Your website is advertising under Texas rules, and Texas regulates advertising by license holders in detail. In short: your sponsoring broker's name must appear in a readily noticeable place, at least half the size of the largest contact information shown for you or your team; you must use the name on your license or an alternate name registered with TREC; and your homepage must carry two labeled links — one to a completed Information About Brokerage Services (IABS) notice, one to the Consumer Protection Notice. Those come from 22 TAC 535.155, 535.154, 531.20 and 531.18.
Everything below is quoted or closely paraphrased from the Texas Real Estate Commission's own published rule text. Where we could not confirm something, we say so instead of guessing.
22 TAC 535.155(b)(1) defines an advertisement as "any form of communication by or on behalf of a license holder designed to attract the public to use real estate brokerage services," and the list is explicit about the internet: "all publications, brochures, radio or television broadcasts, all electronic media including email, text messages, social media, the Internet, business stationery, business cards, displays, signs and billboards."
The definition does carve out a few things — including a communication from a license holder to that license holder's current client, and certain directional signs. A public marketing website is not one of those carve-outs.
Rule: 22 TAC 535.155. Adopted effective May 15, 2018; amended effective September 4, 2018 (43 TexReg 5680).
535.155(a) requires that "Each advertisement must include the following in a readily noticeable location in the advertisement: the name of the license holder or team placing the advertisement; and the broker's name in at least half the size of the largest contact information for any sales agent, associated broker, or team name contained in the advertisement."
The size rule turns on what counts as "contact information," and 535.155(b)(4) reads that broadly: a name, phone number, email address, website address, social media handle, scan code or other similar information. So the comparison isn't just against your name in the hero headline — it's against the largest of any of those elements.
There is a narrower path for social media and text under 535.155(c): the required items may sit on a separate page or account profile instead, if that page is "readily accessible by a direct link" and the information is "readily noticeable" there. That subsection is written for social media and text messages, not for a website generally.
Rule: 22 TAC 535.155(a), (b)(1), (b)(4), (c).
Under 535.155(d)(6), an advertisement is misleading if it "contains the name of a sales agent that is not the name as shown on the sales agent's license issued by the Commission or an alternate name registered with the Commission."
An "alternate name" is defined in 535.154(a)(2) as "a name used by an individual license holder other than the name shown on the license issued by the Commission, such as a middle name, maiden name, or nickname." Registration comes first, not after: 535.154(b)(1) says "Before a license holder starts using an alternate name in an advertisement, the license holder must register the name with the Commission using a process acceptable to the Commission."
So if you go by "Kate" and your license says "Katherine," the site should not say Kate unless that alternate name is already registered.
Rule: 22 TAC 535.154(a)(2), (b)(1) and 535.155(d)(6). 535.154 was last amended effective March 4, 2020 (45 TexReg 1435).
535.154(c) is short and strict: "A team name may not include any terms that could mislead the public to believe that the team is offering brokerage services independent from its sponsoring broker. A team name must end with the word 'team' or 'group'. Before an associated broker or a sales agent sponsored by a broker starts using a team name in an advertisement, the broker must register the name with the Commission using a process acceptable to the Commission."
Note who registers it — the broker, not you.
535.155(d)(5) supplies the matching prohibition: an ad is misleading if it "contains a team name with terms that imply that the team is offering brokerage services independent from its sponsoring broker, including, but not limited to, 'brokerage', 'company', and 'associates'."
Rule: 22 TAC 535.154(a)(5), (c) and 535.155(d)(5).
This one surprises people building a personal brand. Under 535.154(a)(4), an "assumed business name" — commonly known as a DBA or trade name — "means any name used in business by a broker" that meets the rule's requirements. The definition is tied to a broker.
535.154(d)(1) then requires that before a broker, associated broker, or sponsored sales agent uses the broker's assumed business name in an advertisement, the broker must register it with TREC and "provide written evidence of legal authority to use the assumed business name in Texas, such as registration of the name with the Secretary of State or county clerk's office."
TREC has said the same thing in its own guidance: there is no provision for a sales agent to hold an individual assumed business name or personal "brand name" — a name like that falls under the team-name definition and has to meet those requirements instead.
Rule: 22 TAC 535.154(a)(4), (d). TREC guidance: "What's in a Name? Advertising Name Types Under TREC Rule 535.154" (TREC, August 2018).
