Key points

• TREC Rule 535.4(f) reserves soliciting listings to licence holders.
• TREC guidance states an unlicensed assistant may not call to find out whether someone is interested in buying, selling or leasing, even to book a follow-up with a licensed agent.
• The activity is what matters, not the medium. A card and a phone call are treated by the same test.
• California's DRE page states the general prohibition and the supervision duty but publishes no marketing-specific list on the page itself.
• Separately, the CFPB's RESPA FAQs treat gifts and promotions as things of value, with no exception based on how small the gift is.

What prompted this

A coordinator posting about mailing greeting cards to keep in touch with clients sent the desk to check where the licensing line actually falls on client-touch marketing, and who may fund it. Nothing here describes this account's practice, which we have not examined.

Credit: The Real Estate Assistant (@realestateassistantatx) on tiktok.

Staying in front of past clients is ordinary practice in residential real estate, and a good deal of it now runs through the coordinator. Mailers, closing gifts, anniversary cards, the birthday note that arrives on time because somebody put it in a system. It is genuinely useful work, and most of it raises no question at all.

The question starts at a specific point, and it is narrower than most people assume. It is not about postage, branding or who licked the envelope. It is about solicitation.

What Texas actually says

The Texas Real Estate Commission addresses unlicensed assistance in guidance built around the Texas Real Estate License Act and Rules 535.4 and 535.5. Under Rule 535.4(f), soliciting listings is reserved to licence holders.

TREC's guidance carries an example worth reading closely, because it closes the loophole most people reach for. An unlicensed assistant may not make calls to determine whether a person is interested in buying, selling or leasing property, and that holds even when the purpose of the call is only to schedule a follow-up appointment for a licence holder to handle the substance. Handing the conversation off does not cure it. The prohibited act is the asking.

The test is the activity, not the format. Nothing in the rule turns on whether contact arrives by telephone, email or post. A mailer that asks whether the recipient is thinking of selling is doing the same work as the call, and is measured the same way.

Where that leaves the card

On a plain reading of the Texas material, the line falls between keeping in touch and prospecting. A card that thanks a client, marks an anniversary or carries the agent's brand is not asking anyone whether they want to transact. A card that invites the recipient to find out what their home is worth is.

• Sending a branded card on a schedule the licensed agent sets is the administrative half of the job.
• Asking, in any medium, whether the recipient is thinking of buying, selling or leasing is solicitation.
• Booking the agent's follow-up call is not a workaround. TREC's example addresses that directly.
• Who signs the message matters less than what the message asks for.

California publishes less than people think

Coordinators working California files often expect a cleaner answer, because California is generally the best-documented state on unlicensed assistance. The Department of Real Estate's unlicensed assistants page states the general position, that an unlicensed person may not perform any activity requiring a real estate licence or a mortgage loan originator endorsement, and it sets out the broker's duty to supervise adequately so that the proper limitations are observed. It also states that a broker may not employ or compensate an unlicensed person, directly or indirectly, for performing licensed acts.

What the page does not carry is a marketing-specific list. The DRE maintains a longer PDF guide alongside it, which is where practitioners generally look for itemised activities.

What we could not verify. TC Bulletin was unable to extract the text of the DRE's PDF guide to unlicensed assistants, so this story does not characterise its contents. Coordinators working California files should read that guide directly rather than rely on the summary page. If your reading of it differs from anything here, write to the desk and we will publish the correction with its date.

The second rule, about who pays

There is a separate federal question sitting underneath the same campaign, and it is about money rather than licensing. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's RESPA FAQs, last updated on 7 October 2020, treat gifts and promotions as things of value. Regulation X defines that term broadly, reaching well past cash into services at special or free rates, trips, and payment of another person's expenses.

Section 8(a) is triggered where a thing of value is given pursuant to an agreement or understanding that settlement service business will be referred. That agreement does not have to be written or even spoken. The CFPB's material is explicit that it can be established by a practice, pattern or course of conduct.

