Texas: your license, the TREC forms, and the rules of a deal
Texas licenses agents through the Texas Real Estate Commission (TREC), and TREC also writes the contract forms most Texas home sales use. This guide covers how to get the license, what your sponsoring broker must do for you, the forms and deadlines of a resale, and the notices a seller owes a buyer. Every fact comes from a Texas statute, a TREC rule, or a TREC form, and links to its source.
Every fact links to its source. Checked Oct 8, 2026
Getting your Texas license
To be eligible, you must be at least 18 years old and a U.S. citizen or a lawfully admitted alien, and satisfy TREC as to your honesty, trustworthiness, and integrity. You must also pass the exam and complete the required courses. (Source: Texas Statutes)
A nonresident applicant has the same license requirements as a resident. A nonresident also files, with the application, an irrevocable consent to legal action in the Texas courts. (Source: Texas Statutes)
Before you apply, you can ask TREC, for a fee, to decide whether you have the fitness to be licensed. TREC notifies you no later than 30 days after it decides. (Source: Texas Statutes)
A sales agent applicant completes 180 hours of qualifying courses: 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. (Source: TREC)
TREC says to apply and pay through its REALM Portal, and not to apply until all your pre-license education is complete and uploaded. (Source: TREC)
TREC's fee schedule, effective December 15, 2025, lists a total fee of $206.00 for a sales agent's original application. (Source: TREC)
You submit a set of fingerprints so that TREC can get your criminal history records from the Texas Department of Public Safety and the FBI. TREC refuses to issue a license to a person who does not. (Source: Texas Statutes)
TREC ends your application if you do not meet the education, experience, or exam requirements, or do not give your fingerprints to the Department of Public Safety, within one year after you file it. (Source: TREC)
TREC says Pearson gives the license exams. (Source: TREC)
The exam has a national part and a state part, and a sales agent applicant needs at least 70% on each. After three failures in a row, you complete more qualifying courses before you can retest or apply again: 30 hours for a failed national part, 30 hours for a failed state part, or 60 hours for both. (Source: TREC)
TREC issues a new sales agent license as inactive. You cannot practice as a sales agent until an active Texas broker sponsors you. (Source: TREC)
By the end of your first license period, you complete 90 more classroom hours of qualifying courses, including the 30-hour real estate brokerage course. (Source: TREC)
For your first renewal, you complete those 90 hours before you file the renewal, and you also take Legal Update I and Legal Update II, plus the Broker Responsibility Course when it applies to you. (Source: TREC)
A license holder who does not owe the education for a sales agent's first renewal takes continuing education courses that TREC approves during the term of the current license. (Source: Texas Statutes)
TREC's rule sets 18 hours of continuing education for a renewal. They include Legal Update I (4 hours), Legal Update II (4 hours), and 3 hours on real estate contracts. For a broker, or a delegated supervisor such as a team leader, the 18 hours also include the 6-hour Broker Responsibility Course. (Source: TREC)
A broker license needs four years of active experience as a Texas broker or sales agent in the five years before you apply, and time licensed in another state can count. It also needs 270 hours of qualifying courses, including a 30-hour brokerage course taken in the last two years, 630 more classroom hours of related courses, and the 6-hour Broker Responsibility Course. (Source: TREC)
Working under a sponsoring broker
A licensed sales agent can do real estate brokerage only when a licensed broker sponsors them, and only for that broker. (Source: Texas Statutes)
Unless the law exempts you, you need a license to show a property. Showing includes letting a buyer or tenant view it, unlocking it or giving access to it, and hosting an open house. (Source: TREC)
A sales agent accepts pay for a deal only from the broker who sponsors them, or who sponsored them when they earned it. A sales agent pays a commission to another person only through their current sponsoring broker. (Source: Texas Statutes)
Your broker tells you in writing which activities you may do. Listings and other agreements for brokerage services are made in the broker's name, and the broker makes sure your ads follow TREC's advertising rules. (Source: TREC)
Your broker's written policies must give you coaching and help from an experienced, competent license holder the first 3 times you do a type of brokerage activity, and an answer from the broker or a delegated supervisor within 2 calendar days. (Source: TREC)
A license holder who leads a team must be delegated as a supervisor, in writing. (Source: TREC)
The broker keeps the records of each deal, such as disclosures, listing and buyer agreements, offers and contracts, compensation records, and comparative market analyses, for at least 4 years. (Source: TREC)
A sales agent may not keep a trust account. A sales agent who receives earnest money or other trust money gives it immediately to the sponsoring broker. (Source: TREC)
Advertising your business
TREC's ad rules cover social media, texts, email, websites, business cards, signs, and billboards. Each ad shows the broker's name in at least half the size of the largest contact information for an agent or team in the ad. (Source: TREC)
On social media and in a text, the required information can be on your profile page or a separate page, when a direct link from the post or text reaches it. (Source: TREC)
A team name must end with the word "team" or "group". The broker registers it with TREC before the team uses it in an ad. (Source: TREC)
TREC treats some ads as misleading, for example an ad that calls a sales agent a broker, a team name with words such as "brokerage", "company", or "associates", or an ad for a listing that does not stop within 10 days after the listing agreement ends. (Source: TREC)
Each business website links TREC's Consumer Protection Notice from its homepage, labeled "Texas Real Estate Commission Consumer Protection Notice" or "TREC Consumer Protection Notice". (Source: TREC)
