106. Getting Your Real Estate License

All right, getting your real estate license. We're going to talk about what's involved with getting your real estate license, what's the process, what does it take, how much does it cost. So what are the steps that you need to go through and then once you get your license, what do you have to do? And so those are some of the things we're going to talk about here. So starting off, there's a state agency called the Texas Real Estate Commission or Trek. The TREC for short. So the Texas Real Estate Commission or Trek is the state agency that governs real estate brokers and licensees, real estate salespersons in Texas. I'll use that term if I say licensees that includes both salespersons and brokers. And the difference between the two is a broker. We'll talk about what takes you to get your broker's license too, but a broker is the one that manages an office in sponsors agents. And the salesperson or real estate agent is the sponsor by a broker. And we'll talk about what it takes to get your broker's license as well. So Texas Real Estate Commission or Trek is the state agency. And so there are two sets of laws that come into play in relation to real estate licensees there's the Texas Occupations Code, Chapter 1101. So the Texas Occupations Code, Chapter 1101. And what that does is it outlines what you have to do to get your license and then keep it. And so some of the things we're talking about here outlined in that chapter. And there's also the Texas Administrative Code. And the Texas Administrative Code is not just for Trek, it's for many state agencies, but there's particular chapters in the Texas Administrative Code that relate to the brokerage operation. And so those are two different things. One is on the licensing side, one is on the operating side. If you want to find out more about Trek as a state agency and look for more information that in terms of what we're talking about here, go to trek, t-r-e-c-trek.texas.gov. And that'll take you to Trek's website and there there's a wealth of information. A lot of times you can find the answer to the question you may have in relation to getting your real estate license. The process of forgetting your real estate license has been somewhat consistent, I would say, over the last 20 plus years. In terms of you take courses now, you've got to get your fingerprints taken digitally. And so that's something that was added a number of years ago. But then that was still a requirement. It's just now that they're instead of the old, using the old card system now, they're taken digitally. And then you take an exam. And then there's certain courses you have to complete. And that's one thing that's changed. When I got my real estate license back in the mid-90s, you only had to take four courses at that time. And then how those courses were structured were a little bit different. And there really wasn't a whole lot of math, believe it or not, a whole lot of math back then, like there is now in the courses around that exam. And one thing that has changed is back then you took an exam and the availability was somewhat limited. It was either once a month in major cities or once a week in Austin. And you took it on a hard copy exam and then it took a while to get your results back. And then you could start practicing real estate. Now you passed the exam and you find out that day if you passed. And then it's a little bit shorter process than once you get notified by track that you've been your licensee and then you get an active license to a sponsor in brokerage. That's what we're going to talk about all of that. I'm going to walk you through the process here. So, to get your real estate license, the first thing you need to do is there's two things. One is you can submit an application now, even without having taken any courses. And then you have a year to complete all the requirements that we're going to go through within that one year. Or you can go ahead and start taking the courses. And so there are six courses that are required. Six courses and these are called qualifying courses. And we're going to talk about a distinction. These are the qualifying required courses. There's another set of qualifying courses that are elective courses that we'll talk about a little bit later on. And then there's also continuing education. So those are three different sets of courses that are required. And so you start off with the six required courses. And those are principles of real estate one. Principles of real estate two. Real estate agency, law of contracts, promulgated contracts, and real estate finance. So those are the six courses that are required to get your real estate license. And so what that totals, those are each 30 hour classes. Okay, so are 30 classroom hours. And what that means is one hour equals one hour. So those are each 30 hour courses. So that's a total of 180 hours. So if you were to take a class at UTSA, a three hour course, like when you're standard three hour courses, that one hour is equivalent to 15 classroom hours under Trek rules. So that would be a three hour class would be worth 45 hours. However, you have to take these six specific courses. So principles of real estate one, principles of real estate two, law of agency, law of contracts, promulgated contracts, and real estate finance. So each of those are 30 hours, and that totals 180 hours. And then one of the questions. And so then in relation to those courses, there's a couple of ways you can take the courses. So one is you can get credit or may get credit for a course taken at the university level. And then you would submit that course with your transcript and request credit. And so for example, a principles real estate course at UTSA is three hours. So that's equivalent to 45 hours. And