If you're buying or selling off-market deals in Kentucky — wholesaling, assignment contracts, or working with a "we buy houses" platform — there's a 2023 law change that a lot of people in this space still haven't fully reckoned with. It changes who's allowed to publicly market an assignable contract, and it has real teeth: cease-and-desist authority, misdemeanor criminal exposure, and the ability to void the underlying contract. This isn't a technicality. It's the single biggest compliance question anyone should be asking before they buy or sell an off-market deal in this state.
What Kentucky's HB 62 Actually Says
House Bill 62, signed into law in 2023 as an act relating to real estate brokerage, amended two sections of Kentucky's real estate licensing statute. It expanded the legal definition of "real estate brokerage" in KRS 324.010 to include advertising for sale an equitable interest in a contract for the purchase of real property between a property owner and a prospective purchaser — in plain terms, marketing a house you've put under contract but don't yet own. KRS 324.020(1)(b) then makes it unlawful for anyone without a Kentucky real estate license to do exactly that.
Before HB 62, a wholesaler could put a house under contract and market the assignment of that contract to a buyer's list, a Facebook group, or an investor platform without needing a license at all. After HB 62, that same activity is real estate brokerage activity under Kentucky law — full stop. There's no volume exemption. The Kentucky Real Estate Commission's own guidance is that even a single publicly marketed assignment can trigger the licensing requirement.
What Counts as "Advertising" Under the Law
This is broader than most people assume. Based on how the law is written and how KREC has described it, advertising an equitable interest in a contract can include email blasts to a buyers list, social media posts, listings on investor or wholesaler platforms, flyers and marketing materials, and website postings — essentially any public solicitation of a buyer for a contract you don't yet own. A fully private, one-off deal between two parties who already know each other sits in a different category than a repeated, publicly marketed business.
What's Actually at Stake if This Gets Ignored
Kentucky isn't just saying "please get licensed." The real exposure includes a KREC cease-and-desist order, civil liability and contract voidability, title companies refusing to close on a deal that was marketed in violation of the statute, and potential misdemeanor criminal charges under KRS 324.990 for practicing real estate brokerage without a license. For a buyer, that last point matters as much as it does for the wholesaler — a deal built on a contract that was marketed illegally is a deal with real legal risk attached to it, not just a compliance footnote for whoever sourced it.
The Compliant Paths Forward
There are a handful of real ways to stay on the right side of this law: get a Kentucky real estate license yourself (96 hours of pre-licensing education, the state exam, and broker affiliation), partner with a licensed agent or broker who handles the public marketing side of the deal, structure the transaction as a true double-close where you take title before reselling, or keep deal-sharing strictly private rather than publicly marketed. Each path has real tradeoffs in cost, speed, and control — but "I didn't know the law changed" isn't one of the options anymore.
Why Every Deal in Winner's Network Runs Through a Licensed Realtor
This is exactly why Winner Realty built its off-market and wholesale network the way it did. Every deal that moves through OffMarket.deals gets reviewed by a licensed Kentucky Realtor before it ever reaches a buyer — not as a marketing line, but because that's what the law actually requires for a deal to be marketed publicly in the first place. When you're buying through a platform where the person sourcing and marketing the deal is a licensed Realtor working under a real Kentucky brokerage, you're not just getting a second set of eyes on the numbers. You're getting a transaction structured by someone who's legally allowed to be marketing it to you at all.
That's a higher bar than most off-market deal sources in this state are built to clear, and it's exactly the bar we think this market should be judged against. If you're sourcing deals, selling an assignment, or just trying to figure out whether a platform you're using is actually compliant, reach out and we'll walk through it with you — or explore how OffMarket.deals structures every transaction with a licensed Realtor in the loop. For more on how assignment contracts and wholesaling work in Kentucky more broadly, see our wholesaling guide.
Sources: Kentucky House Bill 62 (2023 Regular Session, enacted as 2023 Ky. Acts ch. 84), KRS 324.010, KRS 324.020, KRS 324.990, Kentucky Real Estate Commission guidance on HB 62.