Ask ten agents what the Telephone Consumer Protection Act does and most will say it restricts dialers, and several will add that they are safe because their software is “TCPA compliant.” Both beliefs are wrong. Both cost money.
The statute does not mention dialers as a category and it does not certify software. What it does, at 47 U.S.C. 227(b)(1)(A), is prohibit two specific things when the number belongs to a cell phone and the called party has not given prior express consent: making the call with an automatic telephone dialing system, and making it using an artificial or prerecorded voice. Everything else agents attribute to the TCPA, the calling hours, the registry, the internal do-not-call list, comes from the regulations written under it and from the FTC’s parallel rule, and the four-rule overview and the do-not-call spoke cover those. This piece is about the two prohibitions, what they have come to cover, and what that means for how you reach a homeowner whose number, like 78.7 percent of American adults’ (NCHS), is a mobile. It is operational education, not legal advice.
Prohibition one: the autodialer
The statute defines an automatic telephone dialing system as equipment with the capacity to store or produce telephone numbers to be called using a random or sequential number generator, and to dial them. For two decades that definition was read broadly enough by some courts that almost any software that dialed from a list could be swept in. In April 2021 the Supreme Court narrowed it in Facebook v. Duguid, holding that the equipment has to use a random or sequential number generator to store or produce the numbers. A system that dials numbers from a list a person uploaded, in the order the list provides, is not generating them.
That ruling is why most dialers agents use today are not treated as autodialers by most courts. The question did not go away. Courts have continued to disagree about specific configurations, plaintiffs test the edges constantly, and a vendor’s marketing claim settles nothing. The question to put to a compliance attorney is specific: given how this software selects and dials numbers, does it fall inside the definition as the courts in my circuit currently read it? “TCPA compliant” on a sales page answers nothing.
There is a second reason the autodialer question does not go away after Duguid. The FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule regulates abandoned calls regardless of how the dialer is classified. A dialing mode that can connect an answering homeowner to silence, because no agent was free, produces an abandoned call if nobody is on the line within two seconds of the greeting, and no more than three percent of answered calls per campaign per thirty days may end that way. The dialer modes piece covers where that rule bites, and it bites hardest in exactly the multi-line modes agents adopt to raise contact rates.
Prohibition two: the artificial or prerecorded voice
This prohibition has no Duguid. It has expanded. It keeps expanding.
A prerecorded message played to a cell phone without prior express consent has been a violation since the statute was written. In 2022 the FCC ruled that ringless voicemail, the products that drop a recording into a voicemail box without ringing the phone, is a call under the statute and needs the same consent. In February 2024 the FCC issued a declaratory ruling that voices generated by artificial intelligence are “artificial” within the meaning of the statute, which means an AI voice agent placing outbound calls to cold cell numbers is making artificial-voice calls without consent, however natural it sounds and however well it handles objections.
For a cold list, that closes three doors: no voicemail drops, no recorded messages, and no AI-voiced outbound calling to homeowners who have not consented. A live person speaking in their own voice is the mode this prohibition leaves open, and it is the mode every script on this site assumes.
Consent, and why a cold list has none
Prior express consent is the exception to both prohibitions, and it comes in two grades under 47 CFR 64.1200(a). For informational calls, giving you the number can be enough. For telemarketing, which is what a listing solicitation is, the consent has to be prior express written consent: a signed agreement, electronic signatures included, that clearly authorizes autodialed or prerecorded marketing calls to a specific number and states that the homeowner can decline it and still do business with you.
Read that against your lists. It is short. An expired seller consented to nothing with you. A FSBO put a number in an ad for buyers. A farm household has never heard of you. None of them has given the consent that would open either prohibition, which is why the analysis for a cold list is simple: the two prohibited things are prohibited, full stop, and the permitted thing is a person dialing and speaking.
Consent also ends when the homeowner says so. Under the FCC’s revocation rules that took effect in April 2025, a consumer may revoke by any reasonable means, the words “stop,” “quit,” “revoke,” “opt out,” “cancel,” “unsubscribe” and “end” must be honored as revocations, and the revocation has to be processed within ten business days. Since April 2026, a revocation delivered by any of those means covers all robocalls and robotexts from that caller, not just the message type it arrived on. For an agent who has built a consented database from lead forms, that means one “stop” text closes every automated channel to that contact at once.
A text is a call
Agents who would never robocall an expired will happily text one, and the statute does not see a difference. The FCC has long treated text messages as calls under the TCPA. An automated or platform-sent text to a cold cell number, which is every mass-texting product, is an autodialed call to a cell without consent if the platform meets the autodialer definition, and the FCC confirmed in 2023 that the do-not-call rules apply to texts as they do to voice calls. A single text typed by hand on your own phone sits in a grayer area on the autodialer question, but it is still a solicitation to a number that may be on the registry, and the FSBO follow-up plan puts it plainly: text only the sellers who asked you to.
| Method, to a cold cell number | Under the statute | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Live person dials from a list and speaks | Permitted, subject to the do-not-call and hours rules | The default mode for every cold list |
| Predictive or parallel dialing with a person on the line | Autodialer question depends on configuration and circuit; abandonment rules apply regardless | Get a specific opinion; keep abandonment under three percent |
| Prerecorded message | Prohibited without prior express consent | Do not |
| Ringless voicemail drop | A call; prohibited without consent | Do not |
| AI voice agent placing the call | Artificial voice; prohibited without consent | Do not, whatever the vendor says |
| Automated or platform text | A call; autodialer and do-not-call rules apply | Only to contacts with prior express written consent |
| Hand-typed text from your phone | Grayer on autodialer; do-not-call still applies | Only to sellers who asked for texts |
| Voicemail left in your own voice after a live dial | A live call that reached voicemail | Permitted; keep it short and identify yourself |
What a violation costs, and why it compounds
The private right of action at 227(b)(3) allows the homeowner $500 per violating call or text, trebled to $1,500 for a willful or knowing violation, with no statutory cap on the total. A voicemail drop campaign to two thousand cold numbers is two thousand violations before anyone picks up. That math is why TCPA suits are filed as class actions and why the plaintiffs’ bar watches real estate outreach closely: the lists are large, the numbers are cells, and the consent is absent by construction.
A vendor’s indemnity changes none of that. If a texting platform or a voice product promised you compliance, read the contract for what it actually promises when the suit names you, which is usually less than the sales call implied.
What this means for how you dial
The rules, applied to a cold list of expireds, FSBOs or a farm, come down to a short set of practices. A person dials, from a list, and speaks when the homeowner answers. No recording of any kind goes to a cold cell, in any product, under any name. Texts go only to contacts who gave written consent or asked for them, and every “stop” is honored across every channel within ten business days. If you run a multi-line mode, you have a written opinion on the autodialer question for your configuration and you watch the abandonment rate the way the dialer setup checklist describes. And you keep records: the list source, the scrub date, the consent record where one exists, the outcome of every dial.
None of that stops you prospecting. Not one line of it. It defines the shape of prospecting that is legal to a population of homeowners who almost all carry the phone in their pocket, and the compliance guide carries the state overlays that sit on top of the federal statute. The agents who get into trouble under this law are rarely the ones dialing and talking. They are the ones who bought a product that promised to do the talking for them.