so then you could get 45 hours credit for principles real estate one. And that means you still have to take principles real estate two. And then the other course, potentially that somebody could get credit for is principles, I mean, is real estate finance. However, my recommendation has always been to buy a course package. And that's where you buy all six courses or sometimes we're going to talk about the other qualifying elective courses. There's another three courses you have to take after you get your license. We'll get to that in a minute. But sometimes you can buy course package that includes the first six courses plus those three courses plus two other courses. As a whole course package, there are others that include just the six courses. And so that's something to keep in mind in terms of, do you want to get credit for the two? I give you if you are real estate major at UTSA, get credit for those two courses, potentially get credit for those two courses, principles of real estate one and real estate finance. And you could, so you can, one of the issues is going to come into play though is that what we teach is on point, but what we teach is also tends to lean more towards the business side or real estate development side of real estate. And then these course packages tend to try to get you ready to take the exam, which is heavily on the residential side. And so that's something to take in consideration. If you buy a course package, it can go. So right now I'm going to, I'm on my phone. I'm going to go to, give me just a second here. I'm going to go to the Groupon app. Let me pull this up. So I'm going to the Groupon app and I'm going to type in real estate course, real estate course. And so what pops up, I'm seeing two providers. Oh, actually it looks like there's a third provider there. Not seeing that one before. Okay. So not, I'm not familiar with that one. So out of these, it's interesting. It says Best Groupon, but it's 165 bucks for all six courses. So 165 dollars for all six courses. What they're not telling you here and it says that it's really $450 off and you're getting 63% off and that's real estate. What they're not telling you here is that usually when you take their exam, so you have to take an exam at the end of each of those courses that you have to pay a proctoring fee. And usually that proctoring fee is about 25 bucks. So I'm looking here to see if they have a reference to that. Oh, look at your Proctering fee is 15 bucks. Okay. So the Proctering fee is 15 bucks on top of that. So 15 times. Six. So that's going to be 30, 60, 90 dollars extra on top of that 165. If you go to the other one that I'm a little bit more familiar with, I'm called Real Estate Express, and I also think their other name is McKissock. It's showing two packages, one for 619, but it's 50% off. So that's 309 dollars. And then the other one is 519 dollars, and it's 50% off. And that is 200. So it ends up being 259 dollars. And the distinction there is that, like if we look at that, what do each of those include? Right. And so the usually when you're paying a little bit extra, there's additional, some either extra courses or some additional benefit that comes into play with that higher rate. And so sometimes it can be, they'll include the exam prep with that higher rate. So you've got to, you've got to compare the packages, basically, is what it comes down to. So in this case, what I would do is I would actually go over to real estate express.com and look at their packages, and they're going to have more than just these two. But here on Groupon, they're giving you a 50% off that you're, you may, you're likely not going to see on the website. So I'm going to go to real estate express.com and when I'm on that site, I'm going to go to get my license. And then I'm going to select the state. So I'm going to go to Texas. There we go. And education, I'm going to do my license and then find courses. And so here, here's the thing that says, in roll this weekend, get 30% off your courses and then there's a coupon code. So see that all the time. So let's look here. So here on their website, they've got the $484 package that is $338.80. They've got the $5.19 package that here online is 363.30 on the Groupon. That one's 259. That 6.19 on the Groupon is 309. And then here on the website is 4.3330. So if you go through the Groupon, you're getting the same package that you're seeing online. It's just you're getting at a discount price. And then they have a, have a fourth package that is regularly $669 that's on sale for $468.30. And so when you go, when you get on this page, they have the table broken down to where you can see exactly what's included in each of these packages. And so as I mentioned that 259 package in the Groupon includes the 180 hour courses plus the exam prep. And looking here and some other things in eBooks. But if you go up to the next level to 309 package, you get the 180 hours plus the other 90 hours that you're going to need whenever you were in your license. Plus you can get the only thing extra there. I see with that's on top of the other packages, live course Q&A. And then if you go to the last package, you get all of that plus you get one year professional development membership. So I have to go do some more research to see what's included in that. So bottom line is and then you've got to take the exams in front of a proctor. And so the, you know, and that can be there's certain people that qualify for proctor. So you can either do it online and pay that online fee. And there again, I think that that was either 20, 25 bucks extra. So you got a factor that cost in. And then looking here. I'm not, I'm not seeing it right off in terms of what they're, what the proctoring fee is. If you go through them versus getting