California DRE rules for new salespeople: courses, exam and CE

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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Every real estate career in California starts at the same gate. Before anyone in the state can list a home, negotiate a lease or collect rent for someone else, they need a licence issued by the California Department of Real Estate, the state agency that licenses brokers and salespersons. For a newcomer without two years of experience or a real estate degree, the salesperson licence is the first step, and its rules decide how long the road into the trade takes and what it costs.

The rules have also moved in recent years. The Department's fees rose in July 2024, the first statutory change to them since 1997, the Real Estate Practice course gained new content on implicit bias and fair housing from January 2024, and in September 2026 the Department restated what each renewal must contain.

This guide follows the path as the Department sets it out today: who may apply, the three college-level courses, the state examination, fingerprints and the licence fee, the link to a responsible broker, the four-year term and the first renewal, later renewals, the route to a broker licence, and what the law says about working without a licence. Every fee and hour count below is the one the Department currently publishes.

California Department of Real Estate, salesperson requirements, examination and continuing education pages, as published in 2026.

Who may hold the licence

The basic conditions are short. According to the Department of Real Estate, an applicant must be at least 18 years old for a licence to be issued. Beyond that, the requirements the Department lists for a salesperson are the specific real estate courses described below, the examination and the licence application.

Residence in California is not a condition in itself. The Department keeps a separate set of instructions for applicants who live in another state, and they can sit the same examination and apply for the same licence, with some differences in how fingerprints are handled.

The third condition is honesty. The Department states that applicants must be honest and truthful, and that a criminal conviction may lead to a licence being refused. That wording matters: a conviction does not automatically bar an applicant, but it opens a review of the record, and a material false statement in the application can itself become a ground for action. Among the grounds for discipline listed in the Department's own key to the Real Estate Law is obtaining a licence through misrepresentation or a material false statement, under section 10177 of the Business and Professions Code.

The three college-level courses

The heart of the salesperson requirements is education. The Department requires three courses, each at college level and each equal to three semester units or four quarter units. Every course it approves runs at least 45 hours.

Two of the three are fixed:

• Real Estate Principles
• Real Estate Practice

The third is an elective chosen from a list of twelve subjects published by the Department.

Since 1 January 2024, the Real Estate Practice course has had to include a component on implicit bias and a component on fair housing. The Department specifies that the fair housing part includes an interactive role-play in which the student takes the part of the consumer and then the part of the real estate professional.

A few points on what counts and what does not. Continuing education courses, the shorter courses that licensees take to renew, do not satisfy the college-level requirement, according to the Department. Coursework completed abroad has to be evaluated by a foreign credentials evaluation service that the Department accepts. Members of the California State Bar are exempt by statute from the college-level courses altogether. And anyone who has already completed the eight courses required for a broker licence may sit the salesperson examination without further proof of education or experience.

Applying for the state exam

Once the courses are done, the applicant files an examination application with proof of education and the fee. The Department's guide to the steps of becoming a salesperson presents two routes: an application for the examination alone, or a combined application for the examination and the licence together, which carries the licence fee and the fingerprint requirement from the start.

Applications can be filed online through the Department's eLicensing system, and paper forms remain available, including the salesperson examination application.

An application has a life of its own. The Department explains that there is no limit on the number of times a candidate may sit the examination during the two years after the original application is filed. After that period, a candidate who has not passed must file a new application, meet all the statutory requirements again under the rules then in force, and pay the fee again.

The order of events, as the Department describes it, runs like this.

Inside the exam room

The salesperson examination is a test of 150 multiple-choice questions, each with four possible answers, and candidates have three hours to complete it. The pass mark, according to the Department, is 70 per cent of the questions answered correctly.

The Department names five examination sites where the test is currently given in electronic format: Fresno, La Palma, Oakland, Sacramento and San Diego. Candidates are asked to arrive 30 minutes before the start, because sessions begin on time.

Admission depends on identification. The Department accepts a current state driving licence or state identification card, a United States passport or a passport issued by another government, or a United States military identification card. Without one of these documents, a candidate is not admitted. Telephones, bags, wallets, keys and watches stay outside the room, along with other items on the Department's list.

Results arrive quickly. On the electronic examination, the result is given at the end of the session, and any further correspondence is normally mailed within five business days. Candidates who pass are not told their score. Candidates who fail are told their score and the percentage they answered correctly in each subject area. The Department points out that those subject percentages cannot simply be averaged to give the overall score.

A candidate who fails may apply to sit again only after receiving the result. The Department warns that sending a new application, a new fee or a request for a new date before the result is released can flag the file, hold back the result and delay or cancel rescheduled dates. Retakes are booked through eLicensing or with the examination result notice.

Fingerprints, background and the licence fee

Passing the examination does not make anyone a salesperson. The licence itself requires a separate application, a fee and fingerprints.

The fingerprints are taken electronically by Live Scan. California residents pay the fingerprint fee, US$49, directly to the Live Scan provider. Applicants applying from outside California for an original licence send the US$49 to the Department with their application and licence fee instead.

The fees themselves were raised from 1 July 2024. The Department's notice of the change explains that the new schedule was signed into law on 29 June 2024 and applies to applications received on or after 1 July 2024, and that the previous statutory change to its fees dated from 1997. The current amounts are set out below.

For a California resident who passes at the first sitting, the fees due to the Department come to US$450, the examination fee plus the licence fee, whether paid in one combined application or in two steps. Adding the Live Scan fee brings the official charges to US$499. Course tuition is separate and set by each school or college, so it varies widely.

Working under a responsible broker

A California salesperson licence is not a licence to run a business. The salesperson works on behalf of a broker, who is responsible for supervising the salesperson's licensed activity.