The two conditions on the promotional exception

• Not conditioned on referrals: Condition 1 (Items aimed only at past or expected referral sources point the wrong way. Broad distribution points the right way.)
• Not defraying the recipient's expenses: Condition 2 (It may not cover costs the referral source would otherwise pay itself, such as required continuing education or office supplies.)
• Value-based exception: None (The CFPB FAQs state there is no exception based solely on the value of the gift or promotion.)
• FAQs last updated: 7 Oct 2020 (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau)

The direction of the gift is what a coordinator should watch. A card going to a consumer who has already closed is a different object from a benefit flowing to the agent who sends the coordinator work. Where the coordinator absorbs the cost of marketing that would otherwise be the agent's own expense, the second condition of the promotional exception is the one to think about.

An honest gap in the federal answer

Whether Section 8 reaches a transaction coordinator at all is less settled than the confident advice circulating on the subject suggests. Regulation X defines a settlement service as any service provided in connection with a real estate settlement, and the enumerated examples run to loan origination, closing services, title services, title insurance, document preparation, surveys, inspections, appraisals, credit reports, and the services of attorneys, real estate agents and mortgage brokers. Transaction coordination is not named.

The list is expressly not exhaustive, which is why the question is open rather than answered in the coordinator's favour. TC Bulletin has not found a CFPB statement addressing transaction coordinators by name, and this story does not assert one either way. What it does establish is that anyone telling coordinators the answer is obvious, in either direction, is going beyond the published material.

The practical read

1. Check the rule for the state the property sits in, not the state the coordinator sits in.
2. Read every piece of client-touch copy for one thing: does it ask the recipient about transacting? If it does, a licence holder sends it.
3. Do not treat handing the conversation to the agent as a fix. Texas addresses that example directly.
4. Keep a record of who paid for the campaign and who it went to. The RESPA question is answered by that record, not by intent.
5. Where a coordinator absorbs a cost the agent would otherwise carry, get it reviewed before it becomes a pattern.

Primary sources for this story

• TREC, unlicensed individuals in Texas real estate transactions Guidance citing TRELA and Rules 535.4 and 535.5
• TREC rules
• California DRE, unlicensed assistants
• California DRE, guide to unlicensed assistants (PDF) Read directly; this story does not characterise its contents
• CFPB, RESPA FAQs Last updated 7 October 2020
• 12 CFR 1024.14, prohibition against kickbacks and unearned fees

Sources cited

• Texas Real Estate Commission
• California DRE
• CFPB RESPA FAQs
• 12 CFR 1024.14

Key points

• There is no federal rule on transaction coordinator scope. Every answer is a state answer.
• California's DRE publishes both a web page and a detailed PDF guide on unlicensed assistants.
• Texas TREC frames the answer around TRELA and Rules 535.4 and 535.5.
• Florida has no single FREC page on unlicensed assistant duties; section 475.42 of the Florida Statutes governs unlicensed activity.
• NAR's state-by-state table on unlicensed assistants carries a 2017 date and should not be relied on alone.

The question a coordinator gets asked more than any other, usually by a new agent and usually on a Friday, is whether they can just call the lender. The honest answer is that it depends on the state, on what is said on the call, and on whether the coordinator holds a licence. What it never depends on is how urgent the file is.

There is no national scope of practice for transaction coordination. There is no federal regulator, no reciprocity, and no single definition of the role. What exists is fifty separate treatments of unlicensed assistance, written by real estate commissions that were mostly thinking about administrative staff in a brokerage rather than an independent contractor running forty files for six agents.

California: the checklist state

The California Department of Real Estate publishes guidance on unlicensed assistants as a web page and backs it with a detailed PDF guide. The structure of the California approach is a list: activities an unlicensed person may perform, and activities requiring a licence. That makes it the most quotable of the three, and the one most often cited outside California by coordinators who do not realise they are quoting another state's regulator.

California is also the state with the most developed professional infrastructure around the role. The California Association of REALTORS runs the Certified Transaction Coordinator credential and hosts a public TC directory, and the California Association of Transaction Coordinators is the only verified state association for the profession.

Texas: the conditional answer

The Texas Real Estate Commission addresses the question in guidance titled around whether unlicensed individuals can help with Texas real estate transactions, and answers it: it depends. The guidance points to the Texas Real Estate License Act and to Rules 535.4 and 535.5, which set out what constitutes acting as a broker and what an unlicensed person may do on behalf of one.

