed to your association rather than to the Real Estate Board. Your MLS agreement may also be stricter than the regulation, particularly on listing-status accuracy, which the new B.3 and B.4 now cover as well.
Sources: 18VAC135-20-190 (Advertising by licensees), as rewritten eff. 1 April 2026 (Va. Register Vol. 42, Iss. 14); 18VAC135-20-10 (definitions), -20, -45, -260, -300; Va. Code §§ 54.1-2100, 54.1-2105, 54.1-2106.1, 54.1-2110.1, 54.1-2138.1, 54.1-2138.2; Virginia Real Estate Board final agency statement (Action 6446); NAR 2026 Code of Ethics. Verified against Virginia's official law publisher and the Virginia Register, 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.
Whatever your broker's policy says, once
Virginia now leaves the detail to your firm’s written policy — which means one approved signature, used everywhere. Autograph builds it, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and sets up your iPhone by QR code so the approved version is the one that sends from every device.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
Do I still need the city and state of my office in my Virginia email signature?
No. That requirement came from the old electronic-media disclosure definition, which was repealed effective 1 April 2026. What you need now is the firm’s licensed name plus “office contact information” — and the content of that is set by your broker’s written policies, not by the regulation.
Is the “one click away” rule still in force in Virginia?
No — it was repealed on 1 April 2026 along with the rest of the electronic-media subsection. It is still widely cited, including in DPOR’s own downloadable regulations PDF, which is stamped October 2022 and has not been updated.
Does Virginia require my license number in advertising?
No. The phrase appears in Virginia’s real estate regulations and statutes only in reinstatement, termination-reporting and branch-renewal contexts — never as an advertising requirement.
Why does my broker get to decide what goes in my signature?
Because the rewritten rule says so. 18VAC135-20-190.B.1 requires the firm’s name and the office contact information, then states that the contact information “and any additional required information will be specified by the principal or supervising broker in the firm’s written policies.” Virginia deliberately moved from prescription to broker-set policy, so your firm’s written policy is the operative document.
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.