TCPA Rules for Land Cold Calling: What Land Investors Should Know

This article is general information, not legal advice. Calling rules change and depend on your facts. Talk to an attorney who handles telemarketing compliance before you start a campaign.

Land investors call owners every day, and most do it without trouble. The ones who get sued usually skipped one of a handful of basics. Here is what those basics are.

The federal rules

Two sets of federal rules matter most:

• The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and the FCC rules under it (47 CFR 64.1200).
• The Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR), enforced by the FTC (16 CFR Part 310).

Is a call to buy land “telemarketing”?

These rules focus on calls that encourage someone to buy, rent or invest in something. A call offering to buy someone’s land does not fit that neatly, and the question is not settled everywhere. Most careful investors treat their calls as if the rules apply. That is the approach we recommend.

Do Not Call

• National Do Not Call Registry. Scrub your list against it before calling, and refresh the scrub regularly. The TSR requires using a version of the registry no more than 31 days old.
• Your own do not call list. When an owner says “don’t call me again,” record it and stop. Keep that list across every campaign and every caller.
• State lists. Some states, including Florida and Tennessee, keep their own Do Not Call lists.

Calling hours

Federal rules allow calls between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. in the called person’s local time. Some states set narrower windows. Use the owner’s location, not yours, and remember area codes do not always match where people live.

Autodialers, prerecorded and AI voices

• Autodialers. After the Supreme Court’s 2021 decision in Facebook v. Duguid, the federal autodialer definition covers equipment that uses a random or sequential number generator. That narrowed the federal rule, but several states have written broader definitions of their own.
• Prerecorded and artificial voices. Calls to cell phones with a prerecorded or artificial voice need prior express consent, and prior express written consent for telemarketing. In 2024 the FCC confirmed that AI generated voices count as artificial voices under the TCPA.
• Abandoned calls. If a dialer connects an owner and no live person is there, that is an abandoned call. Federal rules limit abandoned calls to 3% of answered calls per campaign over a 30 day period.

Live callers talking to owners, on a monitored dialer, are the lowest risk way to do this.

Caller ID

Transmit a real caller ID number that someone can call back, and do not spoof. Local numbers are fine when they belong to you and ring back to your team.

State laws to know

Several states have their own “mini TCPA” laws that go further than federal rules, often with broader autodialer definitions, stricter hours, limits on repeat calls and a private right to sue. Florida and Oklahoma are well known examples. If you call into a state, follow the stricter of the federal and state rules.

Litigators

A small number of people file TCPA suits professionally. Litigator scrub lists remove known serial plaintiffs. They are not a substitute for following the rules, but they reduce risk.

Penalties

The TCPA allows $500 per violation, and up to $1,500 per violation if it was willful or knowing. On a campaign with thousands of calls, that adds up fast.

A practical checklist

• Scrub against the National Do Not Call Registry and any state lists.
• Keep and honor an internal do not call list.
• Remove known litigators.
• Call between 8 a.m. and 9 p.m. local time, or narrower where states require it.
• Use live callers. No prerecorded or AI voices without the right consent.
• Transmit accurate caller ID.
• Have callers give their name and the business they are calling for.
• Check the specific rules for every state you call into.

We build these steps into every LandDial campaign, and we review your target states with you before dialing. Your own attorney should still sign off on your setup.