The short answer
A farm area call list in Australia comes from three places: numbers the agency already holds, numbers a person gave you, and data bought from a provider. Whichever it is, the numbers have to be washed against the Do Not Call Register before you dial, and a wash result protects the person who performed it for 30 days.
What to take away
- Three sources, three different risks: your own records, numbers given to you directly, and bought data. Only the first two carry provenance you can describe to the person who answers.
- A wash result lasts 30 days and the protection belongs to whoever performed the wash, so a list somebody else washed and sold you does not carry its defence across to you.
- At 30 June 2023 the Do Not Call Register held 12.49 million Australian numbers, and registration is permanent, so the pool a list has to be checked against only grows.
- In the only large published study of real estate cold calling, 17 per cent of the numbers were not working at all. A list is a perishable asset, not an owned one.
- Record where each number came from, when it was washed and every request to stop. If a complaint lands eight months later, the file is the only version of events that counts.
Where do Australian agents get the numbers they call?
Three places, and they are not equally defensible when somebody asks.
The first source is the agency's own records: past appraisals, past buyers, past vendors, enquiries off a sign or an open home. The second is a number a person handed over directly, at an inspection or on a form. The third is bought data, sold as a street level list of owners and numbers. The first two come with provenance you can say out loud on the call. The third usually does not, and the Do Not Call Register Act 2006 treats all three the same way regardless: a number that is on the register may not be called for a telemarketing purpose, and washing is the only way to find out which ones those are.
12.49 million
Australian numbers on the Do Not Call Register at 30 June 2023: 5.83 million fixed line, 6.26 million mobile and 410,000 fax. Registration is permanent, so the pool a farm area list has to be checked against only grows.
Do Not Call Register statistics, at 30 June 2023
| Source | What you can say about it | What it still needs | What to record |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your own records | Where and when the person came into the business | A wash inside the last 30 days, every campaign | The original enquiry, its date, the wash result |
| Given to you directly | The person handed the number over and to whom | A wash, plus a note of what was actually agreed | The form or the note, dated, and any consent wording |
| Bought data | Very little, unless the seller documents the origin | Your own wash, because the seller's does not travel | The supplier, the purchase date, your own wash result |
What does the Do Not Call Register actually do to a list?
It takes numbers out of it, and only after you submit them. The register is not a list anyone can read or download. You send your numbers to it, it tells you which of them are registered, and washing at that scale is ordinary practice rather than an unusual step.
According to the Do Not Call Register, telemarketers submitted more than 478 million numbers for washing in the 2022/23 financial year. A number counts as checked if the list was washed in the last 30 days and the number was not registered then, and that protection holds even if the number is added to the register during those 30 days.
Thirty days is the part that decides how a list is built. A list that is washed once and worked for a quarter is not a washed list, so the practical unit of a farm area campaign is a month: wash, call for 30 days, wash again before the next round, and never bolt new numbers onto a washed list without washing those.
Is a bought list worth what it costs?
That depends on one question, and it is not the price per record. Ask the seller where each number came from and what the person was told when it was collected. A supplier who can answer that is selling data. A supplier who cannot is selling you their risk at a discount.
The risk does not stay with them either. The 30 day protection belongs to whoever performed the wash, so a prewashed list does not carry its defence across to the agency that calls from it. Section 11(9) of the Act goes further: if you arrange for somebody else to make the calls and they make them, you are taken to have caused those calls to be made.
Consent is the other thing a seller will imply and cannot transfer. The ACMA's guidance for the real estate industry treats express consent as lasting three months unless it was given for a longer or indefinite period, treats consent inferred from a one off transaction as lasting only for that transaction, and says that holding somebody's phone number is not consent. The burden of showing consent existed sits with whoever made the call.
How much of a list is dead before you dial it?
More than most agents assume, and the only large published measurement of it comes from real estate. Baylor University's Keller Center logged the outcome of 6,264 cold calls placed by 50 agents in November 2011, and one number in six was not working at all.
Unanswered
Rang out, engaged or diverted
Answered
A human on the line
Not working
Disconnected or wrong number
Share of dials by outcome. Source: Keller Center for Research at Baylor University, calls placed November 2011 in the United States, published September 2012. Measured, not modelled. It is a United States study on a genuinely cold list, so read the proportions as a warning about list quality rather than as an Australian rate.
The 17 per cent is the number that should change how you buy. A list is a perishable asset: people move, numbers are ported and disconnected, and a file that was accurate when it was compiled decays from that day whether it is worked or not. Age is the first thing to ask about and the last thing a seller volunteers.
The other two bars are the reason volume is planned rather than hoped for. Just over one call in four reached a person at all, which is the arithmetic behind how many calls it takes to win one listing, and the hour you place them in changes the shape of it, which is in the best time to cold call homeowners in Australia.
How do you build the list?
In the order below, because it puts the numbers you can explain at the front and leaves bought data as the thing that fills a gap rather than the thing that starts the farm area. A view from the desk, with no sample published: the order is ours, and it is the order that keeps the awkward question on the call answerable.
Building a farm area list you can defend
Draw the boundary before you draw the numbers
Streets, not suburbs. A farm area you can name street by street is one you can measure, and it decides which records in the database are in the patch and which are noise you are about to waste a month on.
Empty your own system first
Past appraisals, past buyers, past vendors, sign and open home enquiries, anyone who asked for a price guide. These are the numbers whose origin you can state on the call, which is worth more than the count.
Write the origin against every number
One field: where it came from and when. A list where half the rows say unknown is a list you cannot answer a question about, and it is the one question on a prospecting call that cannot be improvised.
