Texas SB 140: What DFW Investors Need to Know Before Cold Texting a Seller

Since September 1, 2025, a text message sent to a Texas consumer to get them to sell, buy, rent or sign anything is a "telephone solicitation" under Chapter 302 of the Texas Business & Commerce Code. That is the whole of Senate Bill 140 in one sentence, and it changes the math on the most common outreach habit in wholesaling. This guide explains what the law requires, what the Attorney General later carved out, where the real exposure is for a small investor, and why direct mail became the default channel for a lot of DFW operators this year.

This is a practical explainer, not legal advice. The statute, the Secretary of State's registration page and a lawyer who knows Chapter 302 are the authorities; the sources are linked at the end.

What changed on September 1, 2025

Texas has regulated telephone solicitation for decades: a business making unsolicited sales calls to Texas consumers had to register with the Secretary of State, post security, and honor the state no-call list. SB 140 did one big thing and a few smaller ones:

1. Texts are now calls. The definitions of "telephone call" and "telephone solicitation" were expanded to include "transmission of a text or graphic message or of an image." Every rule written for cold calls now applies to a cold SMS or MMS.
2. Registration for unregistered solicitors. A business that solicits Texas consumers this way must file a Telephone Solicitation Registration Statement with the Secretary of State, pay a $200 fee per business location, and post $10,000 in security. Failing to register when required is a Class A misdemeanor, on top of civil penalties.
3. A private right of action with teeth. A consumer who receives a solicitation that violates the no-call rules or the disclosure rules can sue directly. Violations are actionable under the Deceptive Trade Practices Act, statutory damages run up to $1,500 per violation, willful violations allow treble damages, and the Attorney General can seek up to $5,000 per violation. A consumer can recover from the same sender repeatedly for separate messages.

The people this hits hardest are exactly the people who never thought of themselves as telemarketers: a one-person wholesaling shop running a texting platform against a skip-traced list.

What the Attorney General carved out

After the law took effect, a lawsuit challenged it and the Texas Attorney General took the position that the registration requirement was not intended to apply to consent-based text messaging. The Secretary of State's office confirmed the practical rule: a business that sends text messages with the prior consent of the consumer is not required to file the registration statement.

Read that carefully. It exempts consented texting from registration. It does not touch:

• Texts sent without consent. A cold text to a number you skip-traced is the case the law was written for.
• The state no-call list and the quiet-hours rules, which apply regardless of registration.
• The private right of action. A court, not the Attorney General, decides a private lawsuit, and the AG's reading is persuasive but not binding.

So the clean line for an investor is: if the seller did not ask you to text them, treat the message as regulated.

The federal layer has not gone away

SB 140 sits on top of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, not instead of it. Two federal points still matter in 2026:

• Autodialed or prerecorded outreach to a cell phone without prior express consent remains a TCPA violation, and AI-generated voice calls were explicitly brought under the prerecorded-call rules in 2024.
• The carriers' 10DLC registration regime filters unregistered bulk texting aggressively. Even where a message is lawful, deliverability of cold SMS through consumer-grade platforms has collapsed, which is why several national lead platforms moved to bring-your-own-Twilio models where the customer carries the registration and the liability.

Put together: the channel got legally heavier and technically worse in the same year.

What this means in practice for a DFW investor

If you keep texting. Register with the Secretary of State before your next campaign if you send unconsented texts, scrub every list against the Texas no-call list and the national Do Not Call registry, honor quiet hours, identify yourself and your business in the message, and keep records. Budget the $200 filing and the $10,000 security as a cost of the channel. Then decide whether a channel with 20 to 45 percent deliverability is worth it.

If you switch to mail. A letter or postcard to the mailing address on a public record is ordinary commerce. There is no registration, no security, no quiet-hours rule, no per-message statutory damages, and no carrier filtering. What still applies is the plain stuff: be honest about who you are, never imply a connection to a court, a lender or a taxing authority, and do not use the fake-check or fake-notice envelopes that get investors sued under the DTPA anyway.

If you call. Live, manually dialed calls to a skip-traced number are the least-regulated voice option, but the Texas and national no-call lists apply, and a phone number that came back flagged Do Not Call should not be dialed. This is why every skip trace we deliver carries a DNC screen on the phone numbers, and why an "unknown" screen is shown as unknown rather than as clear.

Why this is a structural advantage for DFW-deep data

Cold texting worked because it was cheap and fast: pull a national list, blast it, wait for replies. When the blast is regulated, the economics flip toward fewer, better contacts, and that rewards knowing more about each owner before you spend a stamp on them.

That is the whole point of reading the courthouse records instead of buying a modeled list. A posted trustee sale with a date on it, a probate filing with a named executor, a tax suit with a case number: those are owners with a reason to answer a letter this month. Sending one well-written postcard to a hundred of them beats texting a thousand names off a national file, and it does not require a bond.

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Frequently asked questions

Does SB 140 apply to me if I only send a few texts a month? The statute regulates the activity, not the volume. A single unconsented marketing text to a Texas consumer is a telephone solicitation. Some businesses are exempt by category (publicly traded companies, regulated financial institutions, certain established-customer situations), but a small investor rarely fits one.

I got the number from a skip trace. Does that count as consent? No. Consent means the consumer agreed to receive your messages. A number obtained from a data vendor or public record is not consent.

Is direct mail regulated the same way? No. Chapter 302 covers telephone calls and, since SB 140, text and image messages. Postal mail is not a telephone solicitation. General consumer-protection law still applies to what you say in the letter.

What about mailing an owner on the Do-Not-Call list? The Do-Not-Call lists govern calls and now texts. They do not restrict mail. We show the DNC screen on skip-traced phone numbers so you know which numbers not to dial.

Where do I register if I decide to keep texting? With the Texas Secretary of State, using the Telephone Solicitation Registration Statement (Form 3401), with the filing fee and the security. Talk to a lawyer about whether an exemption applies to you before you decide not to.

Sources

• Morgan Lewis — Texas Telephone Solicitation Law Now Covers Text Messages (SB 140)
• Nixon Peabody — Texas telemarketing update: no registration for consent-based text messages
• Paul Hastings — Marketing Texts in Texas: SB 140 Broadens State Telemarketing Regulations
• Texas Legislature — SB 140, 89th Legislature

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Lead counts elsewhere on this site are live from SmartPropLeads' DFW data as of September 24, 2026, across 13 counties and 3,166,249 parcels.