The practical difference from California is that Texas asks the coordinator to reason from the statute rather than read a list. That is harder to hand to an agent as a boundary, and it is the reason Texas coordinators tend to write their own scope letters.

Florida: the statute and the enforcement programme

Florida is the gap. The Division of Real Estate sits under the Department of Business and Professional Regulation, and DBPR runs an unlicensed activity programme, but there is no single clean state page setting out what an unlicensed assistant may and may not do. Section 475.42 of the Florida Statutes governs unlicensed activity, and the working duty guidelines that circulate among Florida coordinators are generally PDFs published by local boards rather than by the state.

Verification note. TC Bulletin was unable to locate a single FREC-hosted page setting out permitted unlicensed assistant duties in Florida. If one exists, write to the desk and we will correct this story and date the correction.

The nine-year-old table everyone cites

The National Association of REALTORS maintains a state-by-state unlicensed assistants table and a field guide to personal assistants. Both are genuinely useful as an orientation. The table, however, carries a 2017 date, and state regulators have kept publishing since. Any scope decision that matters should be checked against the state commission's current page, not against the table.

• Confirm which state's rule actually governs the file, not the state the coordinator lives in.
• Read the current regulator page, then the statute or rule it cites, before writing a scope letter.
• Treat NAR's table as a map, not as authority.
• Where a licensed coordinator is doing licensed work, be explicit about which brokerage they are hanging that licence with.

Primary sources for this story

• California DRE, unlicensed assistants guidance
• California DRE, guide to unlicensed assistants (PDF)
• Texas Real Estate Commission Guidance citing TRELA and Rules 535.4 and 535.5
• Florida DBPR, Division of Real Estate
• Florida DBPR unlicensed activity programme
• NAR field guide to personal assistants

Sources cited

• California DRE
• Texas TREC
• Florida DBPR
• NAR

Key points

• NAR maintains a state-by-state Unlicensed Assistants Table as a PDF dated 2017.
• It sits alongside NAR's Field Guide to Personal Assistants.
• State commissions including the California DRE and Texas TREC have published guidance since.
• Use the table for orientation and the state regulator for authority.

Ask a brokerage compliance officer where the line sits on unlicensed assistance and there is a good chance the answer arrives as a PDF attachment. It is usually the same PDF: the National Association of REALTORS state-by-state table on unlicensed assistants, which carries a 2017 date.

The table is not wrong so much as old. It was assembled to give a national overview of a question that is decided fifty times over, and it does that job well. But nine years is a long time in licensing guidance, and the state commissions have not stopped publishing. The California DRE maintains both a live page and a detailed PDF guide. TREC has published its own conditional guidance pointing at TRELA and Rules 535.4 and 535.5.

Where it still earns its place

For a coordinator taking on a file in a state they have not worked before, the table answers the first question quickly: is this a state that treats the activity permissively, or one that does not. That is a useful triage step. It is not a defence.

NAR's Field Guide to Personal Assistants is the companion document and is maintained on the association's site. Both are membership-oriented material written with brokerage assistants in mind, which is a different working relationship from an independent coordinator contracting with several agents at once.

Primary sources for this story

• NAR Field Guide to Personal Assistants
• California DRE, unlicensed assistants
• Texas Real Estate Commission

Sources cited

• NAR

Key points

• The California DRE publishes its Real Estate Bulletin quarterly.
• Issues post around the middle of March, June, September and December.
• Winter 2026 is the current issue at the time of writing.
• The DRE Updates newsroom carries items between issues.

Regulatory reading is easier to keep up with when it arrives on a schedule. The California Department of Real Estate publishes its Real Estate Bulletin quarterly, with issues appearing around the middle of March, June, September and December. Winter 2026 is the current issue.

For a coordinator working California files, the bulletin is the slow channel and the DRE Updates newsroom is the fast one. Enforcement notices, licensing changes and advisories appear in the newsroom as they happen; the bulletin collects and contextualises.

Publication pattern

• Mid March: Spring issue
• Mid June: Summer issue
• Mid September: Autumn issue
• Mid December: Winter issue

Primary sources for this story

• California DRE Real Estate Bulletin
• California DRE

Sources cited

• California DRE Real Estate Bulletin