Permitted activities of unlicensed sales assistants

Support work versus licensed activity

An unlicensed sales assistant helps a California brokerage operate without acting as its broker or salesperson. California Business and Professions Code section 10130 prohibits acting or advertising in either licensed capacity without a license. Supervision does not turn an assistant into a licensee. Classify the actual task, not the employee's title or pay arrangement.

Routine support includes filing, scheduling appointments, relaying messages, assembling documents, and entering information at a licensee's direction. An assistant can type terms already selected by the licensee; choosing terms, explaining their legal effect, recommending an offer, soliciting listings, and negotiating belong with a licensee. An assistant can arrange a showing with a salesperson, but should not independently conduct a sales showing. At a licensee's open house, administrative help such as distributing approved brochures is different from discussing bargaining strategy or answering substantive transaction questions.

Supervision and compensation

Give the assistant clear assignments, approved factual materials, and a route for referring substantive questions to a licensee. For example, the assistant may book a buyer's appointment and relay the buyer's request for a price reduction; the licensee handles the bargaining response. Payment for clerical work does not authorize licensed work. California section 10138 restricts compensation for acts requiring a real estate license. Calling a payment a clerical fee does not cure unlicensed negotiation.

Specific permissions have specific conditions

California section 10131.01 provides a particular residential apartment management exception. An employee of a retained property management firm, working under the required broker or qualified salesperson supervision, may show rental units and common areas; provide or accept preprinted applications and answer completion questions; accept specified fees, deposits, and rents; give rental terms from the employer's schedule; and accept signed leases. Giving scheduled terms is different from negotiating new ones. This exception is not permission for a sales assistant to show homes for sale.

Under California section 10145, an unlicensed employee of an individual broker may be specifically authorized in writing to sign trust account withdrawals if the broker maintains qualifying fidelity bond or insurance coverage at least equal to the maximum funds accessible to the employee. Signing authority does not authorize the employee to choose who is entitled to the money.

These are task-specific boundaries: confirm the applicable conditions before relying on an exception. The practical rule is to delegate clerical execution and route licensed judgment, solicitation, and negotiation to the licensee.