How to Become a Texas Real Estate Broker (2026)

To get a Texas real estate broker license, you need at least four years (48 months) of active experience as a licensed sales agent or broker within the 60 months immediately before you apply, 900 hours of TREC-approved education, at least 720 qualifying experience points under the rule that took effect January 1, 2026, and a passing score on the broker exam: 80 national questions (75% to pass) plus 50 state questions (76% to pass), in one four-hour Pearson VUE appointment. That 720-point threshold is double what it was before 2026 — TREC's prior rule required only 360 points, so agents who were counting transactions under the old math need to recheck their totals. Between the doubled experience bar, 900 hours of coursework, and a harder two-part exam than the sales agent test, the realistic timeline from first sales agent license to broker license now runs closer to five or six years for most agents, not the four-year floor the statute technically allows.

TREC requires at least 48 months of active experience as a licensed sales agent or broker within the 60-month period immediately preceding your broker application. "Active" means sponsored and working, not just holding a license — a sales agent whose sponsorship lapsed for stretches inside that five-year window will have gaps that don't count toward the four years. The bigger change for 2026: the Texas Real Estate Commission raised the minimum qualifying experience points from 360 to 720, effective for any application filed on or after January 1, 2026. Applications submitted before that date are still evaluated under the old 360-point rule, but anyone applying now needs to clear the new 720-point bar. The change came out of the Broker Responsibility Advisory Committee's (BRAC) recommendations tied to Senate Bill 1968, and it deliberately shifts weight toward real transaction volume rather than academic substitution. Points are logged transaction-by-transaction on TREC's Supplement A – Qualifying Experience Report, backed by a transaction identification list, and each sponsoring broker you worked under has to certify the entries covering their sponsorship period. If you changed brokerages during your four years, plan on tracking down a signed certification from every broker on that list — TREC staff reviews the report and transaction IDs before awarding points, and incomplete certification is one of the most common reasons a broker application gets sent back for more documentation. For the mechanics of how sponsorship and commission actually work day to day under a broker, see our guide to Texas commission splits and broker sponsorship. Qualifying points aren't limited to closed residential sales. TREC's point system also credits property management activity, commercial transactions, leasing, and broker-supervised negotiation work, each weighted differently on the Supplement A schedule — a candidate who spent four years in commercial leasing can reach 720 points without ever closing a residential sale, as long as the sponsoring broker certifies the activity.

A Texas broker license requires 900 total hours of education: 270 hours of mandatory qualifying courses plus 630 hours of related education. The 270-hour block must include seven specific courses — Principles of Real Estate I, Principles of Real Estate II, Law of Agency, Law of Contracts, Promulgated Contract Forms, Real Estate Finance, and Real Estate Brokerage — and TREC requires the Real Estate Brokerage course specifically to have been completed no more than two years before you file your application. The remaining 630 hours used to be fully satisfied by a bachelor's degree or higher from an accredited institution, no matter the major. As of the rule changes effective January 1, 2026, a bachelor's degree now caps out at 300 hours of credit toward the requirement, not the full 630 — meaning even degree holders need additional related coursework, continuing education credit, or qualifying experience points to close the gap. Applicants without a degree face the full 900-hour bar directly, though up to 300 hours of it can now be satisfied by substituting qualifying experience points instead of classroom time, under the same 2026 rule package. Course providers track these requirements closely since a rejected application costs students both time and re-filing fees, so most TREC-approved schools bundle the seven mandatory courses together. Before enrolling anywhere, confirm the provider's broker package reflects the post-2026 hour structure — some marketing pages built before the rule change still describe the old 630-hour degree substitution. For the regulatory framework behind these requirements, see the Texas licensing chapter. Related education hours beyond the mandatory 270 can come from a mix of sources: additional TREC-approved qualifying real estate courses, TREC-accepted continuing education from your years as a sales agent, or general college coursework outside a real estate major. Because CE hours you already banked as a sales agent can count toward the 630-hour related bucket, agents who consistently completed their 18-hour CE cycles on time often arrive at the broker application with a meaningful head start rather than starting the related-education requirement from zero.

