June 2022
Teams and groups are not a license category. The creation of teams and groups is a form of business practice that allows licensees to brand themselves. A registered business has the choice to set company policy allowing the formation of groups or teams.
If you are a broker or principal broker who has formed a team or group, transparency is key. You may not imply you are a stand-alone business if in fact your team is part of a registered business name.
Consumers need to know who employs a broker or principal broker if they have a problem requires escalation to the registered business or to the Oregon Real Estate Agency. This means if a team or group name is used in marketing, the registered business name must be used.
Oregon Administrative Rule (OAR) 863-015-0125(4) requires that the registered business name be immediately noticeable in all real estate advertising by a licensee.
What does that mean? Let's look at some examples.
Figure 1
In the above example, the registered business name, Home Broker Realty, is here. But can you see it immediately? It's located in very small print in the bottom left corner. This would not meet the requirements of OAR 863-015-0125(4).
Figure 2
In this example, the registered business name is prominently displayed with the group name. Assuming everything else on the advertisement is truthful and not deceptive or misleading, it appears to comply with the advertising rule.
The Agency understands that there are business practices that make it advantageous to form a team or group for the purpose of advertising. But understand that the registered business name must be obvious on all advertising, whether it is team group advertising or not.