If you’re a real estate investor, you’ve probably wondered if you can call numbers on the DNC list without getting slapped with a TCPA violation.
Good news—below we've found and included the case law that says you can. Why? Because real estate investors not selling anything. Importantly, real estate investors are just offering to buy. Let’s break down why that distinction matters (and why Keller Williams got it wrong).
We aren't legal professionals - we're just pointing to the publicly available case law related to the DNC list. However, if you are in doubt of who you can and cannot be calling be sure to consult your own legal advisors. Also, this is the state of the law as of October 2024, so if you’re reading this in the future, you’ll want to check for any updates.
When Can Real Estate Investors Call the DNC List?
The TCPA (Telephone Consumer Protection Act) was created to regulate sales calls to consumers.
A federal do-not-call list was created, and you are not legally allowed to call those numbers to sell something without prior consent.
Real estate investor calls don’t “encourage the purchase or rental” of any property, goods, or services. Our calls are the exact opposite, encouraging the sale of a real estate property. No goods or services are being encouraged for purchase or rental or investment.
The Keller Williams Case
Real estate agencies (Keller Williams, Coldwell Banker) have recently been found to violate the TCPA. It is different for real estate agents (offering real estate services) vs. real estate investors (making strict offers to purchase, which is DealMachine’s main use case).
Here’s the type of language that got Keller Williams into trouble:
“Hi, this is Karmel from Keller Williams Realty, I saw that your house is not listed on the MLS anymore, I was wondering when you are ready to interview real estate agents to get your house sold. Please give me a call at 336-609-6016 I would greatly love the opportunity to talk to you.”
With this language, the real estate agents were held to be actually trying to sell real estate services, so it's “unsolicited advertising” and "telemarketing" thus violating the TCPA.
Jance v. Homerun Offer LLC
We have not found any cases where real estate investors violated the TCPA. Here’s some good case law that supports that real estate investors are not telemarketing:
In Jance v. Homerun Offer LLC, No. CV-20-482, 2021 WL 3270318 (D. Ariz. July 30, 2021), the court held that calls to the plaintiff's cell phone seeking to determine his interest in selling his home, and not to induce a purchase by the plaintiff, were neither telemarketing nor solicitation.
In this case, "Plaintiff" means the consumer who was called by the real estate investor.
"Here, Plaintiff alleges that the purpose of the calls was to purchase Plaintiff's home, not to induce Plaintiff to make a purchase from the caller. Because the TCPA clearly defines the terms solicitation and telemarketing, and that definition does not include offers to purchase, Plaintiff fails to state a claim under § 227(c)."
Pepper v. GVG Capital LLC
There is also a Texas case from last year that supports the use case of real estate investors—Pepper v. GVG Capital LLC. The plaintiff’s TCPA claim was dismissed because they were strict offers to purchase.
"GVG Capital argues that it has not made any “telephone solicitation” to Pepper because its calls “only offered to buy something”—not sell something. (Docket Entry No. 12 at 4). GVG Capital argues that the regulation applies only to calls “encouraging the purchase” of property, goods, or services.”
Based on the current case law, we allow real estate investors to make offers on properties to the DNC list via the DealMachine dialer.
Conclusion
If you feel uncomfortable making calls to the DNC list as a real estate investor, you can click "Scrub DNC." Then you will only call numbers that can accept any calls.
About 40% of real estate investors on the DealMachine dialer actually choose to NOT call DNC numbers, in an overabundance of caution.
DealMachine also uses AI to summarize each call for you. If the AI detects any selling of goods or services to the DNC list (whether by you or a team member, on accident or on purpose) it will flag us and we will reach out to you. That should give you peace of mind that you have a second set of eyes to help keep you and your team in line with the case law as it pertains to the DNC list.
