What Are the Three Major Sections of the Code of Ethics?

The three major sections of the NAR Code of Ethics are Duties to Clients and Customers (Articles 1–9), Duties to the Public (Articles 10–14), and Duties to REALTORS® (Articles 15–17). Together these 17 articles set a behavioral standard for members of the National Association of REALTORS® that reaches beyond what state licensing laws require. The Code was first adopted in 1913, predating most state real estate licensing statutes, and it operates as a voluntary professional compact rather than government regulation.

Duties to Clients and Customers (Articles 1–9)

The first and largest section covers how agents treat the people they represent and the other parties in a transaction. Article 1 draws the line between clients and customers: a client is whoever the agent has a formal representation agreement with, and the agent’s duty is to protect and promote that person’s interests above their own. The duty to a client does not license deceit toward anyone else, though. Honest treatment is owed to all parties, represented or not.¹

Article 2 forbids exaggerating property features, hiding pertinent facts, or misrepresenting the transaction. Agents are not expected to find hidden structural defects a home inspector would catch, but they cannot conceal problems they know about. Articles 4 and 5 require that any personal financial interest an agent has in a property be disclosed in writing before anyone signs.¹

Confidentiality and Offer Handling

Standard of Practice 1-9 makes confidentiality outlast the professional relationship. Once the agent is no longer working with a client, they still cannot reveal that client’s private information, use it against them, or turn it to anyone else’s benefit. The exceptions are narrow: court orders, preventing a crime, or defending against an accusation of wrongdoing.¹

On the offer side, Standard of Practice 3-2, amended effective June 2025, bars agents from holding back a buyer’s offer while negotiating their own compensation. Offers must be delivered promptly. The change carries added weight after the 2025 practice changes, since buyer-broker compensation is no longer presumed to be bundled into the listing broker’s offer of cooperation.¹

Trust Funds and Written Agreements

Article 8 requires agents to hold other people’s money—earnest money, escrow deposits, and similar funds—in a separate account at a financial institution, kept apart from the agent’s personal funds. Commingling is one of the fastest routes to both an ethics complaint and action by a state licensing board.¹

Article 9 requires listing agreements, buyer representation agreements, purchase contracts, and leases to be in writing and in clear language, with every party getting a copy at signing. Standard of Practice 9-2 adds that agents must make reasonable efforts to explain the nature and specific terms of any contractual relationship before the other party agrees, a provision that gained practical importance after the 2025 changes to buyer-broker agreements.¹

Duties to the Public (Articles 10–14)

The second section turns from the parties in a particular transaction to the public at large. These articles govern fair treatment, truthful advertising, professional competence, and the boundary between real estate practice and legal practice.

Non-Discrimination

Article 10 is often assumed to mirror the federal Fair Housing Act, but it goes further. The Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability.² Article 10 adds sexual orientation and gender identity, holding NAR members to a broader standard than federal law requires. The prohibition covers service delivery, employment practices, and advertising.¹

Advertising, Competence, and the Legal Line

Article 12 requires a true picture in all advertising and marketing. Every ad, including social media posts and online listings, must make clear the communication comes from a real estate professional, and the brokerage firm’s name must be disclosed in a reasonable and readily apparent way. Agents also cannot describe their services as free unless they truly receive no compensation from any source.¹

Article 11 covers competence. If a transaction falls outside an agent’s experience, say a residential agent being asked to handle a commercial warehouse, the agent must either bring in someone with the right expertise or disclose the gap to the client.¹

Article 13 draws a firm line around legal practice. Agents cannot do work that amounts to practicing law, and they should recommend an attorney when the situation calls for one. Drafting complex legal documents or giving legal opinions sits outside a real estate license.¹

Duties to REALTORS® (Articles 15–17)

The third section governs how real estate professionals treat one another. The premise is that an orderly, trustworthy marketplace depends on agents dealing in good faith with their competitors, not only with their clients.

Article 15 bars false or misleading statements about other agents, their businesses, or their practices. It also prohibits knowingly filing false ethics complaints against a competitor, a tactic that is sometimes used as a competitive weapon. Even repeating someone else’s false claim about a competitor is a violation.

Article 16 protects exclusive listing agreements. Standard of Practice 16-4 specifically prohibits soliciting a listing that is currently under an exclusive agreement with another broker. There is one narrow exception: if the listing broker refuses to say when the agreement expires, the agent may contact the owner to get that information and discuss a listing that would take effect afterward.¹

Article 17 requires that disputes between REALTORS® over commissions or other real estate business matters be resolved through association-level arbitration rather than going straight to court. The process keeps disagreements out of the public arena and tends to resolve them faster, though either party can still pursue litigation if arbitration does not settle things.

How the Code Differs from State Licensing Law

A frequent misconception is that the Code of Ethics and state real estate law cover the same ground. They overlap, but the Code reaches further by design. NAR’s own materials describe it as defining “duties and obligations required in the public interest which are beyond the capacity or power of the law to mandate.”³ An agent can comply fully with state licensing requirements and still violate the Code. State law may not address how quickly an offer must be delivered or whether an agent may publicly disparage a competitor; the Code does. The enforcement tracks are also separate. A state licensing board can revoke a license, while NAR can only revoke membership and MLS access. Both carry real consequences, and the same conduct can trigger parallel proceedings in each system.

What Happens When an Article Is Violated

Each of the three sections is backed by discipline. A complaint from a consumer, a client, or another REALTOR® first goes to a Grievance Committee for preliminary review, and if it clears that stage it moves to a hearing panel of the Professional Standards Committee.⁴

The range of discipline available to a panel is broad:

A letter of warning or reprimand placed in the member’s file.
Mandatory ethics education or other specified training.
Fines of up to $15,000 per violation, scaled by severity and whether the conduct is a first or repeat offense. A less serious first-time violation might carry a fine of $500 or less; a repeat violation of the same article can reach the $15,000 cap.
Suspension of membership for 30 days to one year, with MLS access typically lost during that period.
Expulsion, with a ban of one to three years before the member may even apply for reinstatement.

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A panel can also order the member to stop the offending conduct or take specific steps to come into compliance by a set deadline, with additional discipline if they fail.⁵ The three sections are not aspirational statements. Each article is enforceable, and violations in any of the three can cost an agent money, membership, and the MLS access that membership carries.

1
National Association of REALTORS. 2026 Code of Ethics and Standards of Practice
2
U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Housing Discrimination Under the Fair Housing Act
3
National Association of REALTORS. The REALTOR’S Code of Ethics A Gift of Vision
4
National Association of REALTORS. Code of Ethics and Arbitration Manual – Part 3 Section 19 Grievance Committees Review of an Ethics Complaint
5
National Association of REALTORS. Part 2 Section 14 Nature of Discipline