Prospecting is regulated speech
Cold calling and mass emailing are ordinary prospecting, and both sit inside federal rules with hard numbers.
Scrubbing the registry
16 CFR 310.4(b)(3)(iv) requires the seller or telemarketer to access the National Do Not Call Registry no more than 31 days before making a call and to drop any registered number. Meeting that schedule is part of the safe harbor.
Three months tempts because it is a genuine Do-Not-Call figure, but it is the window for a consumer who made an inquiry or application, not the scrub interval.
The exception windows, and what beats them
Two established business relationship windows matter:
- 18 months after a purchase, rental, or financial transaction.
- 3 months after an inquiry or application.
The trap: a company-specific do-not-call request must be honored for five years and always overrides an established business relationship.
Worked example: a client closed March 1, 2025, so the 18-month window would run to about September 1, 2026. On May 1, 2026 she told the firm in writing to stop calling. A June 2026 referral call is not permitted: her request extinguished the window. Soliciting future business is telemarketing; confirming a showing appointment is not.
Calling a for-sale-by-owner
Calling a registered for-sale-by-owner number on behalf of an identified buyer client genuinely interested in that specific property is negotiating a purchase, not soliciting, so it is permitted — but the buyer's interest may not be a pretext to solicit the listing. Asking the owner to list, or offering a free market analysis, is solicitation. A yard sign is not the express written agreement the regulation requires.
CAN-SPAM
Under 15 U.S.C. 7704 and 16 CFR 316, commercial email must carry honest headers and subject lines, identify itself as an advertisement, include a valid physical postal address and a clear opt-out mechanism functional at least 30 days, and honor opt-outs within 10 business days.
There is no established-business-relationship exception; CAN-SPAM reaches all commercial email, including business-to-business, and is opt-out, not opt-in.