PAR Legal Hotline Stats – And Some Helpful Hints

Well, it’s certainly been a year, hasn’t it?  

The PAR Legal Hotline handled just over 6,000 tickets, each representing a unique question in 2024. That’s an increase of about 100 tickets over 2023 and averages out to about 24 calls per day.  

The weeks of August 5, 12 and 19 had the highest call volume, by far. Those were just before, during and right after the deadline for implementing practice changes from the NAR settlement. In fact, the week of August 12 was our 7th busiest week since we started collecting these stats back in 2019. We don’t track call times, but the length and complexity of calls definitely increased this year with the settlement. 

Three of the top five topics were all settlement-related. These were categories on Fees, Forms Usage, and the NAR Class Action. The other categories in the top 5 were Landlord-Tenant issues (which is almost always number 1 but fell to number 3 this year) and Inspections – proving that some calls were just about regular old transactions and not the settlement. 

3035 individual callers contacted the hotline this year. The top 10 overall callers – our “frequent fliers” – each called 20 times or more. All but one were brokers or managers who generally called on behalf of their agents. We love those types of frequent callers, since it shows that those agents are actually talking to their managers! At the other end of the spectrum, 1,929 callers contacted the hotline only once. Many of them were first-time callers. 

Leaving aside the raw numbers, call times and complexity jumped this year. Some of that is certainly based on settlement-related issues, but a good piece of it seems to be based on the overall innovation and… let’s call it “creativity…” that has been showing up in the market over the past few years. Your time – and ours – is best used when we can quickly get to the heart of your questions with a response. So, let’s take a look at some of the ways you can make your hotline experience more effective for everyone. 

• I’ll start with the biggest one, which is that agents should talk with their broker/manager BEFORE calling the hotline, and then again AFTER you get a response. Contacting your manager first may save everyone time if they can simply answer the question. Even if they can’t answer, if the question is tricky enough to generate a hotline call, they should know about the situation, right? And then close the loop by letting them know what we said afterwards – especially since our answers often include phrases like “you should talk to your broker/manager about how this one should be handled.” 
  • And for brokers, don’t “manage by hotline” and have agents use the hotline as their first line of assistance. Questions from those agents are quite often focused on things like brokerage policy or simple training issues that you should be handling at the brokerage level. 

• We shield the hotline number online to reduce calls from consumers and non-members looking for free legal advice. If you need it, please call the PAR Solutions Center at 800-727-5345 and they’ll provide it after validating membership. This is a member-only benefit, so please don’t pass the number on to clients or other non-Realtors®. 
  • If you try to ask a hotline question some other way – leaving it on our general voicemail, through the website, or by sending it directly to one of the attorneys – it’s likely to be delayed. 

• Voicemails that don’t have all the necessary information probably will have delayed responses. PLEASE remember to leave: 
  • Your name (spelled out, since we can’t always clearly hear the audio);  
  • Your phone number, with area code; and  
  • A brief summary of the subject matter of your issue/question. “I have a question” is not enough for us to prepare the start of an answer before we call. 

• All hotline calls go right to our voicemail. It’s not necessary to leave multiple messages or to call us back if we miss you. In fact, it just takes up extra time for us to listen to the message and realize it’s not a new question. 
  • That said, if you are calling to follow up on a conversation from a prior call, PLEASE let us know that so we can look up the background information from the earlier ticket. 

• We generally return calls in the order they’re received, with a goal of returning every call within one business day except in extreme circumstances. Questions that start out with something like “our deadline is today” or “we’re closing in an hour” are usually best directed to your broker/manager. 

• Please respect the boundaries of our hotline service. The general purpose of the hotline is to provide assistance with members’ licensed real estate activities.  
  • If you need legal assistance with personal buy/sell/lease transactions (where you’re the buyer/seller/landlord/tenant in the transaction), our best advice is generally that you should consider hiring a local real estate attorney – just as you’d advise your own clients to do. 
  • Our “lane” is limited to real estate-related laws/forms/ethics/etc. We can’t give advice on other topics like personal legal issues (divorce, civil lawsuits, criminal charges) or business decisions (how to organize a brokerage, what your fees should be, who to hire/fire). Yes – all of those were real. 
  • Hotline attorneys can’t interpret language that wasn’t drafted by PAR. If your question involves language drafted by the agents, parties or counsel and the parties aren’t in agreement as to what the words mean, the parties should seek assistance from counsel. (Also, a good way to avoid liability for unclear drafting is for agents to not draft substantive contract changes themselves.) 

• Please be respectful of the attorneys who are returning your calls. Not every ticket can get a “here’s what to do next” answer. Responses like “that’s outside of our scope,” “there’s not a clear answer here” or “your client really needs to talk to an attorney” are legitimate answers – and they are quite frequently the correct answer based on what we can help with. We’re not “ducking the question,” “refusing to help” or “not real attorneys” (actual comments…) – we are doing the best we can within the limitations of the service that the association provides. 
  • I feel like I shouldn’t have to say this, but using terms like “sweetie,” “darling” and “hon” in any professional conversation generally isn’t helpful. And let’s keep the swearing down to zero in 2025, please. 

• We provide all sorts of disclaimers that we answer questions based on the information we’re given from one side of the transaction. Since we don’t know all the facts and have no attorney-client relationship we are NOT providing legal advice that members and/or their clients can rely on for their specific transaction. In fact, my own disclaimer often includes statements like “…so don’t go calling the other side or filing a lawsuit or professional standards case and say ‘I win because the hotline said so.’” 
  • So please stop citing the hotline when you or your clients file lawsuits, ethics complaint and/or arbitration requests.