Realogy Settles TCPA Class Action Lawsuit For $20M

The recent $20 million settlement between Realogy Brokerage Group (now Anywhere Real Estate) and the members of the class action lawsuit serves as a stark reminder that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) one-to-one consent rule takes effect today, January 27, 2025. 

The class-action lawsuit, involving 298,494 class members, was initially filed in the Northern District Court of California in 2019, against defendants Realogy and Mojo. The plaintiffs claimed that Realogy violated the TCPA by allowing its Coldwell Banker affiliated agents to call plaintiffs and others who are registered on the National Do Not Call Registry (NDNC) and for using prerecorded messages, provided by Mojo Dialing Solutions. 

An estimated 700,000 phone calls were made by Realogy agents affiliated with the Coldwell Banker franchise between 2015 and 2020, according to court documents. The lawsuit's NDNC class spans 131,892 telephone numbers, while the prerecorded message class includes 201,001 numbers.

Realogy is a large real estate conglomerate that includes brands like Coldwell Banker and Sotheby International Realty. Thousands of real estate agents across the U.S., contracted with Realogy, are responsible for following up on leads for residential home sales. The Coldwell Banker-affiliated agents used auto dialers and lead generation platforms like Mojo, Phone Burner, and Storm Dialer to conduct cold calls. 

The named plaintiffs are individual homeowners located in California, Minnesota, and Florida. Plaintiffs allege that they received unwanted calls from Realogy Agents affiliated with Coldwell Banker asking them to list their homes for sale. Plaintiffs Rowan and Peker also received prerecorded messages from Realogy agents. 

“Despite the widespread embrace of the National Do Not Call Registry, companies like the defendant flagrantly ignore the Registry and invade the privacy of consumers with unwanted calls,” the complaint read.

However, Realogy argued for class decertification in 2024, claiming there were class members who had no valid claims. The defendants challenged the plaintiff’s expert analyst, Verkhovskaya, by arguing some clients had business relationships with brokerages while others were not on the NDNC registry and others never received a call.

Plaintiffs would have faced either class decertification or a loss on trial, based on errors by the plaintiffs' expert analyst.

Attorneys for Realogy agreed to the proposed settlement. From the $20 million fund, $12.6 million would be distributed to approximately 298,494 class members, according to case filings.

New TCPA Rules For Lead Buyers

In December 2023, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted new rules to combat unwanted and/or illegal telemarketing calls and texts, instituting a rule that closes the so-called “lead generator loophole.”

The new one-to-one consent requirement will obligate parties making marketing calls using an automatic telephone dialing system or an artificial or prerecorded voice to obtain prior express written consent “one seller at a time.”

Essentially, consumers cannot consent to multiple lenders at once. Instead, they must consent to each lender individually and exclusively. That means the lead buyer cannot resell a lead to any other person or company — a common practice in the industry.

The FCC rules apply to all lead publishers — like LendingTree, Credit Karma, and Money.com — and to all lead-buying businesses using auto dialers for robo texts or robocalls.

In 2024, Founder of Next Percent, a mortgage consulting company, Michael Eshelman said “When [consumers] have to select which individual lenders they wanna speak with, we’ll find out, are they going to select lenders that they have heard of before? Are they going to decide not to select anyone? Because now it’s just another hurdle that they have to cross.”

Additionally, the new rules include requirements for the consent be “clear and conspicuous,” and for the calls and texts initiated pursuant to the consent to be “logically and topically associated with the interaction that prompted the consent.”

Lead buyers are also required to maintain documentation of the consumer’s consent and cannot rely on lead publishers to maintain it, adding to their compliance burden. To boot, the new rules extend the Federal Do Not Call (DNC) registry protections to text messages.

“This is a big deal and is going to have a major impact on mortgage lending and advertising,” wrote Founder and CEO of InSellerate, Josh Friend, in a LinkedIn post when the news initially broke. “A lot of lenders don’t yet understand the impact but they will when the rates drop and they want leads. Or their online purchase leads go away.”