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North Carolina mortgage advertising rules
Adline flags phrases that match cited rules. It does not certify that North Carolina marketing is compliant. We flag and cite. We never certify. This is not legal advice. Whether a rule reaches you depends on your license type. Federal Reg Z and Reg N still apply.
Scanner status: Index only. The engine cites Washington, Arizona, and Idaho only. This page is an index of retrieved text. The engine does not emit a North Carolina citation.
Regulating agency
Office of the Commissioner of Banks (North Carolina Commissioner of Banks / NCCOB).
Office of the Commissioner of Banks (North Carolina Commissioner of Banks / NCCOB). The statute refers throughout to "the Commissioner."
NMLS and license display: Conjunctive and disjunctive elements.
Governing statute and administrative code
- STATUTE. N.C. Gen. Stat. Chapter 53, Article 19B, the "North Carolina Secure and Fair Enforcement (S.A.F.E.) Mortgage Licensing Act." (Substantially amended by Session Laws 2025-43, effective October 1, 2025. the retrieved text reflects those amendments.)
- REGULATION. 04 NCAC Subchapter 03M (Mortgage Lending), adopted by the Banking Commission.
Two regimes? North Carolina consolidated mortgage licensing into Article 19B; there is no separate mortgage broker act. A distinct consumer-finance regime exists (Chapter 53, Article 15, NC Consumer Finance Act) for non-mortgage consumer lending. not examined here.
License and NMLS ID display
VerifiedSTATUTE. N.C.G.S. § 53-244.107, "Unique identifier shown":
"shall be clearly shown on all residential mortgage loan application forms, solicitations, advertisements, business cards, websites, other electronic means, and any other documents as established by rule"
The subject is "The unique identifier of any mortgage loan originator or person engaged in the mortgage business."
And, in the same section, a second and separate mandate:
"In addition, mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers shall include a link to NMLS Consumer Access on their websites."
Conjunctive or disjunctive: CONJUNCTIVE on both axes. (i) The media list is conjunctive. the identifier must appear on *all* enumerated media, and the list is one of the broadest in this batch, expressly naming business cards, websites and "other electronic means." (ii) For a website, two separate elements are required together: the unique identifier and a hyperlink to NMLS Consumer Access. The Consumer Access link obligation binds mortgage lenders and mortgage brokers. by its terms it does not bind individual MLOs or mortgage servicers.
Only the *unique identifier* is required. the statute does not additionally require the state license number or the company name in advertising.
Prohibited claims
Verified- § 53-244.111(15). it is prohibited "To engage in unfair, misleading, or deceptive advertising related to a solicitation for a residential mortgage loan." *Attaches to: all advertising claims. This is a general standard, not an enumerated word list.*
- § 53-244.111(6). see §5 below (availability).
- § 53-244.111(8). prohibited "To engage in any transaction, practice, or course of business that is not in good faith or fair dealing or that constitutes a fraud upon any person."
No express North Carolina ban on "lowest," "best," "cheapest," "guaranteed," "pre-approved," "free," "no cost," or "government" was found, and no general superlative prohibition. Searched the full text of Article 19B and all of 04 NCAC 03M. North Carolina operates on a general unfair/misleading/deceptive standard.
Unusual affirmative content mandate. STATUTE, § 53-244.109(9). Among mortgage broker and mortgage lender duties: "Ensure that advertising materials are designed to make customers and potential customers aware that the mortgage broker or mortgage lender does not discriminate on any prohibited basis." This is a positive content requirement on advertising materials, and it is rare. see §8.
Rate advertising
Verified"To advertise residential mortgage loans, including rates, margins, discounts, points, fees, commissions, or other material information, including material limitations on residential mortgage loans, unless the person is able to make the residential mortgage loans available to a reasonable number of qualified applicants."
*Attaches to: rates, margins, discounts, points, fees, commissions, and any other material information. broader than rate-only.* Test is availability "to a reasonable number of qualified applicants."
No North Carolina-specific APR-disclosure, rate-lock-terms, or "rates subject to change" advertising requirement beyond federal Reg Z was located. (Contrast NY § 38.2(e)(5) and OR 441-870-0080(1)(b).)
Related: § 53-244.111(13) requires, when brokering a rate spread ARM, disclosure to the borrower of fixed-rate terms "at the lowest annual percentage rate for which the borrower qualifies". a transaction disclosure, not an advertising rule.
Ad filing, prior approval, retention
None foundNo filing or prior approval requirement found.
Retention: 12 months. REGULATION. 04 NCAC 03M .0501(f):
"A licensee shall maintain a record of samples of each piece of advertising relating to the licensee's business of mortgage lending or mortgage brokerage in North Carolina for a period of 12 months."
Note this is shorter than New York's two years and is measured per "each piece of advertising." Records must generally be kept "in a location within the State accessible to the Commissioner," with out-of-state centralized storage available only on Commissioner approval (04 NCAC 03M .0502(c)).
Social media and character-limited media
Not yet verifiedNo North Carolina guidance specifically addressing social media, texting, or abbreviated disclosures was located. NOT VERIFIED. The definition of "Advertisement" at 04 NCAC 03M .0101(2) is broad enough to reach electronic channels: material "used or intended to be used to induce the public to apply for a mortgage loan," including material disseminated "by direct mail, newspaper, magazine, radio or television broadcast, electronic mail or other electronic means, or billboard or similar display." It expressly excludes government-prepared disclosures and program descriptions, and excludes material excluded from Federal Reserve consumer-credit-disclosure regulation. There is no abbreviated-disclosure accommodation for character-limited media.
Anything unusual
- The non-discrimination advertising mandate (§ 53-244.109(9)) is the North Carolina outlier. Most compliance programs treat fair-lending taglines (e.g., Equal Housing Opportunity) as a federal/GSE/investor practice. In North Carolina it is a statutory duty on brokers and lenders that advertising materials be *designed* to convey non-discrimination. A minimalist social ad with no EHO indicia is exposed here.
- The NMLS Consumer Access hyperlink requirement is a genuine website-build requirement, not just a disclosure string, and it binds companies but not (by its terms) individual originators.
- Article 19B was substantially rewritten effective October 1, 2025 (S.L. 2025-43). Rule citations in 04 NCAC 03M still carry authority notes to the pre-amendment statute. Verify currency before relying on any secondary summary written before late 2025.
- 04 NCAC 03M contains no advertising-content rule at all. confirmed by enumerating every section in the subchapter (.0101 through .0703). The only two occurrences of "advertis" in the entire subchapter are the definition (.0101(2)) and the retention rule (.0501(f)). All substantive North Carolina advertising law is in the statute.
Penalties
VerifiedSTATUTE. N.C.G.S. § 53-244.116(a)(2): the Commissioner may impose a civil penalty for any violation, and "The civil penalty shall not exceed twenty-five thousand dollars ($25,000) for each violation of or failure to comply with this Article. Each violation of or failure to comply with this Article is a separate and distinct violation." A parallel $25,000-per-violation penalty applies to violations of a Commissioner directive or order (§ 53-244.116(a)(3)). The Commissioner may also order disgorgement (§ 53-244.116(a)(4)) and prohibit practices found "unfair, deceptive, designed to evade the laws of this State, or that are not in the best interest of the borrowing public" (§ 53-244.116(a)(5)).
Sources
- https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/ByArticle/Chapter_53/Article_19B.htmlofficial N.C.G.S. Chapter 53, Article 19B, full text (OFFICIAL — North Carolina General Assembly):