How to Get Your Real Estate License in Texas
Get Your Real Estate License in Texas
This article will assist anyone looking to understand what it takes to get your real estate license in Texas. Summaries below include more information on pre-licensing education, examination, renewal, and more.
Texas Real Estate Governing Body
The Texas Real Estate Commission is located in Austin and comprises nine governor-appointed members who serve for six-year terms. This governing agency provides licensing education, and complaint investigation along with regulation and enforcing the state laws to serve and safeguard consumers within the real estate industry.
Process and Qualifications for Salesperson
The starting qualifications to obtain a real estate sales agent license includes being at least 18 years of age and a U.S. citizen or a lawfully admitted alien. In addition, each individual must be fingerprinted and pass a background check to meet TREC’s qualification for integrity, honesty, and trustworthiness. A fitness determination can be requested by a candidate before they apply for the license.
1. Complete The 6 TREC Courses
- Principles of Real Estate One
- Principles of Real Estate Two
- Law of Contracts
- Real Esate Finance
- Law of Agency
- Contract Froms
There are 180 hours of pre-licensing mandatory hours which includes 60 hours of Principles of Real Estate and 30 hours each of Law of Agency, Law of Contracts, Promulgated Contracts Forms, and Real Estate Finance courses. Commission-approved institutions are listed online.
2. Submit an Application
To get your real estate license in Texas you will need to create an account at https://www.trec.texas.gov/. Here you can click “Register Here” under “Become Licensed”. After you have an account you can begin the application process.
3. Find a Sponsoring Broker
Texas mandates that an applicant find a sponsoring current and active real estate broker within the state in order to apply for a license. Consider reading our post about choosing a real estate broker to help you through this part of the process. It is a good idea to start this process before you take your exam so that you can begin your career right away.
4. Get Approved and Consider a Prep Course
After your application is approved, you have passed a background check, have chosen a broker, and have your fingerprints on file, it’s time to get serious about taking the exam. It is highly recommended that any candidate considers taking a real estate prep course for both Texas and the National portion of the exam. After all of the time and energy that have been spent to reach this point, there is no reason to skip this portion of the process. A solid prep course can save a lot of frustration and fees to retake the exam.
This is Our #1 Choice for a Texas Real Estate Exam Prep Course
5. Register for Your Exam
In TX, the license exams are administered by PearsonVUE. Once course completion documents are sent to TREC, they will send a notice with instructions for scheduling the exam along with a copy of the exam Candidate Handbook. The Texas real estate exam is broken into a national and state section with a total of 110 questions with 150 minutes to complete. The minimum passing score on each section is 70%.
Renewal
Even after you get your real estate license in Texas, licensees must complete an additional 90 hours of qualifying real estate course credit hours for the first two-year license renewal, including 8 hours of current legal update courses. In the subsequent two-year license period, one must complete 18 hours of continuing education that consists of 8 hours of legal education as well as 10 hours of relevant elective accredited education.