The Department set this out plainly in a licensee alert issued on 1 September 2015 by the Real Estate Commissioner of the day, aimed at salespersons who presented themselves as independent professionals. The alert explains that salespersons must be associated with a responsible broker and depend on that broker in law. A salesperson who conducts licensed business independently of a broker, for example by managing property alone, is acting without the proper licence, and the alert describes that as a crime. A salesperson who wants to work independently has to become a broker, and the alert says there is no exception to that.

The obligations run both ways. According to the same alert, brokers must reasonably supervise the licensed activities of their salespersons, remain accountable for the work that requires a licence, and put in place policies and systems to review and manage their salespersons' advertising. The Department's disciplinary key lists failure to supervise salespersons as a ground for action under section 10177 of the Business and Professions Code.

The four-year term and the first renewal

According to the Department, every California real estate licensee must complete continuing education to renew, and the licence runs for four years. The amount is the same for everyone: 45 hours per renewal. What differs is how those hours must be spent, and the first renewal of a salesperson licence is the most prescribed.

The Department's update on continuing education, published on 4 September 2026, sets out the first-renewal requirements for salespersons as follows.

The named courses add up to 17 hours: four three-hour courses on ethics, agency, trust fund handling and risk management, a three-hour fair housing course and a two-hour implicit bias course. The fair housing course includes an interactive part in which the licensee plays both the consumer and the real estate professional, the same approach now built into the pre-licence Practice course. On top of those, at least 18 hours must come from courses the Department classes as consumer protection. By subtraction, that leaves 10 hours, which the Department allows to be consumer service or further consumer protection courses.

Brokers follow a similar first-renewal pattern with one addition: a fifth three-hour course on management and supervision, which salespersons do not take.

Courses must come from approved providers. The Department's Education and Research section approves continuing education courses, and its September 2026 update counted 63 providers offering 525 approved courses.

Later renewals and late renewal

From the second renewal onwards, the structure loosens. Every licensee, salesperson or broker, still completes 45 hours every four years. According to the Department, the specified subjects can then be covered by a single nine-hour survey course that addresses ethics, agency, trust fund handling, risk management, management and supervision, fair housing and implicit bias, or by individual courses in each subject. At least 18 hours must again be consumer protection, and the remaining hours can be consumer service or consumer protection.

The renewal fee for a salesperson is US$350 when paid on time. A licence that has expired can still be renewed within two years after its expiry date, at the late fee of US$525.

The Department's cite and fine programme, described in an update of 11 December 2025, lists failure to notify the Department of a change of address among the common technical breaches by licensees.

Moving up to a broker licence

For many salespersons, the licence is a stage rather than a destination. The broker licence allows a person to run a brokerage, supervise salespersons and work independently, and it has its own requirements.

The age condition is the same, 18 or older. The difference lies in experience and education.

On experience, the Department accepts three routes: at least two years of full-time licensed salesperson experience within the last five years; two years of equivalent experience gained without a licence; or a four-year college degree with a major or minor in real estate, which stands in place of the experience requirement.

On education, a broker applicant needs eight college-level courses, again of three semester units or four quarter units each. Five are compulsory: Real Estate Practice, Legal Aspects of Real Estate, Real Estate Finance, Real Estate Appraisal, and either Real Estate Economics or Accounting. The other three are chosen from a list that includes Real Estate Principles, Business Law, Property Management, Escrow, Real Estate Office Administration, Mortgage Loan Brokering and Lending, three advanced courses in legal aspects, finance and appraisal, Computer Applications in Real Estate and Common Interest Developments. An applicant who takes both Economics and Accounting needs only two courses from the list.

A salesperson who has already taken Principles, Practice and an elective such as Finance or Appraisal therefore arrives with part of the broker education done. Members of the State Bar are exempt from the broker courses too, but they must still meet the experience requirement.

The broker examination costs US$150, the original broker licence US$450, and the combined application US$600. Broker licences also run for four years and renew at US$450 on time or US$675 late within two years.

What unlicensed activity costs

The licence exists because the law reserves certain acts to licensees. The Department's key to the Real Estate Law summarises section 10130 of the Business and Professions Code as acting without a licence, and section 10137 as unlawful employment of, or payment of compensation to, a person who is not properly licensed. The second matters for brokers as much as for newcomers: paying an unlicensed person for work that requires a licence is itself a ground for discipline.

The Department uses several tools against breaches. Its cite and fine programme, in place since 2014, deals with relatively minor and technical violations, especially where consumers suffered little or no harm, and its stated aim is to correct practice rather than to punish. For licensees, a citation can carry a fine of up to US$2,500 per case. For people without a licence, the maximum is US$2,500 for each unlicensed act or transaction, not each case, so the Department notes that ten unlicensed acts could easily lead to fines of US$25,000, and extensive activity could pass US$50,000. Money collected goes to the Department's Recovery Account.

The Department's examples of unlicensed activity are ordinary tasks of the trade: advertising property for sale, holding open houses, negotiating lease terms, collecting rent, accepting referral fees and offering property management services.

More serious conduct leads to formal disciplinary action. The Department's disciplinary key lists, under section 10176, grounds such as substantial misrepresentation, false promises, commingling trust funds with the broker's own money, undisclosed dual agency and secret profits. Under section 10177, it lists among others criminal convictions, false advertising, negligence or incompetence in licensed work, fraud or dishonest dealing, violation of the conditions of a restricted licence and any breach of the Real Estate Law or its regulations. The 2015 alert to salespersons also warned that working outside a broker's supervision can lead to disciplinary action, criminal prosecution or both.

In California, the licence is earned in a classroom and an exam room, but it is kept through a broker, a renewal every four years and a clean record.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

About Kooky and Shaka →