DC Real Estate Advertising Rules — Four Elements, a Phone Number, and Where They Go
DC is the only jurisdiction in this series that tells you where in the message the disclosure goes. It also asks for something neither Maryland nor Virginia does — the jurisdiction in which you hold a licence — and for a phone number its own newsletter forgets to mention, but which it has fined a licensee for omitting.
§ 2615 is the advertising rule. It names email, and it defines the “on-line disclosure” you must include.
§ 2609.6 sits in the Code of Ethics and adds the brokerage’s main telephone number — unconditionally, whenever your name is used in any advertisement. Almost nothing written about DC cites it. The Commission has imposed a $1,000 fine for breaching it.
Step by step
Include all four elements of the on-line disclosure
The defined term does the work here. An “on-line disclosure” is advertising containing the licensee’s name, the name of the firm with which the licensee is affiliated, the city and state in which the licensee’s office is located, and the jurisdiction in which the licensee holds a license. All four. The last one is the most-missed.
Add the brokerage’s main telephone number
§ 2609.6: a salesperson or associate broker “shall not knowingly permit the use of his or her name in any advertisement without the name of the brokerage company with whom he or she is affiliated, and the main telephone number of the brokerage company or branch office which serves as his or her regular place of employment”. Note “main” — your own direct line does not satisfy it. This is unconditional and it is enforced.
Put it at the beginning or the end of the message
§ 2615.6(b): “E-mail, newsgroups, discussion lists, and bulletin boards shall include an on-line disclosure at the beginning or end of each message.” That is a signature-block rule in all but name, and DC is the only jurisdiction in this comparison that prescribes position within an email.
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Download freeUnlock Pro — one-time, no subscriptionDo not try to satisfy it with a link
DC allows link-outs elsewhere and pointedly not here. A web page may carry the disclosure “or a link to” it, and banner advertisements may link out. § 2615.6(b) grants no link option for email. The disclosure has to be in the message.
Leave the licence number out
No licence-number display duty exists in either of the two relevant chapters. The claim leaks in from the agency disclosure form, which does carry a “Licensee & License #” field, and from the separate appraiser rules. Both are forms and filings, not advertising.
Know when the email rule does not apply — and when the other one still does
§ 2615.6(b) carries a genuine carve-out: it does not apply “to correspondence with persons with whom the licensee has already established a brokerage relationship and which are made in the ordinary course of business”. So the four-element disclosure bites on prospecting, not on routine client email. But § 2609.6 has no such exemption and applies to “any advertisement” — so the brokerage name and main phone number are the safe floor for every message.
The nickname ban was repealed in 2013
You will still find it asserted that DC forbids nicknames in advertising. The old § 2615.4 did read: “Individual licensees shall not use a nickname in any advertising medium.”
It has read “[RESERVED]” since 19 April 2013. The rulemaking that removed it says so in its own preamble — it “repeals a restriction on the use of nicknames in advertisements”. Nicknames are fine in DC.
DC against Maryland and Virginia
This matters more here than anywhere else in the series: agents routinely hold all three licences and use one signature across them. We read the Maryland and Virginia rules directly.
- Only DC asks where you are licensed. Maryland requires no location and no jurisdiction element at all. Virginia used to require the city and state of your place of business — and struck it in the rewrite effective 1 April 2026. DC is now the only one of the three requiring any geographic or licensure statement, which makes it exactly the line a tri-licensed agent’s single signature drops.
- Only DC’s phone requirement is unconditional. Maryland requires the broker’s phone only if you use an individual telephone number or email address — list neither and you escape it. Virginia now asks only for “office contact information”, which its definitions let you satisfy with an email address, a web address, or even a digital link. DC requires the brokerage’s main telephone number whenever your name appears, full stop.
- Only DC fixes the position within the message. Maryland’s positional rule targets the first 25 percent of the main page of an electronic advertisement. Virginia’s one-click rule — which expressly covered email messages — was repealed on 1 April 2026, leaving Virginia with no placement rule at all.
- DC has no team rule whatsoever. The word “team” does not appear in either chapter. Maryland has a highly prescriptive one, down to which four words may sit between a team name and the brokerage name. Virginia licenses teams as business entities.
The regulator’s own guidance understates its own rule
The Commission’s newsletter addressed this directly in 2025, reporting “an uptick in advertising that violates our requirements to fully disclose the name of the brokerage with whom a licensee is affiliated”.
