John Schuch · Founder

What a compliant Marketplace post looks like

A post about a listing your brokerage does not hold is fine in most of the country, and it turns into a problem in exactly one way, which is that a reader cannot tell whose listing it is. Everything below is about closing that gap in three lines.

Here is a post as the app renders it. The listing details are made up, and the shape is the real one.

3 bd | 2 ba | 1,850 sqft
Denver, CO
Open kitchen, fenced yard, two car garage.
Questions welcome.

Marketed by Jane Agent, Example Realty
Listing courtesy of Another Brokerage

Marketing on behalf of Another Brokerage with
written permission.

Line one, who is marketing it

Marketed by Jane Agent, Example Realty. That is the agent doing the posting and the brokerage that agent works under, and it is there because a reader is entitled to know they are talking to a licensee rather than to an owner. Colorado states it plainly in Rule 6.10.A.4: "All Advertising must be done clearly and conspicuously in the name of the Broker's Brokerage Firm." Arizona asks for the same thing in the advertising rule for licensees, which requires the employing broker's legal name to be identified in a clear and prominent manner.

Your own brokerage's name is not decoration on the post. In both states it is the part that makes the advertising yours in the eyes of the regulator.

Line two, whose listing it is

Listing courtesy of Another Brokerage. This is the line people leave off, and it is the one the rules are most specific about. Colorado's condition for passing along another broker's advertising is that "The Broker discloses, in a conspicuous manner, the owner's Brokerage Firm". Arizona says it directly: "A licensee who advertises property that is the subject of another person's real estate employment agreement shall display the name of the listing broker in a clear and prominent manner."

Note what neither rule asks for. Neither one asks you to be quiet about marketing somebody else's listing. They ask you to say whose it is, in a place a reader will actually see, which is a much easier standard to meet than most agents assume.

Line three, the disclosure

Marketing on behalf of Another Brokerage with written permission. Strictly speaking this line is doing a job the first two have mostly already done, and it is worth carrying anyway, because it says the quiet part out loud. A reader skimming a post does not parse the difference between marketed by and listing courtesy of. A sentence in plain English removes the ambiguity for the one person the rules exist to protect.

It also does something for you. A post that states the arrangement in a sentence is a post you can forward to a managing broker without a covering explanation, which is most of what makes the next permission easier to get than the last one.

What the three lines are not

They are not permission. A perfectly worded post about a listing you were never allowed to market is still a post about a listing you were never allowed to market, and the attribution does not cure that. Permission comes first, in writing, from the listing agent or the managing broker, and under whatever rules your own brokerage sets. There is a walkthrough of that ask, with a note you can paste, in the note that gets you the yes.

They are also not a compliance verdict. Advertising rules vary by state and by association, and the two quoted above are the two this post happens to cite. Read your own state's rule and ask your broker, because the app writes lines and does not practise law.

Where the lines come from

Listing AutomatEr is a desktop app for Mac and Windows that posts the listings you have permission to market to Facebook Marketplace, and it fills the three lines from the listing record rather than from anything you retype.

The app fills them from the listing record rather than from anything you retype. The brokerage that holds the listing is on the record, so the courtesy line is written from that field, and your own name and brokerage come from your account. The post then goes out on the schedule you set instead of on the days you remembered.

The reason that matters is not the typing. It is that the failure mode here is not one dramatic mistake, it is the fifth listing on a busy morning where the courtesy line quietly does not get pasted. A machine writing the same three lines every time is a smaller claim than most software makes, and it happens to be the one worth having.

It does not obtain the permission for you, and it does not judge whether the yes you have covers the listing you are about to post. It writes the lines and it keeps to the schedule, and the authority behind the post stays yours.

For the rule text in the regulator's own words, the Colorado page and the Arizona page each quote the sections above in full.

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.