a proctor. I think the rule is you can use somebody and I can an academia like a professor. You can use a librarian. Somebody like that to, to project your courses. You can buy some, some package or some providers offer menu pricing and others don't where they just offer the course package. So here it will stay express. They offer individual 30 R courses for $99 a piece. So what that means is if you were to buy those courses individually, it would cost you approximately $600. Whereas you can get that group on and get those courses for $259. That's a pretty big savings. And you get the exam prep factored in with those that course package or those course packages that you don't get if you buy it off the menu. So that's one another one. I'm just giving you some ideas of so we've got the six courses. If we go to. Let's see here. What I am looking for is here we go. Another one is career web school and they changed their name to on course learning. So same thing, but career web school. Let's go to their website. This is another one. So career web school and there again, I'm going to do the same thing. I'm going to select find real estate courses is real estate. I'm going to select Texas is the state. Here's Texas and then new license and then on. On this page what we have here are we've got the platinum package, which is $599. We have the goal package, which is $549 and then the silver package, which is $489. And again, each of those are going to include different. Different items and then you can buy the courses off the menu and those are $99 a piece as well. One thing that career web school has is they do have an exam prep that you can go to. I was going to look for one. One more. Let's see here. Let me find this other one. Let me just a second look for it. I'm going to pull up their page. If you go to train agents calm. So train agents calm and on this page, I'm going to go to real estate license courses and then the sit we have here we've got they've got three packages so they're and they've got their original pricing and their discounted anywhere from about 35% up to almost 42%. And so they've got their packages or 299 329 and 349 with trained agents and each of those includes additional items and then the 349 package they'll pay your exam fee, which is $54. But what that actually does is it kicks that package. It makes that package into being cheaper than the their lowest price package, the silver package. So that's something to consider others that I've not talked about here. So those are three. We looked at real estate. Well, actually we looked at the group on we looked at real estate express we looked at career web school and we looked at train agents. And so another one I'll go to is a seabor. And one one distinction here was stay say board versus of others the others of other three are all online. Okay, and with say board you go to say board and I'm going to click on so San Antonio border realtors S a B O R dot com. And I'm going to go to education and license information and then that's going to keep me over to realtor academy. And so that's the name of their education arm. And so here we've got courses that are both in the classroom or online. And so that's one one distinction that you'll find if you want to go sit in the classroom. And so say we're offers you that that option. And then you can get on their their calendar and see what. When those courses are offered. So let's look here at. Here's a promulgated contracts class. So that meets Monday through Thursday eight to five. So four eight eight hour days. And actually nine hour days, but they think they give you a break for lunch. And that's $155 for that class. Okay, so that's in the classroom. And I think that they may don't call me on this one, but I think they may give you a discount if you pay early versus paying at the door. If you pay if you pay in advance, they may give you a discount. The other, they also have online courses available as well, where you can buy the courses. And I'm looking here to see if they offered a discount, but I'm not showing that right now. Let's see here. And the other thing, one thing that I've had some difficulty with is when I'm on their site trying to find their online courses, they're on here. So here's the section. Yeah, so six courses each are $155. They estimate the time to complete their six weeks. We'll talk about that here in a minute in terms of how long does it take to do all this. They have their online courses. I'm just not finding them right now. They're somewhere on here, but basically I think they're a reseller for other courses. So I was trying to find was their their price for their courses. Oh, here we go. Under courses, I had to go to the weird. I had to go to another page and then this menu popped up. So online courses, here we go. And so I want to look and see what their online courses are. These are the following to view our catalogs. We're looking at the qualifying courses. And then that takes us over to the CE shop. Okay. So I click on shop now and then look at pricing. So this is another another provider. And let's see what they have. They've got three packages. And those packages range from about 389 all the way up to 719. Okay. So that gives you a gives you another idea of what what what's out there. So you've got both with Sabre online or through reseller that they're going through. And the last one I'm going to talk about is champions. So champions school of real estate. And with champions, they've got a couple of different options. They have someone to go on their website. I'm going to go to real estate and I'm going to go to qualifying education and Texas and go. And of course these the websites are always subjects change in terms of how they're laid out. But here what what they have they have