The past few years have shaken up a lot of people’s lives, including their professional lives. Spending 24/7/365 at home has also made a lot of people rethink their housing situations. If those two parallel tracks converge for you and you’re thinking that you might like to start a new career and be part of the strongest housing market in years, read on to learn how to become a real estate agent.
Requirements
Real estate licensing is administered on a state-by-state basis, and each state has its own licensing requirements. Some requirements are consistent across states, though, and they include:
- Minimum age of 18 or 19
- Legal US residency
- Completed required pre-licensing education
- Passing score on state real estate licensing exam
It’s worth noting that these are the minimum requirements. Real estate agents come from varied professional backgrounds, as this tends to be a second or third career for many people who come to it later in life, and many brokerages prefer to hire people who have education and professional experience well beyond these minimums. While it is technically possible, it’s not all that likely for a newly minted teenager with a newly printed license to be invited to sign on as a full-fledged sales agent.
Steps Toward Licensing
Still, those requirements are mandatory, so if you want to get started as a real estate agent, the steps that you will need to follow are:
- Understand your state’s requirements. Visit the real estate commission website for your state and make sure that you can check all the boxes; for instance, some states require a high school diploma or GED, and a few even require some post-secondary education apart from the required real estate-specific classes.
- Enroll in a state-approved pre-licensing program. These may be offered by community colleges, online and in-person real estate schools, and even some real estate brokerages.
- Take and pass the real estate licensing test. Some states require a background check before you can sit the exam, and all require that you pay when you register. Of course, you also have to take and pass the test.
- Sign with a broker. Once you’ve qualified for and passed your exam, you have to be sponsored by a broker to be issued a license.