Speed to lead is everything in real estate: answer a portal lead in five minutes and you are in the conversation, answer in an hour and someone else has the showing. So your CRM texts new leads instantly — except in 2026, if that number is not A2P 10DLC registered, the carrier is quietly dropping the message and your five-minute response lands nowhere.
A2P means application-to-person: texts sent by software on your behalf, from a standard 10-digit local number. AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon require every business sending A2P texts to register with The Campaign Registry (TCR): a Brand (your business identity) and a Campaign (your messaging program, with sample messages). Registered traffic gets delivered; unregistered traffic gets blocked or filtered.
Carriers train their filters on complaints, and real estate feeds them constantly: “cash offer for your home” wholesaler blasts, “your home value went up!” farming campaigns, circle-prospecting texts to people who never opted in. That history means real-estate vocabulary draws extra scrutiny, and a legitimate agent doing honest lead follow-up pays the reputational tax unless the number is registered and the content reads like a professional talking to a client.
You file through your texting provider's console — Twilio, or the SMS vendor behind your CRM's texting feature — which passes everything to TCR; you never deal with the registry directly. Have ready:
Pick Low Volume Mixed if you send under about 2,000 messages a day (nearly every solo agent and team does), roughly $1.50–2 a month. Bigger brokerages doing drip marketing at scale fit Mixed or Marketing, roughly $10–12 a month.
“Harbor View Realty sends showing confirmations, new-listing alerts, open-house follow-ups, and transaction status updates to buyers and sellers who submitted their number through our website, signed in at an open house with texting consent, or requested information from an agent directly. All messages identify Harbor View Realty and include opt-out instructions.”
Third-party lead generation is a prohibited 10DLC content category. If your description sounds like you capture and resell buyer leads rather than represent clients, expect rejection. Describe the brokerage texting its own clients and prospects.
Keep sample messages (and real ones) about the property and the transaction, never the neighbors or the “kind of neighborhood.” Anything that could read as steering (“great area for young families,” “safe community”) is a fair-housing problem no carrier registration fixes.
A sign-in sheet with names and numbers is not an opt-in list. Add one consent line to the sheet or tablet form — “I agree to receive texts from Harbor View Realty about this property and similar listings. Reply STOP to opt out.” — and it becomes a documented, campaign-safe audience.
Zillow or realtor.com leads consented to the portal's terms, which generally cover agent contact, but log the lead source and timestamp so your opt-in story is provable.
Every number that sends A2P traffic must be attached to a registered campaign. The team's “main line” texting from the CRM needs registration just like each agent's tracking numbers.
TCR assigns your brand a 0–100 trust score, which sets daily capacity: T-Mobile enforces published daily caps, AT&T rate-limits per minute, Verizon filters on reputation.
| Trust score | Tier | T-Mobile daily cap | Real estate reality check |
|---|---|---|---|
| 75–100 | Top | ~200,000/day | National franchises and portals |
| 50–74 | Upper-mid | ~40,000/day | Large multi-office brokerages |
| 25–49 | Lower-mid | ~10,000/day | Teams and mid-size brokerages; plenty |
| 0–24 | Low | ~2,000/day | Solo agents; far more than you send |
| Sole Proprietor | Bottom | ~1,000/day | Heavy filtering — get an LLC instead |
A solo agent sending 60 follow-ups a day will never touch these caps. The score matters more for filtering aggressiveness than raw volume at this scale, and registered low-tier still beats unregistered every day of the week.
Opt-in: collect consent at capture — website form checkbox: “I agree to receive texts from Harbor View Realty about listings and my transaction. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out.”
Opt-out: STOP, CANCEL, QUIT suppress the number immediately. Your provider handles the keyword; your CRM must respect the suppression forever, including the “just checking in” texts a year later. First message of a thread or any blast carries the footer:
“Harbor View Realty. Msg & data rates may apply. Msg frequency varies. Reply HELP for help, STOP to opt out.”
Consent and quiet-hours rules (federal 8am–9pm recipient local time, stricter in some states) are TCPA territory, separate from 10DLC. The state-by-state SMS rules hub covers those, and our TCPA compliance guide goes deep on consent.
On Twilio-backed platforms, unregistered US traffic is rejected at the API with error 30034: the text never leaves the building. Elsewhere, carriers filter silently — the CRM says “sent” while the buyer's phone shows nothing, which is worse, because you follow up on conversations that never happened. Filtered traffic also degrades the number's reputation, so the longer you run unregistered, the longer the climb back. Full diagnosis playbook in our Twilio deliverability guide.
The same mechanics apply across every local-services vertical; see the companion guides for solar companies and home security dealers if you work referral partnerships in those trades.
FollowUp exists so agents never touch TCR: the Autopilot tier includes a dedicated 10DLC-registered business number with the brand and campaign work already done, plus automatic opt-out handling and quiet-hours enforcement. Follow up in minutes and know the message landed.
Yes, if the texts go through software. Any CRM, IDX platform, or follow-up tool sending SMS on your behalf from a 10-digit local number is application-to-person traffic and must be registered with The Campaign Registry. Manually texting from your own phone is person-to-person and exempt from 10DLC, though TCPA consent rules still apply either way.
If you have an LLC or S-corp with an EIN, register that entity as the brand for roughly $4. Agents without an entity can register as Sole Proprietor, but that tier is capped near 1,000 messages a day and filtered hardest. Team leads and brokerages should register the brokerage entity once and run agents' numbers under its campaigns.
Brand registration is a $4 one-time fee. Campaign registration adds a one-time vetting fee of approximately $15 plus roughly $1.50 to $12 per month depending on use case. A typical solo agent or small team fits Low Volume Mixed at about $1.50 to $2 per month. Carriers add small per-segment surcharges.
Only if the sign-in sheet actually collected texting consent. A name and number on a sheet is contact information, not permission for automated marketing texts. Add a consent line to your sign-in form (“I agree to receive texts about this property and similar listings, reply STOP to opt out”) and your open-house list becomes a legitimate, documented opt-in audience.
Frequent causes: the campaign description reads like lead generation or list resale, sample messages promise valuations or “cash offers” in spammy phrasing, samples lack opt-out language, the opt-in description is vague, or the brand website does not match the registered entity. Rewrite around listing updates, showing confirmations, and client follow-up, then resubmit.