a six course package with the exam prep and and I always advise students to take champions exam prep if they can right before they take the exam to get their license. But that package the six courses plus the exam prep is $980. The they have a nine course plus the exam prep. So that's the six courses you need to get your license plus the five classes after you get your license. But before you're first renewal. And that's 1475. And then they've got a whole another a third level which is all of that plus a 30 day coaching series and a two day success through business etiquette and that's 1654. So that that nine 80 or the 1475 is worth it because once you start getting into the essay courses which we're going to talk about a little while those can get expensive a lot of times when you get to buy them off the menu. And so one thing about if you were to buy the champion courses individually those were 165 apiece. So there's a little bit of savings if you buy the package and you get the exam prep thrown in otherwise you have to buy that separately. And so my my advice is and I'm going to tell you this again later but my advice is if you want to if you're thinking about getting your roll state license you start that process right now. Do not wait don't don't say I just talked to a student the other day and she had said you know when I graduate then I think I'm going to get my license and I said don't do that you got to do it now. And the reason why is if you don't have your license one and you get a job opportunity that opens up you can't do anything you're of no value to that brokerage or to that business unless you have your roll state license. Second is that you can start doing business now while you're in school. We can talk about that some more later too. So my advice is to start this process now. The let me interject here to finish up with champions and then I'll come right back to where I left off there but the champions has three different options they either have the class I think four different options actually they have the classroom reshope you take all the courses in the class they have a online so you do everything online they have a correspondence and there's other providers out there they have correspondence basically they mail you all the paperwork and then you look at the PDF documents and then you take the you go to a proctor and take you take your exams for each of those courses and then they have a hybrid which is you do like for a class you do part of the work online and then part of the work in the classroom so it shortens the amount of time that she's been in the classroom and then another option is the distance learning where it's it's online but you're attending a live class but you're not having to go to the class and so I had somebody that actually attended a class she lived out in the country and was able to attend the class over the internet and then she was able to ask questions with instructor and engage in class discussion and so that's that's those those are five what are we five or six different options to get and getting your roll state license the court getting the courses to get your roll state license and then the going back to what I was saying earlier sometimes someone may not have all that money up front to start taking the courses so like let's say if you're if you're going through the group on that that's cheap enough save up for that money by the courses start taking the courses the the if you're looking at something like champions then go through it one course at a time and and my my advice is to put a a plan in place actually map out a plan or you know like if we were we were driving from San Antonio to Dallas in the old days we would pull out the map and we would look at all the routes that we would take to get from San Antonio to Dallas now we look at the GPS right but simple enough same same concept where are we going to go and how are we going to get there and how long is it going to take us you need to do the same thing with your courses when am I going to take these courses when am I going to have the time how am I going to make the time and then when do I plan on finish each one and when do I plan on having all of them finished you know what's what's a what's a deadline I'm going to put in place and and then map it out like if if it involves saving money throughout the next year then then that's fine that's part of your roadmap that's part of your your plan how how long should it take you well I can tell you it can be done in less than a month all all said now that's that's rare that with people I know or that I've known that have gone through the process just because they're busy they may not have the money they think that they don't have the time to do it they don't take the effort you know to take the initiative to make it a priority so they may buy the courses and then just never finish and so you you know if you're going to do the online courses you have to make sure that that fits with your you know your your personality in terms of being able to be diligent and and get through those courses and and do it in a timely manner otherwise it may be you know there are people who are like I do a whole lot better when I go sit in a classroom well to sit in a classroom for you know from eight to five or four days in a row is a lot you know people may not have the time to be able to do that and so there's all these there's you know there's there's this balancing act and so you've got to figure out what works best for you in order to make that happen okay and and then put the plan in place and and what I can say is no excuses like if you say I think I'm going to get my roll state license start working on that today don't wait until tomorrow don't wait until you're from now don't