Why is the line break tag displaying as text from a Custom Html Helper asp.net mvc

I have an html helper which takes in a broken address and formats it, but i'm seeing the actual <br /> tag as text instead of a line break on my web page. What am i doing that's causing this to occur?

Here's part of my helper method

public static HtmlFormatAddress(this helper,   string number
    , string fraction
    , string direction
    , string street
    , string type
    ....)
{
    var sb = new StringBuilder();
    if (!开发者_开发问答string.IsNullOrEmpty(number))
        sb.Append(number.Trim() + " ");
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(fraction))
        sb.Append(fraction.Trim() + " ");
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(direction))
        sb.Append(direction.Trim() + " ");
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(street))
        sb.Append(street + " ");
    if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(type))

    if (sb.Length > 0)
        sb.Append("<br />");
    .....
    return sb.ToString();
}

If this is MVC2/ASP.NET 4, you need to return an MvcHtmlString instead of String

If not, then be sure you are not encoding the output with <%: %> but instead use <%= %>

you're probably using the <%: %> syntax which encodes the string.

Try using <%= %> instead

or change your return type to MvcHtmlString which will only require you to write return MvcHtmlString.Create(sb.ToString());