Today we’re talking about the upcoming TREC mandate regarding advertising rules. As you may have heard there has been a lot of discussion about these rules and they go hard and mandatory on May 15th.

Which, as a compliance and contracts nerd, I love because that’s my birthday! So this is like an early birthday present for me, getting to talk to you about these issues.

As you probably know, here at All City, we’re big believers in a collaborative agent world where brokers and agents share information where information and knowledge can crossover broker boundaries so that we’re all the best agents that we can be. We’re all fiduciaries to our clients at the highest possible level. Let’s quickly go over the big points of these new TREC rules.

First of all, if you are an individual agent and your marketing platform is Suzy Smith, I’m with ABC Realtors, and that’s how you advertise things. Making sure that your broker name is the proper size, which is 50% of the largest contact information on any consumer-facing advertising, you’re in great shape.

However, if you have a team or a group, the new rules which are about to go mandatory on May 15th, stipulate this as they are currently outlined.

First of all, you may not in your group, or team name include the words realty, company, or associates. You may include the terms real estate or properties only if that team name, for instance, the team name was Ace Property Group or Ace Property Team, if and only if the last word of that name of that team or group is the word “team” or the word “group.” Okay?

I spoke with a TREC attorney just the other day and said, “What about team Ace?” Nope. Can’t do it. The word team or the word group has to be at the end of that particular entity.

If your team name is something other than your own personal name, if it involves the word team or group, you can include real estate group or property group.

The Ace and Associates Team, or Ace and Company Group. Can’t do it.