wait to you graduate I've had a number of students in the past who have graduated without their license they say I'm going to wait till my last semester I'm going to wait till the last semester my senior year oh my gosh that's you got you know in their case a lot of times they have two capstone courses they one of the courses includes a major project they're getting ready for graduation they've got senioritis but they're they want to check out but they can't check out because they've got all this work to do and they do not have time for you know to add their real estate courses on it's one thing if they already started and they had to finish out one or two that's different but now to get started with all of this stuff going on they they just don't have the time and so that's why I say it's better to start now not wait until you know your last semester or in in their cases they had waited and they actually had jobs lined up and they they're like you're hired and then once the company found out that they didn't have their license they're like we can't do anything with you we're still going to hire you but basically you've got to go through this whole process and then come talk to us once you have your license then we can actually use you you know now you're actually a value now you can actually start working to make money so that's that's a big issue now the other thing for those of you who are like well you know what I don't want to go into active real estate sales I don't want to go into active brokerage but I've thought about getting my real estate license well then go get your real estate license get it and sign on with the brokerage and go through the training. Hopefully you get on with the brokerage that has a good training program. And then send out referrals. Don't even actively get involved with the day-to-day function of real estate brokerage. You can just send out referrals, family, friends, people that you know, send them to other agents and get a referral fee. Sometimes you can make a whole lot more money doing that. And then if you got into brokerage full time and worked 80 hours a week like some of the new agents do, and then just don't ever make any money. They're spinning their wheels. And so all of that involves a plan. You know, it's about having a plan, putting a business model in place and affecting that. But anyway, so I'm giving you some options. I've given you options on the courses. I've given you options on pricing. On how to buy the courses. On a time frame, I talked about how you could all this could be done in less than a month. And I know somebody that did that. I know somebody that did it. I think two people less than a month, maybe three. I know some others that were just over four to six a week time frame. I would say on average, you know, if you put forth the effort, nine months, nine to 12 months would be a, you know, if you're not, if you're not like, I'm going to get this done as fast as possible. So I can, I can get it knocked out and then start, you know, either working or doing something else. Then nine to 12 months. I know somebody that was over two years. And maybe somebody else that's probably pushing two years. So it's, you know, it's all over the place. And so my best device is put a plan in place and then affect that. So you, so let's, okay, so let's say you sign up. You, you finished the first six courses. Well, then, then what you do is, let's say you send in your application to Trek. Okay. And then you send in your college transcript. If you have one, and then you send in your course completion certificates for each of these six courses. And so you send all into Trek, the application fee for a real estate license, the real estate salesperson is $205. So it's not that much. That's a, that's pretty decent. Actually, that's pretty cheap. And then that's if you do it online. So you go online, it doesn't take you hardly any time to fill out that online application. You click submit, you make the payment. Okay. Then you, you end up emailing your documents to a certain email address that Trek has. So you email your documents to Trek to the education department. They review those. And then if everything's good, you'll get, you'll get an email. And in that email, there'll be a code. And then you'll use that code to then register to get your fingerprints taken. And then register for the exam. And so the fingerprint provider is MorphoTrust. A MorphoTrust. M-O-R-P-H-O trust. MorphoTrust. And you get online, you schedule. There have been tons in the past where you paid online. But now I think you pay when you get there. And the, the cost to get your fingerprints is about $37. I think you can pay online. And if you do, I think it's actually more. I think it's $37.74. But it's about $37. And when you show up, you have a specific time. You show up. It takes about, should take about 10, 15 minutes from start to finish. You're in and out. And one thing to note that if you already have already had your fingerprints taken for another state agency, then those records are not shared with other state agencies. So you have to get your fingerprints taken again. So for example, already had my fingerprints on file for my law license. And then we got my broker's license. That was still under the hard copy of fingerprints. But then when I came up from my first renewal after they passed the law to get your fingerprints taken digitally, I had to go back and get those taken digitally at that time. And then when I got my escrow officers license under the text department insurance, I had to go back and get another set of fingerprints taken for that license and so on. And what's interesting is that every, the fingerprints for each state agency, it's not all the same price. And it varies. And I don't know why that