How to Be a Useful Source When Half Your Subject Is Off Limits

I am a licensed real estate agent, which means reporters ask me questions I am not allowed to answer. Not questions I would rather avoid. Questions that are closed to me.

I cannot tell you which neighborhood is safest. I cannot rank the schools. I cannot describe who lives in an area, because fair housing law exists precisely to stop that. I am not an insurance agent, so I cannot tell your readers what coverage to buy. I don’t forecast prices, because nobody can, and the ones who try get quoted forever.

If you handle PR for anyone licensed, a doctor, a lawyer, a financial adviser, an agent, you have run into this. Your expert gets handed a great question and cannot touch it.

Most sources handle it in one of two ways, and both cost them the relationship. The first is the dodge. “I’m not able to comment on that.” True, polite, and useless. The reporter is on deadline. They move to the next name on the list, and they do not come back.

The second is worse. The source answers anyway, a little vaguely, hoping nobody notices. Now a sentence is in print, permanently, that their regulator would not like.

There is a third way, and it is the whole method: answer the nearest question you are allowed to answer, and bring a real number. Never leave a reporter empty-handed.

Here is what that sounds like in practice.

A reporter asks me which neighborhoods are safest. I say crime is not mine to characterize and the police department publishes the actual data, then I tell them what homes cost on those streets and which flood zone they sit in. They still get a usable paragraph.

A reporter asks whether prices will drop next year. I say I do not forecast, then I tell them what the past twelve months actually did. Median sale price of $255,000 on the Mississippi Gulf Coast, 37 days on the market, from closed sales rather than estimates. A number with a date on it is always safe, and it is more quotable than a guess.

A reporter asks what insurance a buyer should get. I say I am not an insurance agent and will not recommend coverage, then I tell them what people here actually pay. A median of $1,424 a year in a high-risk flood zone, from the federal government’s own policy file. That is not advice. It is arithmetic, and reporters love it.

Notice what happens in all three. I say the limit out loud, once, in about four words. I do not lecture them about compliance. Then I hand over something they can print. The reporter gets material, I stay inside my rules, and my name goes in the story.

If you are preparing an expert who works under rules, three things make this easy. Write the two lists before the first interview, not during it. One column of what your expert cannot say, one column of what they can say instead, in their words. Ours took an afternoon, and it now travels with every pitch we send.

Give them three numbers to carry, each with its source and its date. Not talking points, facts. An expert who can quote one real figure from memory will beat a more famous source who can only offer an opinion.

Practice the pivot until it is short. The limit is one clause, not a paragraph. “That is the police department’s data, but here is what I can tell you.” If you say it longer than that, you sound evasive rather than careful.

What I didn’t expect is that the restrictions made me more useful, not less. Everybody has opinions about the housing market. Far fewer people arrive with a median and a source, and reporters who get burned by a vague quote once do not risk it twice.

Being the source who never leaves a reporter empty-handed is worth more than being the source who will say anything.

**Author Bio:**Lacey Perniciaro is a REALTOR® with Coastal Realty Group in Gulfport, Mississippi, and the agent behind Living Coastal, a Gulf Coast lifestyle brand.