Fill the gap knowingly, not by default
If bought data is the only way to reach the rest of the patch, buy it with the three questions answered in writing, and keep the answers with the file rather than in an inbox.
Wash the whole list yourself, then diarise day 30
Submit it to the Do Not Call Register, keep the result you generated, and set the expiry. If a campaign is still running on day 31, it stops until the list is washed again.
Make a request to stop permanent and central
A number that has asked not to be called should be incapable of being dialled by anyone in the agency, which means the system holds it rather than a sheet. That is also the only version of the rule a second agent will follow.
What do you say when they ask where you got their number?
You answer it plainly, in one sentence, and you do not dress an old enquiry up as permission. The script below is what a defensible list buys you: the ability to say where the number came from without inventing a relationship that was never there.
The where did you get my number call
Vale Property and the street are invented, because a transcript we wrote should not put words in a real agency's mouth. Weekday, inside the permitted hours at the recipient's address, number washed within 30 days.
- Homeowner
- How did you get my number?
- Agent
- It is on the list we keep for the streets around Ellery Street. You asked us for a price guide on the corner block a couple of years ago and the number stayed with that enquiry.
- Agent
- That is not permission to ring you, so I will say the rest of it. We check the list against the Do Not Call Register before every campaign and yours came back clear this month.
- Homeowner
- Take it off.
- Agent
- Done today, and it goes out of the system rather than off my sheet, so nobody here rings you again. Sorry for the interruption.
The line doing the work is the third one. Volunteering that an old enquiry is not permission is the opposite of what the person expects, and it is the sentence that turns a complaint into a removal. A view from the desk, with no sample published: we have not measured that opening against an alternative, and we have found no published Australian study that has.
There is a privacy layer under this as well as a telemarketing one. Australian Privacy Principle 5 requires reasonable steps to tell a person, at or before the time you collect their personal information, who you are and why you are collecting it, and APP 7 governs the use of personal information for direct marketing. Read them at the OAIC rather than in a vendor's summary.
What to keep, and for how long
Keep four things against every campaign: the wash result you generated, the origin of each number, whatever consent you are relying on and when it was given, and every request to stop. Three of those cost nothing at the time and are unobtainable afterwards.
The reason is the burden of proof. If a complaint arrives eight months after the call, the file is the only version of events that exists, and an agency that can produce a dated wash result and an origin for the number is in a different conversation from one that can produce a spreadsheet with no history.
Common questions
- Can I call a number I found on a private sale listing?
- Washing decides it, not the source. A homeowner selling privately is advertising a number that is very likely used for private purposes, which is exactly the kind of number the Do Not Call Register accepts, and a call soliciting the listing of their property is the ACMA's own example of a telemarketing call. Submit it with the rest of the list and keep the result.
- Does the register cover mobile numbers as well as landlines?
- Both. At 30 June 2023 the Do Not Call Register held 6.26 million mobile numbers and 5.83 million fixed line numbers, so a list of mobiles needs washing exactly as a list of landlines does. A mobile also reaches a person rather than a house, which makes an unwanted call harder for the recipient to shrug off and more likely to become a complaint.
- Can I download the register and check my list against it myself?
- No. The register is not published and cannot be read as a list. You submit your numbers through the register's own service, and it returns which of them are registered so you can remove those. That is the only mechanism, and it is also why the check has a date attached to it, which is what the 30 day rule runs from.
- What about a database I brought with me from another agency?
- Treat it as bought data with an extra problem. The wash somebody else performed does not travel, so it needs washing in your own name before it is called. Whether those records were yours to take at all is a question for the agency agreement, your employment terms and the Privacy Act, and it is one to take advice on rather than to settle from an article.
- How big should a farm area list be?
- We have found no published Australian study that sets a size, so treat any figure you are given as somebody's preference rather than a finding. A view from the desk, with no sample published: the test is whether you can contact the patch repeatedly instead of once, because a boundary drawn around a thousand letterboxes and two hundred washed numbers is a letterbox drop plan wearing a calling plan's name.
- Do I have to say the call is being recorded?
- Recording sits outside the telemarketing rules and is governed state by state under listening devices and surveillance devices legislation, so it is one to check for your own jurisdiction and take advice on. As a matter of practice, saying it in the first sentence costs nothing and removes the worst version of the conversation you can have about it later.
Sources
- 1Do Not Call Register Act 2006. Federal Register of Legislation, Compilation in force, 2026.
- 2Telecommunications (Telemarketing and Research Calls) Industry Standard 2017. Federal Register of Legislation, Made 2017, in force 2026.
- 3Do Not Call Register statistics. Do Not Call Register, At 30 June 2023, and 2022/23 financial year for washing volumes.
- 4Using the register. Do Not Call Register, Accessed August 2026.
- 5About the Do Not Call Register. Do Not Call Register, Accessed August 2026.
- 6Dealing with telemarketing. Australian Communications and Media Authority, Accessed August 2026.
- 7Has Cold Calling Gone Cold?. Keller Center for Research, Baylor University, Calls placed November 2011, published September 2012.
- 8Australian Privacy Principles. Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, Current principles, accessed August 2026.
- 9APP Guidelines Chapter 5, notification of the collection of personal information. Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, Current guidelines, accessed August 2026.
Written by
Jason
Founder, ListingLine
Builds the AI voice agent that ListingLine customers point at their farm area. Spends most of his week reading call transcripts, which is an unusual and fairly grim way to learn what Australian homeowners will and will not talk about on the phone.