is. So anyway, about $37, you get your fingerprints taken. And then you also at that same time, you schedule your exam. And the exam is with Pearson view. And they're all over. They have locations all over. You got to get on and figure out which one's closest to you. And we've got one or more here in San Antonio. The one I'm very familiar with is down on San Pedro, just north of 14. And it's in office building on the ground floor. And that exam fee is $54. And what you do is though you get on there, you sign it for a day in a time, and you show up at that day in time. And then you check in and you can't take anything in the exam room with you. And you take the exam. And there could be people from all, you know, taking exams for all other sorts of licensing requirements. You know, maybe nurses or, you know, who knows. It's all over the place. So you're not just for real estate. And you've got 85 minutes to complete the national portion of the exam. And then 45 minutes to complete the state portion. So they break it out. And the national portion is are the laws that make you cover real estate throughout the US. Not subjectively, but more generally nature. And then there's the state-specific laws. And so you got 45 minutes on that. And if you walk out and they say, hold on, they print off a piece of paper on the hand it to you. And it says, you either are past or you didn't. And if you pass, they send the results to track. And then usually within 10 business days, you get another letter saying congratulations. You are now an inactive license salesperson in the state of Texas. And if you don't pass, you can schedule, reschedule the exam, get to pay again. You can take it two more times. And if you don't pass those other two times, then you've got to go back and take another 30 hour course. Before you can take the exam again. And at that point, I might suggest a career change. Or get serious about studying for that exam so you can pass it. So you've taken the six courses, you've applied sending your application to track. Let's look here. So if I go back just real quick, if I go back to that Groupon, just a second here, get back in Groupon. So let's say it is the 259 package. Okay. Through Groupon real estate express. So 259 plus your application fee. So that's 205 plus your fingerprints. That's 37 plus your exam. That's $54. So that is $555 to get your real estate license. That is a very low-barried entry in terms of getting into a business, starting a business. Now, there's a whole lot of other stuff that comes into play once you get your license and you start getting involved. That's totally separate. But to get into the business is $555. That's a low-barried entry. You want to go to law school, you want to go to medical school. That's going to be six figures in however many years it takes you to go through that process. Here you can go in less than a month if you were diligent and you had the money and get your real estate license for $555. Welcome to Texas. Now, you've passed the exam and then the urine unlicensed salesperson. And so now what you've got to do is find a broker to then sponsor you. And that process, that can be done, that sponsorship can be done online. It usually takes less than 24 hours to propagate in the system. And that costs 20 bucks. And as of right now. And once you're sponsored, then you can start engaging in real estate activities. While you're inactive, you cannot. You cannot do any real estate brokerage activities. There's a whole definition in terms of what falls into real estate brokerage. But otherwise, that's it. Once you're sponsored, welcome to real estate. Welcome to real estate brokerage. Now, certain brokerages may have training requirements. They may be short training requirements. They may be extensive training requirements like six weeks before you can do anything. And that's beneficial because the problem is what I don't think many real estate people gain their real estate license really truly understand is that you are an entrepreneur starting a brand new business. And a lot of times people starting a business will put in play in a business place and they'll have equity or financing. And they'll have a strategy and they'll look at marketing. They'll look at market share. They'll look at spot analysis. They'll have a budget. and there are so many people with by the way we've got over about a hundred 50,000 licensed real estate agents and brokers in the state of Texas. And they come into real estate and they've gotten none of that. And then they're like, I don't know why I'm not making any money. And so it's been official if you can get on with the brokerage that has a good training program. Now that's generally we see that on the residential side. On the commercial side, a little bit different process because a lot of times you'll start off as an analyst or doing market research and then you'll be part of a team and then work your way into the business. And on the residential side, I would say give yourself at least six to 12 months lead time before you start making your first round of money. Because once you get signed on, you've got to start doing marketing and you've got to get some listings or if you're doing buyer's rep. Even if you get property in a contract right away, it's a 45 day clubs period, 30 to 45 days. There's some lag time for when you start until when you first start making some money. And with commercial, I used to say two years. I talked to a real estate broker recently and he said, you know, three years. Change that to three years before you really start making some money because different process. And the timing there is even longer. You can have a property that takes a year to close before you get paid. So with that said, you get sponsored and now that you're