Call Recording Across States: Consent Rules for Property Managers

Federal law lets a person record a call when that person is a party to it or when one party consents.¹ Many states are stricter and require every party to the call to consent. A company whose staff call owners, residents and vendors in several states should therefore tell every caller at the start that the call is recorded, and apply the strictest rule that could reach the call.

This article reports what each statute said on official sources on October 13, 2026. It covers recording of live calls, then texting, voicemail, record retention and shared lines. It is not legal advice.

The federal rule is a floor, not the answer

The federal wiretap statute makes it lawful for a person not acting for the government to intercept a wire, oral or electronic communication when the person is a party to it or when one party has given prior consent. The exception does not apply if the communication is intercepted to commit a crime or a tort in violation of federal or state law.¹ This is the "one-party consent" rule.

Federal law does not displace stricter state law. In Kearney v. Salomon Smith Barney, the California Supreme Court held that the federal provision does not preempt California's more protective privacy statutes, relying on its earlier decision in People v. Conklin.²

The federal statute also carries its own civil remedy for interceptions that violate it: the greater of actual damages plus the violator's profits, or statutory damages of $100 a day for each day of violation or $10,000.³

State consent rules

"All-party consent" means every participant must agree, or be told, before the recording starts. The table lists the states I could read on the official statute. It is not a list of every state, and a state missing from it is not necessarily a one-party state.

Source note: statute text from the legislature or code publisher named in each reference. California text is an Internet Archive copy of the official site, because the live site blocked retrieval.

Four points about the table.

Delaware is unsettled on the face of the code. Section 1335(a)(4) and section 2402(c)(4) read differently, and I did not open a Delaware court decision that resolves them.⁷⁸ Treat Delaware as all-party until counsel says otherwise.

Nevada's wiretap text reads as one-party, but the court reads it as all-party. NRS 200.620 allows interception with the prior consent of one party, joined to an emergency condition. The Nevada Supreme Court, in Lane v. Allstate Insurance Co., interpreted it "to prohibit the taping of telephone conversations with the consent of only one party," as that court later restated.¹⁵¹⁶

Connecticut's all-party rule is civil. The criminal eavesdropping definitions in § 53a-187 are written around overhearing by a person other than a sender or receiver, so § 52-570d is the rule that governs a party recording a call.⁶²¹

The stakes differ by state. California allows a suit for the greater of $5,000 per violation or three times actual damages.²² Nevada allows liquidated damages of $100 a day, not less than $1,000, plus punitive damages and fees, and makes a knowing violation a category D felony.¹⁵ Maryland (a felony) and Massachusetts provide for up to five years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000 for unlawful interception.¹²¹³ Florida makes it a third-degree felony.⁹

California's statute applies to any "person," defined to include a business association, a corporation, a limited liability company, and an individual acting for one.⁴ A recording made by an employee for the company is therefore a company issue in that state.

Interstate calls: which state's law applies

A call from a Texas office to an owner in California touches two states. Courts have not settled one rule for all of them, and the two decisions I opened point different ways.

In Kearney, a brokerage's Georgia office recorded calls with California clients. Georgia allowed one-party consent. The California Supreme Court found a true conflict and concluded that failing to apply California law would impair California's privacy interest more than applying it would impair Georgia's.² The court allowed the claim for an injunction to go forward but declined to impose damages for past conduct, because a business could reasonably have been unsure which state's law applied before the decision.² The court also said a business can comply with the California statute by informing the other party at the outset that the call is being recorded.²

In Ditech Financial LLC v. Buckles, a lender recorded calls from Arizona and Minnesota with a Nevada borrower. The Nevada Supreme Court held that NRS 200.620 does not apply when the interception takes place outside Nevada, and that the lawfulness of the recording is judged under the law of the place where it was made.¹⁶ The court quoted a Washington decision for the point that recordings are lawful or not under "the laws of the place of the recording."¹⁶

Neither decision binds courts in other states, and each is about the forum's own statute. Together they show the risk: a call can be judged under the law of the recorder's state, the other party's state, or both. The practical rule operators follow is to apply the strictest law at either end and obtain consent on every call, with one script for all states.

Disclosure at the start of the call and automated greetings

The statutes in the table describe consent in different ways. A disclosure at the very start of the call fits most of them.

• California: Kearney describes the statute as prohibiting secret or undisclosed recording, and says informing the other party at the outset complies.²
• Connecticut: a recorded verbal notice at the beginning of the recording is one of three permitted methods.⁶
• Washington: an announcement that the call is about to be recorded counts as consent, and the announcement must itself be recorded.²⁰
• Montana: a warning from one person lets either party record.¹⁴
• Illinois and Massachusetts: both statutes turn on secret or surreptitious recording, which a clear disclosure removes.¹¹¹³

For Florida, Maryland, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, the statutes say "consent of all parties" and do not describe an announcement method. Whether a caller who hears a notice and stays on the line has consented is a question for state case law, which I did not open for this article. Operators commonly use a spoken notice plus a recorded notice at the start of the recording, and let the other party end the call or ask to continue unrecorded.

