How to get a real estate license

Every state sets a minimum age and a basic honesty or character requirement, and most require a background check. California requires you to be 18 to be issued a license; Texas requires fingerprinting specifically for the commission and clearance of the resulting state and federal criminal history reports before a license will issue, even after a passed exam.

The background check is worth starting early rather than late. In Texas the license does not issue until the commission has the reports and has cleared them, so a delay here is a delay in working.

This is a state-approved course, and the approval is what makes it count. California requires three college-level courses of at least 45 hours each: Real Estate Principles and Real Estate Practice, plus one elective from a published list. Other states express the same requirement as a total number of qualifying hours.

Whatever the number, the provider has to be approved by the state that will license you. A course that has not been approved is study, not credit.

In most states the application goes to the commission first and the exam booking comes second. Texas makes this explicit: the commission issues an eligibility letter after the application requirements are met, and no reservation can be made without it — walk-in examinations are not available.

Application windows are real. A Texas application gives you one year from the date it was filed to pass the exam, and letting that window close means reapplying under whatever requirements are current then.

Where the exam is split, you sit both portions in one appointment and pass them separately. Where it is combined, you sit one paper. Passing standards, fees and retake rules are all set by the state.

Two worked examples show how wide the variation is. A Texas sales agent examination costs $43 and is passed with 56 correct answers on the national portion and 28 on the state portion. A California salesperson examination costs $100, is 150 questions in three hours, and is passed at 70 percent.

Retake rules vary just as much. Texas allows three attempts within the application period, after which additional qualifying education is required before you may test again — 30 hours if you failed one portion, 60 if you failed both.

Passing is not being licensed. A separate license fee is due — $350 for an original California salesperson license, on top of the $100 examination fee — and most states require a new salesperson to be sponsored by or affiliated with an active broker before they can act.

That last requirement is the one most first-time candidates plan for last and should plan for first: choosing a brokerage takes longer than booking an exam, and in most states you cannot practice without one.

It does not give a hours figure, fee or passing score for a state whose own commission we could not read. Those numbers change, they change without announcement, and a study site repeating a stale one is how a candidate ends up short of a requirement they thought they had met.

Every figure above is attributed below to the document it came from and the day that document was read. Where your state is not named, the commission’s own site is the source, and it is the only one worth trusting for a number you are going to act on.