sponsored, you can engage in broker, real estate brokerage activities. And now before your first renewal, that license, that first, your license and all subsequent licenses are good for two years. You reapply every two years. And the before your first renewal, okay. So you've got your license right now, like sick today. So before your first renewal, two years from today, you have got to complete three more qualifying courses. And these are going to be elective courses. So remember the under the original courses that are required. You got principles real estate one and two law of contracts, law of agency promulgated contracts and real estate finance. Now you've got to take three qualifying courses, but they're elective courses. So this could be real estate brokerage, real estate marketing, real estate law, real estate appraisal. There are, there's a GRI certification, graduate of real estate institute certification. And there are three courses that are required for that designation. That's a residential designation and it's under national association realtors. And that one, and that requires three 30R courses. And those courses as of right now, those courses qualify for the SAE. That's those courses which generally refer to those SAE or sales apprentice education, which is the education required after you get your license before your first renewal. So they count towards that SAE requirement. And that's real estate. I think it's real estate brokerage, real estate law and real estate marketing. And so you take those courses and you can get a designation if you go to the GRI program. And those are generally offered, those are generally offered in the classroom setting. And there's some great instructors out there teaching those courses. You're going to pay a little bit more than if you just took an online qualifying elective course, but there's a benefit to that, a huge benefit. So now you've got those 90 hours, those three 30R courses plus you've got to take the legal one and legal to update. And those are continuing education courses. And so now under continuing education, let's say you are now into your second renewal. So you got your license today between now and the first renewal, you do your 90 hours of SAE courses, those are the qualifying courses. And I suggest doing the GRI courses. And then you take legal one and legal to update. That's another eight hours, two, four hour elective CE courses, continuing education courses. And then now you're getting your license renewed again. Okay. So from that time before your next renewal, you've got to do 18 hours of continuing education or CE courses, 18 hours. And from that, Trek says you've got to take the legal, legal update one and legal update two. And those are two four hour courses and legal update one. Generally, what these courses cover are a lot of issues that are being experienced in the industry. So they are beneficial and they're relevant. Hold on just one second. All right, I'm back. What I wanted to do is just give you an idea of what those courses and tales. So the legal update one course has six chapters. Let me get to those chapters. So like right now, based on the current student manual for legal update one is six chapters. Just to give you a quick rundown, we've got chapter one is Lala Land Statute and Rule Update. And so talk about statutory changes. So Trek's always making updates as I mentioned earlier to, there's updates that are made to chapter 11 or one of the Texas occupations code and then there are changes to the Texas administrative code. And then sometimes there are other changes that are outside of those two statutes that affect real estate agents. And so we've got statutory changes, Trek rule changes and then rules adopted by the commission, but at this point when this was written, they weren't in effect yet. So that's a whole rulemaking process for administrative agencies. And so they're constantly coming up with rule changes. Chapter two is on leasing. Chapter three is on property management. Chapter four is sales transactions. Chapter five is promulgated contracts and addendum forms. Chapter six is hot topics. And then there are some cases and some examples and scenarios throughout the material. And so Trek prepares that material if we for legal one and legal two update. If we go over to legal two update, this is more, it includes the ethics component. So there's a canon of ethics. And so we've got chapter one is do the right thing. Ethics requirements for engaging in real estate. Chapter two is fair housing and anti discrimination standards. And that falls under one of the ethics rules as well, one of the canons of ethics. Chapter three is agency. Chapter four is the recovery fund. So Trek administers recovery fund. Part of that is funds from your application or your renewal application go into this recovery fund and that's a whole nother story. But in certain circumstances, limited circumstances, consumers who have been harmed by an agent's actions can seek recovery from that fund. And then we've got chapter five is hot topics. And chapter six is court cases. And so that's those are the two. Those are two courses that are required. So that's eight hours. So then there's another 10 hours of elective courses. And those courses can be anything like contract review or using Facebook to market your real state brokerage or title company given an update on the title company process or things to look for. So there are these courses can be anywhere across the board. There is one other so that the legal update one and legal update to and then the third course, the broker responsibility course are called non elective C E courses. And that's because they're required. So the legal one and legal update to are required. And then the other 10 hours are just