The Florida rule isn't only about disclosure. It's about who has to be more prominent.
- ✓ FREC requires the brokerage name on every advertising surface that solicits Florida real estate business. Websites and social profiles included.
- ✓ Team and sales-associate names cannot appear more prominently than the brokerage name on any Florida advertising surface.
- ✓ FREC Rule 61J2-10.025 and Florida Statutes Chapter 475 govern the digital surface. FREC has cited brokerage-prominence violations in administrative actions.
The four Florida-specific surfaces the FREC rule lands on for a real estate website and the brokerage-prominence pattern that survives a FREC review.
The Florida Real Estate Commission enforces Florida's advertising rule under Florida Statutes Chapter 475 and FREC Rule 61J2-10.025. The rule applies to every solicitation by a Florida licensee or registered brokerage. Two pillars carry the weight: brokerage identification on every advertising surface, and the explicit prominence rule that team or sales-associate names cannot exceed brokerage prominence on the same surface. NAR Article 12 SOP 12-9 sets the federal-association baseline. Florida layers the prominence rule on top, and FREC has cited brokerage-prominence violations in administrative actions, which means the rule is enforced, not aspirational. Earnest's practice audits the per-template Florida disclosure surface against both Chapter 475 and FREC Rule 61J2-10.025 before any rebuild ships in this jurisdiction.
FREC Rule 61J2-10.025: the brokerage-identification rule for digital surfaces.
FREC Rule 61J2-10.025 specifies the advertising requirements for Florida real estate licensees. The registered name of the brokerage must appear in every advertisement. The rule reaches digital surfaces explicitly: websites, social media profiles, online classified ads, internet display ads, and any other digital surface that solicits Florida real estate business. The brokerage name appears in a manner that does not deceive or confuse the public about the brokerage's role. The operating pattern is the brokerage name in the masthead or header of every page template, plus the brokerage name in the footer disclosure, with no surface where a team or agent identifies themselves without the brokerage being named.
The brokerage-prominence rule: team and agent names cannot exceed the brokerage.
Florida's prominence rule is the surface that most differentiates the state from the federal baseline. Team names and individual sales-associate names cannot appear more prominently than the brokerage name on any advertising surface. Prominence covers font size, color contrast, page position, and call-to-action weight. A team site that ships the team brand in 48pt and the brokerage name in 8pt footer text fails the prominence test. A site that features an agent's headshot above the fold and the brokerage name only in the footer can fail. The compliant pattern carries the brokerage name at equal or greater prominence in the same page region as the team or agent identity, in a way that an FREC reviewer reading the page top-to-bottom recognizes the brokerage as primary.
Team-versus-brokerage entity distinction in Florida.
Florida regulates the team-versus-brokerage distinction tightly. A team is a marketing identity within a brokerage. It is not a separate entity for licensing or advertising purposes. The brokerage of record retains license-holder responsibility for every advertising surface the team ships. Team naming conventions cannot imply independent brokerage status. A team named with a corporate-sounding word (Group, Realty, Properties) without a clarifying term that signals team-within-brokerage status can trigger FREC scrutiny. The operating pattern carries the brokerage entity at the schema layer (parentOrganization pointing to the brokerage) and at the disclosure layer (brokerage name and license adjacent to the team brand on every page).
Sales-associate sites and the brokerage-of-record carriage.
An individual sales-associate site in Florida carries the brokerage name and license at meaningful prominence on every page, the same as a team site. The sales associate's license cannot stand alone on an advertising surface. The brokerage-of-record disclosure appears in the masthead, the page footer, the contact card, and any About surface. FREC has enforced against sites where the individual licensee was prominent and the brokerage was buried. The operating pattern routes the brokerage-of-record disclosure into the shared template that every sales-associate page in the brokerage inherits, with the disclosure block managed centrally and updated once when the brokerage changes the licensee of record.
What Florida brokerages ask about the FREC advertising rule before they ship a state-specific site template.
[ 01 ] What does FREC's prominence rule actually require on a website? +
[ 02 ] Does FREC Rule 61J2-10.025 actually reach websites and social profiles? +
[ 03 ] How does Florida treat the team-versus-brokerage entity distinction? +
[ 04 ] Does an individual sales-associate site in Florida need the same brokerage prominence as a team site? +
If your Florida pages let the team or agent brand sit more prominent than the brokerage name, the FREC prominence rule is already in violation. Book a FREC-compliance diagnostic.
We read your existing Florida page templates, masthead variants, footer disclosure placement, and team-versus-brokerage prominence patterns against FREC Rule 61J2-10.025 and Florida Statutes Chapter 475. Output is the per-template Florida ledger plus the rebuild path that holds brokerage prominence at the template engine layer. Funnels into our /nar-compliant-marketing/ retainer when the rework spans a multi-state template library.