The Texas broker exam is 130 questions split into an 80-question national portion and a 50-question state portion, with a four-hour time limit for both sections combined. You need 60 of 80 correct (75%) on the national portion and 38 of 50 correct (76%) on the state portion — and you have to clear both thresholds in the same sitting for the attempt to count as a pass. A strong national score doesn't carry over if you fall short on the state portion, or vice versa. That two-part, two-threshold structure is stricter than the sales agent exam, which uses a single combined 70% passing score. Content on the broker exam leans further into brokerage-level material — trust account management, broker supervision of sponsored agents, and TRELA's advertising and recordkeeping rules — on top of the contracts, finance, and appraisal topics both exams share. If you fail either portion, you pay the $39 Pearson VUE exam fee again to retake it — there's no mandatory waiting period, but your underlying eligibility, meaning the 900 education hours and current experience points, has to remain valid at retake time. Candidates who let their TREC application eligibility period lapse while re-testing have to refile the application before they can sit again.

Government and testing fees for a Texas broker license run about $384 before coursework: a $305 TREC broker license application fee, a $39 Pearson VUE exam fee, and roughly $40 for the required DPS fingerprinting and background check. That's on top of whatever you already paid as a sales agent — these are new, broker-specific fees, not a renewal of your existing license cost. Coursework is the larger and more variable expense. TREC-approved broker course packages covering the seven mandatory courses typically start around $579 and can run past $1,000 depending on the provider and whether you need the full 630 related hours or can lean on prior continuing education credit to fill part of that gap. All in, most candidates land between roughly $960 and $2,000 — courses, application, exam, and fingerprinting combined — before any prep materials or practice exams. That range is wide mainly because of how much related-education credit an individual candidate already has banked from years of continuing education as a sales agent. A rough per-course estimate: each of the seven mandatory 30-hour qualifying courses runs $100–$200 individually through most TREC-approved providers, which is roughly how bundled packages land in the $579–$1,000+ range depending on whether the provider discounts the bundle versus pricing courses separately. Candidates filling the related-education gap with individual continuing education courses, rather than a bachelor's degree, should budget for that as a separate line item on top of the seven qualifying courses.

A broker license is a different legal status, not a harder version of the sales agent license. Under Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1101 (TRELA), a sales agent must always work under a sponsoring broker and can never act independently — a broker, by contrast, can operate solo, open a brokerage under a DBA, and sponsor other sales agents directly. Sponsored sales agents also can't be paid directly by a buyer or seller; commission has to flow through their sponsoring broker first, which is the core reason the sponsorship relationship exists at all. Continuing education also gets more demanding, and got more demanding again in 2026: starting this year, every active broker — not just brokers who sponsor agents, which was the rule through 2025 — must complete the six-hour Broker Responsibility Course as part of their 18-hour CE requirement each renewal cycle. The course covers supervision duties, brokerage policies and procedures, and TREC's most common complaint categories, and it now applies whether or not you ever take on a sponsored agent. For the full renewal and CE breakdown, see our guide to Texas real estate license renewal and SAE requirements. Whether you go independent or stay affiliated as a broker-associate under someone else's firm, the license itself works the same way: it's the only Texas real estate license that can operate without a sponsoring broker attached. Day One's practice exams weight broker-specific content — trust accounts, supervision, and TRELA advertising rules — the same way the actual TREC broker exam does, so you can see exactly where your two-part score is weakest before test day. Errors and omissions insurance isn't mandatory for every broker, but it isn't optional in every case either: if the designated broker of a business entity owns less than 10% of that entity, TREC requires the entity to carry at least $1 million in E&O coverage per occurrence, documented on a Certificate of Insurance filed with the commission. A sole proprietor broker who owns 100% of their own brokerage faces no such mandate, though the Texas Real Estate Recovery Trust Fund exists as a payer of last resort for judgments against licensees, not a substitute for E&O coverage.