There is no Texas rule we could find that regulates an agent's domain name registration as such. What the rules do reach is the impression the site creates. 535.155(d) lists advertisements that mislead or are likely to deceive, including any advertisement:
A personal domain is not prohibited. A domain, email address, or footer title that reads like you operate a brokerage is the problem.
Rule: 22 TAC 535.155(d)(3), (d)(4), (d)(7).
These are the most website-specific rules in the set, and they are easy to miss on a single-page site.
Both rules define a "business website" the same way: a website that is accessible to the public, contains information about a license holder's real estate brokerage services, and whose content is controlled by the license holder. A personal one-page agent site fits that definition.
IABS notice. 531.20(b) requires each license holder to provide "a link to a completed IABS Notice in a readily noticeable place on the homepage of each business website, labeled: 'Texas Real Estate Commission Information About Brokerage Services', in at least 10 point font; or 'TREC Information About Brokerage Services', in at least 12 point font."
531.20 was amended effective April 1, 2025, and amended again effective January 1, 2026 to adopt the updated notice, TREC No. IABS 1-2 — a change implementing SB 1968 from the 89th Legislature. If your site links to an older IABS PDF, that is the thing to check first. Current form: Information About Brokerage Services (IABS 1-2, effective 01/01/2026).
Consumer Protection Notice. 531.18(b) uses parallel language: display it in a readily noticeable location in each place of business, or provide "a link to it in a readily noticeable place on the homepage of each business website, labeled: 'Texas Real Estate Commission Consumer Protection Notice', in at least 10 point font; or 'TREC Consumer Protection Notice', in at least 12 point font." 531.18 was last amended effective November 29, 2023, adopting form CN 1-5. Current form: Consumer Protection Notice.
Rules: 22 TAC 531.20 and 531.18.
We found no TREC rule requiring an agent to get written brokerage approval before publishing a personal website. What the rules do say is that the duty runs to the broker. 535.2(g): "A broker is responsible to ensure that a sponsored sales agent's advertising complies with §535.154 of this chapter … and §535.155 of this chapter (relating to Advertisements)." 535.2(i) adds that a broker "shall maintain, on a current basis, written policies and procedures to ensure that … Each sponsored sales agent complies with the Commission's advertising rules."
TREC's own FAQ is blunt about what that means for you: "TREC does not review a sales agent's advertising… Your sponsoring broker should review your advertising because your sponsoring broker is responsible for ensuring that your advertising complies with TREC's advertising rules, and both you and your sponsoring broker can be disciplined if your advertising violates TREC rules."
Separately, brokerages commonly impose their own stricter approval policies by contract. Those are private policies, not TREC rules, and we did not survey them.
Rule: 22 TAC 535.2(g), (i)(6), last amended effective June 11, 2023. Guidance: TREC Frequently Asked Questions.
We read the full text of 535.154 and 535.155 as published by TREC. Neither one requires a license number to appear in an advertisement. That is a "not found in these two rules," not a claim that no Texas authority anywhere requires it — we did not read all of the Real Estate License Act or all of 22 TAC Chapter 535. Plenty of Texas agents display their license number anyway; that is a choice, not something we can point to a rule for.
Concretely, on the single page you publish:
535.155(d) contains twenty numbered prohibitions. We covered five of them here. Others that routinely show up on agent one-pagers include unsubstantiated claims about property values, production or ranking claims, and rebate and compensation disclosures. Read the full subsection before you publish claims about your results.
Two limits on our own sourcing, stated plainly. First, every rule quote above was read from TREC's published rule text, and that page carries TREC's own disclaimer that it "should not be relied upon as the official text of a rule." The officially codified text lives in the Texas Administrative Code maintained by the Secretary of State; at the time we checked, its new portal did not return readable rule text to us, and the legacy TAC URLs no longer resolve. Second, the effective dates above come from rule source notes and TREC's own pages; TREC's rules page itself prints no per-section dates. Rule text checked August 11, 2026.
AgentSiteHQ builds one-page agent websites: free to publish with a small badge, or a one-time $297 to own it outright on your own domain, with no monthly fee and no IDX or MLS search. The brokerage name, your licensed name, the team name, and the two TREC homepage links are content you add and control — we don't add them for you, and publishing a site with us does not make a site compliant. Whether what you publish meets TREC's rules is between you, your sponsoring broker, and the rules.
Rules change, and the details matter more than the summary. Verify anything here against the current text at the Texas Real Estate Commission and with your sponsoring broker before you rely on it. This page is general information about publicly posted state agency rules — it is not legal advice, not a compliance opinion, and not a guarantee about any particular website.
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