elective C E courses. This other one I mentioned broker responsibility is a six hour C E course. And it is required for any real estate brokers that sponsor agents any agents within a brokerage that have supervisory responsibility for another agent. And now for team leaders. So that's a whole newer concept. But team leaders are required to take this course set six hours. And this book has this manual has 10 chapters. Who must take this course and why? Basically what this does is this follows chapter 535 of the Texas administrative code in terms of the operation of a real estate brokerage. And so you get into scope of an activity, fiduciary responsibility and agency, trust account, property management, delegated supervisors and teams, advertising, written policies. That's a must must must for real estate brokerages. And there's a lot that don't have those additional broker duties and then the complaint process. So those are the C E courses. And the call. cost, you know, it varies usually anywhere from zero dollars to even up to like $25 per hour, maybe on the high side. A lot of times you'll see about $10 per hour for a course. So one thing is going back to what I started off with towards the beginning is when should you get your license and I would say right now. If you're interested or if you thought about it, that doesn't mean that you have to like pull the trigger and buy the courses like right now, but put that plan in place in terms of when you're going to do that and how and when and what does that look like? Okay. So get after that. Don't wait. No excuses on that. Now, once you get your real estate license, what's a broker's license? What does it take to get your broker's license? Well, to get your broker's license, you have to have the 270 hours of qualifying courses. Well, if you've got your real estate license in Texas, you've got that with the six original courses plus the other three. And so the nine courses at 30 hours a course, that's your 270 hours. You also have to have another 630 hours, classroom hours of other education. And so basically if you have a college degree, then that's going to satisfy that requirement. Or even if you don't have a college degree, but close to it, that will satisfy the requirement. And then the other thing you have to show is that you have been active for out of the last five years, active for out of the last five years. Well, what does that take? Like what does that mean? Well, to show that you're active for out of the last five years, you've got to earn a total of 3600 points. Okay. And in order to earn those points, you got to go, I'm going to go to trick, go to trick, Texas.gov. And I'm going to go to agency information. And I'm going to go to forms and contracts. And then I'm going to go to applications. And then I'm going to scroll down to where I get to the brokerage application. And I scroll just a little too far just so here we go. And so qualifying experience report for a broker's license for broker license. And when I look on that form, it says you've got to be active for out of the last five years. You have to be licensed a minimum of four years and active during that four out of the last five years. And then you get points for certain types of transactions. So if you list, if you do a listing agreement, that's 10 points. If you do a buyer or tenant rep agreement, that's 10 points. If you close a residential transaction, that's 300 points. If you do a residential lease, that's 50 points. Property management, you get 25 points per property per year. And so if you had 10 properties, you're doing property management. What did I say that was? Yeah, 25. So you're doing property management and you've got 25 properties. And you've got, I'm sorry, I won't make sure I got my number at the SA 25. Yeah, property management is 25. So you've got 10 properties and you're managing. So for that year, you get 250 points. You close a deal. You add another 300 points plus, let's do the 250 plus 300, but you probably also probably list it or you did the buyer's rep. So that's another 10 points right there. So now you're up to 560. And so it doesn't, it really doesn't take much to show that you were active. But Trek does want to make sure that they've got people who are becoming brokers are have shown that they are active in the industry. There's there's a distinction between residential, commercial and informant ranch transactions. Like so, for example, the sale of a commercial property is 500 points, at least on a commercial property, 100 points, property management on the commercial side, 150 points. And then if you do a listing agreement or a buyer's rep agreement, that's 20 points. So it's show that you're active. And then you follow your application for the brokers license. And then you sit for the brokers exam. And you pass that, boom, you're a broker. And now you can do your own thing or you can sponsor other agents or even if you get your brokers license, you can be what's called a broker associate. That's not a license, but that is somebody that has a broker's license who is still acting as a sales person with a brokerage. So they're not sponsored by that brokerage, but they're still acting as a sales person under that brokerage. And I've always told agents go get your broker's license. It will give you a lot of flexibility moving forward in life. So with that said, I just give you a quick rundown. It was a lesson an hour. Didn't plan on going that long, but gave you a rundown. What does it take to get your real estate license? What do you need to know? What's the process? What do you have to do? And then what's involved in getting your brokers license? So hope it was beneficial to y'all and hope you got something out of it. 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