The 10-Minute DNC Compliance Checklist

What should a real estate agent check before making prospecting calls?

Ten checks cover it: who's on the list, what exemption applies to each contact, whether consent or an established business relationship is actually documented, and whether any outside list has been scrubbed against the registry in the last 31 days. Run through all ten once before any new calling push, not once a year as a habit that fades out by February.

Every item below traces back to a rule this site's DNC and TCPA content already covers in depth. This post is the fast version, the one you actually run before picking up the phone, not another explainer.

The 10-item DNC compliance checklist

1. Every number on your list is tagged with a reason you can call it. Personal relationship, active established business relationship, or documented written consent. If none of those apply, that number doesn't belong on today's list. See when you can legally call a number on the registry for the exact exemptions.
2. Established business relationship dates are tracked, not guessed. 18 months from a closing, 3 months from an inquiry. A relationship you're assuming is still active without a calendar entry is a relationship you're guessing about.
3. Written consent forms include the phone number and the required disclosures. A signature alone isn't enough; the form needs to state what number you're agreeing to be contacted at.
4. Any list you didn't build yourself has been scrubbed against the registry in the last 31 days. Purchased lists, scraped lists, and old lead files nobody's touched in months all need this check before you call them.
5. FSBO and expired-listing calls are scoped to the exemptions that actually apply to them, not treated as a blanket green light because the seller is technically for-sale.
6. Every "stop calling me" request is logged and honored immediately. No exceptions, no "just this once," no relying on memory instead of a written record.
7. Texts follow the same rules as calls. A marketing text to a registered number carries the same exposure as a marketing call. Texting isn't a workaround for a number you couldn't legally call.
8. Calling hours stay within 8:00 a.m.–9:00 p.m. in the recipient's local time, not your own time zone if you're calling across state lines.
9. You know whether your state adds its own rules on top of federal law. Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington all have their own telemarketing statutes layered over the federal TCPA, and federal compliance alone doesn't cover you in a state that's added more.
10. You understand what a violation actually costs before deciding a shortcut is worth it. Statutory damages run $500 to $1,500 per violation in private suits, with no cap on how many violations one bad list can generate.

A DNC compliance self-audit is a quick pass through your own calling list against these ten checks, run before a prospecting session rather than after a complaint. It isn't a legal review and it isn't a substitute for one. It's the fast filter that catches the obvious problems before they become expensive ones.

The agents who run into trouble with these rules usually aren't the ones who never learned them. They're the ones who learned them once, felt confident, and stopped checking. A ten-item list run before every push closes exactly that gap, the one between knowing the rule in theory and applying it to today's actual list.

How often should an agent re-check their DNC compliance?

Run this checklist before any new calling push that uses a list you haven't already worked, and at minimum once a quarter over your full active-calling list. Compliance isn't a one-time setup task you finish and file away; contacts move in and out of exemption windows every month as EBR clocks expire and new inquiries come in, so a list that was clean in January isn't automatically clean in June.

What's the fastest way to audit a call list before a prospecting session?

Sort your list into three buckets before you dial anything: contacts with a clear exemption (personal relationship, active EBR, documented consent), contacts you're unsure about, and contacts with no exemption at all. Call the first bucket. Set the second bucket aside until you can verify the relationship or consent. Drop the third bucket entirely, or route it through a 31-day scrub first if it's genuinely worth pursuing.

That three-bucket sort takes a few minutes for most agents' actual working lists, because most of a relationship-based sphere lands in the first bucket automatically. The audit only feels slow the first time you run it, before your tagging system exists to sort contacts for you.

Most of this checklist is trivially true for an agent whose call list is built from real relationships in the first place. That's not an accident, and it's the actual point of everything in this compliance series: the rules get complicated for cold, stranger-facing prospecting and stay simple for a sphere-first business, because a sphere is mostly self-exempting by design. Run the checklist because you should, not because your list is secretly full of numbers you shouldn't be calling.

This checklist works because it's short enough to actually run, not because it's exhaustive. For the deeper explainer behind any single item, the linked posts above cover the full reasoning; this page is the version you use right before you dial.

Want the printable version, plus the consent language and the exemption flowchart in one document? Download the free DNC-TCPA Survival Guide. For the complete framework, see the complete DNC and TCPA compliance guide.

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This article is educational information, not legal advice. Telemarketing law changes, states add their own requirements, and how the rules apply depends on your specific facts. Consult a licensed attorney about your situation before making compliance decisions. See our legal disclaimer. Every figure in this checklist traces back to a source already verified in the published Can Realtors Call Numbers on the Do-Not-Call List? post; no new claim is introduced here.

Frequently asked questions

Is there a simple DNC compliance checklist for realtors?

Yes. This article's ten-item list covers exemption tagging, EBR date tracking, written consent, list scrubbing, FSBO/expired scoping, opt-out logging, texting rules, calling hours, state-law awareness, and understanding the actual cost of a violation.

What should I check first before a new calling push?

Sort your list by exemption status before anything else: personal relationship, active established business relationship, or documented consent. Anything that doesn't fall into one of those three buckets needs a scrub or shouldn't be on today's list.

How often should I re-run this checklist?

Before any new list you haven't already worked, and at least quarterly over your full active-calling list. Established business relationship windows expire on their own schedule, so a list that passed the check in one quarter isn't guaranteed to still pass in the next.

Does this checklist cover state-specific telemarketing laws?

Only at a high level; item 9 flags that you need to know whether your state has its own layer. Florida, Oklahoma, and Washington each have their own statutes on top of federal law, and the full state-by-state detail lives in a separate post, not in this checklist.