This is a friendly update from Kim Allard, Instructor, REALTOR and Massachusetts Board of Registration of Real Estate board member about a Facebook change.  Facebook of course didn’t stop real estate advertising, she was just trying to get your attention. But, Facebook is now prohibiting adding a property listing on Facebook Marketplace via your business page.  The marketplace is meant for consumer-to-consumer sales; NOT business-to-consumer.  Real estate is your business! Any business-to-consumer transactions/advertising/soliciting should be done with your business page and paid for advertising.

Licensees that disagree with Facebook and feel it’s appropriate to use their personal profiles to solicit business in a consumer-to-consumer marketplace risk being removed from the group, removed from FB or having their personal profile turned to a business page status – losing all of their personal page features. Regardless of FB rules – in all scenarios, advertising property must contain the Name of your BROKERAGE in the TEXT of the POST, otherwise that’s a BLIND AD and prohibited in most states. (btw your team name IS NOT your brokerage name).  You have an obligation to the REALTOR CODE OF ETHICS and the Advertising LAWS in your state.

For example MA: 254 CMR 3.0 (9) Prohibits Agents and Brokers from ADVERTISING the purchase, sale, rental, or exchange of any real property under their own name. In the simplest terms, if you are licensed in MA, and you want to advertise property… YOU MUST INCLUDE THE NAME OF YOUR BROKERAGE right there! For the pleasure of those of you that like to see things for yourself… https://www.mass.gov/…/254-cmr-3-professional…/download.  We thank Kim for the timely reminder!