For an automated greeting on an inbound line, the notice should play before any conversation starts and should be part of the recording. For outbound calls from a dialer or from staff phones, the staff member should say it in the first sentence. A greeting that appears only on the website does not reach a person who is already on the call.

Texts, voicemail and AI voices

The consent rules above govern recording audio. Texting is governed by a different set of rules, covered in TCPA rules for texting tenants, owners and leads: who has consented to be texted, quiet hours, and how fast an opt-out must be honored.

Three points link records to those rules.

Opt-outs arrive by voicemail. A revocation of consent by a means other than the listed ones, such as a voicemail or email to a number or address intended to reach the caller, creates a rebuttable presumption that consent was revoked.²³ A voicemail that says "stop texting me" left on a line nobody checks is still a revocation request. Voicemails need to be transcribed or logged where whoever manages the text list can see them.

Prerecorded and artificial voice messages must identify the business. Every artificial or prerecorded voice message must state, at the beginning, the identity of the business responsible, and state a callback number during or after the message.²³

AI-generated voices count as artificial voices. In February 2024 the FCC ruled that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act's restrictions on "artificial or prerecorded voice" encompass current AI technologies that generate human voices.²⁴ An AI voice agent that calls residents or owners falls inside the consent and identification rules described above and in the TCPA guide. A call recorded for quality review is a separate matter and needs the recording disclosure from the previous section.

Retention: how long to keep call and message records

None of the recording statutes I read sets a period for keeping a recording once it is lawfully made. The periods come from three other places.

Licensing record rules. Florida requires a broker to preserve books, accounts and records pertaining to the brokerage business for at least five years from receipt of entrusted money (or, if none is entrusted, from execution of an agreement), and for at least two years after the end of any civil action or appeal if a record served as evidence, but never less than five years in total.²⁵ The statute does not say whether a call recording or a text counts as a "record," so ask your state commission. Our guide on what to write down recommends setting one retention schedule at the longest period you face.

Fair housing limitation periods. An aggrieved person may file a complaint with HUD within one year after an alleged discriminatory housing practice occurred or ended, and may sue in court within two years.²⁶²⁷ These are limitation periods, not retention rules, but they set the window in which a complaint can arrive. A call is often the evidence in a fair housing dispute. HUD and the Department of Justice stated in a 2004 joint statement that a reasonable accommodation request can be made orally or in writing, and that a provider must consider it even if the resident does not use the provider's form.²⁸ Neither Federal Register withdrawal notice for HUD guidance published in 2026 lists that statement.²⁹³⁰ If a resident says they asked for an accommodation by phone, a logged call note or a recording is what the company has.

Litigation. Under the federal civil rules, when electronically stored information that should have been preserved for litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps, a court may order measures to cure the prejudice. Presuming the information was unfavorable, or dismissal, requires a finding of intent to deprive.³¹ In practice, operators suspend deletion for the people and accounts involved as soon as a complaint, demand letter or deposit dispute is expected.

Deposit disputes. State deposit rules set deadlines and itemization requirements, covered in security deposit rules by state. A call in which staff told a resident what would be deducted, or a resident agreed to a move-out date, is evidence in that dispute. Keep it with the deposit file.

Shared lines and shared inboxes: records that survive turnover

The legal exposure above is the same whether the call happens on a desk phone or a personal cell. The record problem is different: if a staff member's personal phone holds the only copy of a conversation, it leaves with them.

These are operating practices, not legal requirements.

• Put resident, owner and vendor calls and texts on company-controlled numbers that a manager can reassign, not on personal numbers.
• Use a shared inbox for each function (maintenance, leasing, accounting) so a message lives with the team, not one employee's account.
• Write the call note into the property or resident record the same day: date, who, what was promised. A recording is the backup, and the note is what staff read.
• Forward voicemail transcripts to the shared inbox so opt-out requests and accommodation requests are seen.
• On departure, transfer the number and the inbox to a named successor before the employee's last day.
• Tell staff that personal recording apps are not allowed on work calls, because a recording made outside the company's disclosure script may violate the statutes in the table.

For related workflows, see the staff onboarding playbook and the compliance calendar.

What to do now

• Map where your calls happen. List the states of your staff, owners, residents and vendors, and flag any in the all-party column, including Delaware and Nevada.⁷¹⁵
• Adopt one disclosure for all states. Play it before the conversation on inbound lines, say it in the first sentence on outbound calls, and keep it inside the recording.²²⁰
• Do not record in secret anywhere. Illinois and Massachusetts turn on secrecy, and the all-party states turn on consent.¹¹¹³
• Move business conversations to company numbers and shared inboxes and ban personal recording apps on work calls.
• Send voicemail transcripts to the person who manages opt-outs, and honor revocations made by voicemail.²³
• Identify the business in every prerecorded or AI-voice message and confirm consent first. See the TCPA guide.²⁴²³
• Set one retention schedule at the longest period you face, and ask your state commission whether calls and texts count as records.²⁵
• Add a litigation hold step to your complaint, demand and deposit-dispute procedures.³¹
• Log accommodation requests made by phone, with the date and who took the call.²⁸
• Have counsel review the script for each state where you operate, and add the review date to the compliance calendar.