John Schuch · Founder

How to ask a managing broker for permission to market a listing

Agents ask me how to word this more than they ask me anything else about the software, which tells you where the real friction is. The software is the easy half. The ask is a short written note to another broker, and most of the reason it does not happen is that people are not sure what goes in it.

So here is the note, and then the reasoning behind each piece of it.

What the ask has to contain

Four things, and they are all short. What you want to market, which is either one address or their active inventory. Where you want to market it. How long the permission runs. And exactly what the post will say about who holds the listing.

That last one is the piece people leave out, and it is the piece that turns a vague request into an easy yes. A managing broker reading a permission request is not really deciding whether they like you. They are deciding whether a post with their brokerage's name on it is going to embarrass them. Show them the attribution up front and you have answered the question they were actually going to ask.

The note

Subject: Permission to market {ADDRESS}

Hi {NAME},

I am {AGENT} with {MY BROKERAGE}. I would like your permission to
market {ADDRESS} on Facebook Marketplace, at your list price and using
your listing photos.

Every post would carry the attribution:

  Marketed by {AGENT}, {MY BROKERAGE}
  Listing courtesy of {YOUR BROKERAGE}
  Marketing on behalf of {YOUR BROKERAGE} with written permission.

Buyer questions would come to me and I would send anything that
belongs with you straight over.

If you are open to it, would you reply with the window you are
comfortable with, through the close or a date of your choosing,
and anything you want me to leave out or include. If it is
easier to cover your whole active inventory under one set of
conditions rather than doing this listing by listing, that
works too.

Either way, thank you for reading it.

{AGENT}
{PHONE} | {EMAIL}

Send it by email rather than by phone, and not because a phone call is worse. Send it by email because the reply is the record. A broker who says yes on a call has genuinely said yes, and you have nothing on file six months later when somebody asks how you had authority.

What a yes usually contains

A useful yes names the scope and the window. Either the address, or a line covering their active inventory. Either a date, or wording like through closing. If the reply comes back as one word, write back with the scope and window spelled out and ask them to confirm, and you have turned a friendly note into a record you can keep.

Conditions are normal and they are a good sign. Use these photos and not those. Do not post the price reduction. Take it down within a day of an accepted offer. Copy me on the buyer questions. A broker who attaches conditions has thought about it and is telling you how to keep the yes, which is more useful than a breezy yes with nothing in it.

Blanket permission across a whole office is worth asking for and it is not a strange request. Doing this listing by listing costs them more email than it costs you, so a set of conditions that covers everything they hold is often the version they prefer. Ask for it in the same note. The worst case is they say per listing.

What a no usually means

Most no answers are not about you. A brokerage may have a blanket policy against outside marketing of its inventory, an ownership situation on that particular property, or a seller who asked for something specific. None of that is a verdict on the request, and none of it carries over to the next brokerage you ask.

Silence is not a yes. It is the one reply people talk themselves into misreading, usually late in the week when they wanted to get something posted. If you did not get an answer, you did not get permission, and the honest move is to ask again or move on to a listing where somebody said yes.

Before any of this, ask your own broker

Your own brokerage comes first, and it can be stricter than your state. Some encourage marketing outside the usual channels, some restrict it to their own inventory, and some do not allow it. Whatever your broker says is the ceiling on everything above, so start there rather than finding out after you have collected permission you cannot use.

For the state rule underneath all this, the Colorado page quotes the Colorado Real Estate Commission's advertising rule and the Arizona page quotes the Arizona rule, both in the regulator's own words.

Then the boring part is automatic

Once the yes is on file, the repetitive work is writing the same three lines onto every post, correctly, every time, and keeping the listings in front of people instead of posting for four days and stopping. That is what Listing AutomatEr does. It is a desktop app for Mac and Windows that posts the listings you have permission to market, writes your name as the marketing agent, credits the brokerage that holds the listing, and adds the disclosure line, on a schedule you set.

It does not obtain the permission and it does not judge whether the yes you have covers what you are about to post. That part stays yours, which is the correct place for it, because you are the one who has a relationship with the person on the other end of that email.

Nothing here is legal advice. Real estate advertising rules vary by state and by association, and your own brokerage's rules sit on top of both.