Committee backs ordinance to consolidate real-estate brokerage licensing

The committee forwarded Ordinance 2026-28, which would require real-estate brokerages to carry a single brokerage-level license that covers gross receipts for the brokerage. Anne Burkholder said the shift is intended to simplify tracking gross receipts and reduce instances of duplicate reporting when individual realtors and brokerages both file licenses that may attribute the same receipts.

Burkholder said how a brokerage chooses to divide revenue among individual agents remains up to the broker and that the measure is meant to ensure the city receives the full amount of taxable gross receipts without duplication. "It's a much cleaner form of record keeping," she said. Councilors discussed how branch offices or satellite offices would be handled and were told the licensing would be tied to the location of the brokerage's directed or controlled operations. The committee voted to forward the ordinance with recommendation for approval.