One benefit of being a member of Oregon REALTORS® is access to the legal hotline. You can find it at https://oregonrealtors.org/members/legal-hotline/. The Staff Attorney can help you interpret form language, understand administrative and legal obligations, clarify license law, and reduce risk exposure. If you pay member dues, you can access the hotline and email messages for a response.
There are a few practical tips:
- Ask your PB first: Your Principal Broker is your primary resource. They know a lot about real estate, business, and avoiding risks. They’re your primary point of contact for questions. Your brokerage’s Designated Realtor will be cc’d on responses to questions.
- More is better: The hotline is only able to answer questions based on information provided. It’s generally better to provide more context rather than less. Single-sentence questions are harder to answer because the range of responses is often substantial.
- Calls vs. Email: While the hotline attorneys can call people to answer questions, more complex questions of law will generally require a little bit of research and review. Emails sent through the website hotline link tend to allow the attorney more time to consider and research the response than an in-the-moment phone call.
- Keep it legal: Some questions will not be legal questions at all, but rather are questions of personal appetite for risk. E.g., the hotline can’t tell you whether an offer is good or bad; that’s a decision for the client to make when reviewing the offer because their circumstances may shape how the terms are viewed. While it would be nice to have an objective answer to every question, most real estate scenarios have a range of outcomes and answers.