That is correct as far as it goes, and it stops well short of the rules. The brokerage name is one element. The rules also require the brokerage’s main telephone number, your office city and state, and the jurisdiction of your licence. A licensee who did exactly what the newsletter said would still be in breach — and the two elements it omits are precisely the two that get missed.
This is an under-statement rather than a contradiction, which is why we have not counted DC among the jurisdictions whose guidance conflicts with their rules. It is still worth knowing that the regulator’s own summary is not a compliance checklist.
Three defects in the official text
- Two subsections are both numbered 2615.6 — the online-disclosure rule and the broker-title rule. Any citation to “17 DCMR § 2615.6” is ambiguous on its face, and no erratum has fixed it.
- A find-and-replace corrupted the definitions. A 2010 errata directed that “Board” be replaced with “Commission” wherever it appeared — at the level of the word. The definitions section now contains “Bulletin Commission System (BBS)”, “discussion Commission” and “message Commission”.
- The Commission’s own link to its rules is dead. The official meeting page links the words “license law” to a domain that no longer resolves at all. We checked it: the host does not exist.
There is also a naming mismatch worth knowing when you search: the statute still establishes a “Board of Real Estate”, the regulator has called itself the Real Estate Commission since 2009, and parts of the rules still refer to the Department of Consumer and Regulatory Affairs — an agency that no longer exists. Read that as DLCP, which absorbed its licensing functions.
The rules are old, and nothing is pending
The advertising rule dates from 2013 and has not been touched since — no proposed or emergency rulemaking has amended it. DC rules carry no expiry or periodic-review date; only emergency rules time out, at 120 days.
The Commission itself flagged the problem in 2018, listing “the expanding use of ‘Teams,’ and the increasing use of electronic communication and advertising” as something it “should actively review”. Eight years on, no team rule and no updated electronic-advertising rule has been adopted. A rulemaking subcommittee formed in 2025 has begun reviewing the statute and rules generally; nothing on advertising has been proposed.
One consequence of the rules’ age: § 2615.6 addresses IRC, ICQ, newsgroups and “Voice Over Net”, and says nothing at all about social media or SMS. Email, fortunately, is the one modern medium it names.
One thing we could not settle
What “the jurisdiction in which the licensee holds a license” means for an agent licensed in DC, Maryland and Virginia. The phrase is singular on its face; the sensible reading for a tri-licensed agent is to list all three. No DC source resolves it, and we would rather say so than invent a rule. Listing all three is the cautious course and costs you one line.
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.
Four elements, a phone number, in the right place
DC wants your name, your firm, your office city and state, your licence jurisdiction and the brokerage’s main phone number — at the beginning or end of every message, with no link allowed. Autograph builds it once, installs it into Apple Mail in one click, and can keep a separate version per account if you also work Maryland or Virginia.
Download Autograph free See the templatesCommon questions
What has to be in a DC agent’s email signature?
Five things, drawn from two separate rules: your name; your firm’s name; the city and state where your office is; the jurisdiction in which you hold a licence; and the brokerage or branch’s main telephone number. The first four are the defined “on-line disclosure” under the advertising rule; the phone number comes from the Code of Ethics rule that almost nothing written about DC cites.
Does DC require my licence number?
No. Neither of the two relevant chapters imposes a licence-number display duty. The confusion comes from the agency disclosure form, which does have a “Licensee & License #” field, and from the separate appraiser rules. Those are forms and filings, not advertising.
Where in the email does the disclosure have to go?
At the beginning or the end of each message — DC says so expressly, and it is the only jurisdiction in this series that prescribes position within an email. A footer signature satisfies it. A link does not: DC allows a link to the disclosure on a web page and in banner advertising, but grants no link option for email.
Can I use a nickname in DC?
Yes. DC did prohibit nicknames in advertising, and that rule was repealed on 19 April 2013 — the subsection has read “[RESERVED]” ever since, and the rulemaking that removed it said in terms that it was repealing the restriction. The claim still circulates.
I am licensed in DC, Maryland and Virginia. Can one signature work?
It can, but only if you build it to the DC standard, which is the strictest of the three on content. DC is now the only one requiring any geographic or licence-jurisdiction statement — Virginia struck its city-and-state requirement on 1 April 2026 and Maryland never had one — and DC’s brokerage phone requirement is unconditional where Maryland’s is conditional. Build for DC and you are comfortably inside both neighbours.
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