The IABS notice and the buyer agreement
Give the Information About Brokerage Services notice (TREC No. IABS 1-2) at the first substantive communication about a specific property. You can give it in person, by first class mail or overnight courier, in the body of an email, or as an email attachment or link that the body of the email names, not in a footnote or signature block. Each business website also links a completed IABS from its homepage. (Source: TREC)
From January 1, 2026, you must sign a written agreement with a buyer before you show them any home, or before you present an offer when no home is shown. This covers a house, a duplex, triplex, or fourplex, and a condo or co-op unit. (Source: Texas Statutes)
The buyer agreement states the services, the end date, whether it is exclusive, whether you represent the buyer, and the broker's compensation and how it is set. It says, in conspicuous language, that broker compensation is not set by law and is fully negotiable. (Source: Texas Statutes)
An agreement for showings only cannot be exclusive and cannot end more than 14 days after it is made. More services need a separate agreement. (Source: Texas Statutes)
On the TREC resale contract, each party pays its own broker under its own written agreement. The parties can check that the seller pays a stated amount or percentage of the price toward what the buyer owes the buyer's broker, or that the buyer pays toward the seller's broker. (Source: TREC)
A broker who agrees to represent both the buyer and the seller must act as an intermediary. (Source: Texas Statutes)
An intermediary needs the written consent of each party, and acts fairly and impartially. (Source: Texas Statutes)
The TREC forms and the resale contract
TREC's One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), TREC No. 20-19, has an effective date of July 1, 2026. It is for the resale of a house, duplex, triplex, or fourplex. It is not for a condo, a new home a builder sells, or farm and ranch property. (Source: TREC)
When you negotiate a sale, you use the contract forms TREC requires for that deal, with limited exceptions. You may not draft contract terms that affect the parties' rights, such as an escalation, appraisal, or contingency clause. You may add informational items, and add or strike language when your client tells you to in writing and the change is conspicuous. (Source: TREC)
TREC made its 2026 contract changes mandatory on July 1, 2026. They include a definition of "Legal Holiday", a new water rights disclosure, a longer Seller's Disclosure Notice, new broker compensation language in Paragraph 12, and clearer notice delivery in Paragraph 21. (Source: TREC)
The Third Party Financing Addendum (TREC No. 40-11) is used when a third party, not the seller or the buyer, finances all or part of the price. (Source: TREC)
TREC lists these disclosure forms: the Seller's Disclosure Notice (No. 55-1), the lead-based paint addendum (56-0), the addendum for a property owners association (36-11), the Subdivision Information and resale certificate (37-5), the Notice to Purchaser of Special Taxing or Assessment District (59-0), the improvement district assessment addendum (53-0), and the Seller's Disclosure about Groundwater and Surface Water Rights (61-0). (Source: TREC)
TREC's contracts page also lists the Seller Financing Addendum (No. 26-8), the Loan Assumption Addendum (41-3), the Addendum for Sale of Other Property by Buyer (10-6), the Short Sale Addendum (45-2), and the Notice of Buyer's Termination of Contract (38-8). (Source: TREC)
The option period, earnest money, and other deadlines
The Effective Date is the date of final acceptance, and the broker fills it in. (Source: TREC)
TREC counts each contract period in calendar days, starting the day after the Effective Date. (Source: TREC)
The buyer delivers the earnest money and the option fee to the escrow agent within 3 days after the Effective Date. When the last day is a Saturday, Sunday, or Legal Holiday, the time runs to the end of the next day that is not. (Source: TREC)
During the option period, the buyer has an unrestricted right to end the contract by notice to the seller, given by 5:00 p.m. local time on the last day. The seller keeps the option fee, and the buyer gets the earnest money back. (Source: TREC)
If no option fee is stated, or the buyer delivers it late, the buyer has no unrestricted right to end the contract. (Source: TREC)
If the buyer does not deliver the earnest money on time, the seller can end the contract, use its default remedies, or both, by notice given before the buyer delivers it. (Source: TREC)
When the Third Party Financing Addendum makes the contract subject to Buyer Approval, a buyer who cannot get it can end the contract within the days written in, with the lender's written reasons, and gets the earnest money back. After that period, the contract is no longer subject to Buyer Approval. (Source: TREC)
If the lender finds that the property does not meet its requirements (such as the appraisal, insurability, or lender required repairs), the buyer can end the contract on or before the 3rd day before the Closing Date, with the lender's written reasons, and gets the earnest money back. For other financing, the parties can check that the buyer waives this right. (Source: TREC)
The seller furnishes the title commitment within 20 days after the title company receives the contract. (Source: TREC)
The Texas Department of Insurance says all title companies charge the same title premium, and the buyer may choose any title company. (Source: TDI)
Seller disclosures, and the MUD and PID notices
A seller of a home with one dwelling unit gives the buyer the Seller's Disclosure Notice on or before the effective date of the contract. If the contract is made without it, the buyer can end the contract for any reason within 7 days after receiving it. (Source: Texas Statutes)
The seller and the seller's agent have no duty to disclose a death by natural causes, suicide, or an accident unrelated to the condition of the property, or whether a previous occupant had AIDS or HIV. (Source: Texas Statutes)
The notice asks about flood insurance, past flooding, whether the property is in a 100-year or 500-year floodplain, a floodway, a flood pool, or a reservoir, flood claims, and FEMA or SBA help for flood damage. (Source: Texas Statutes)
Under a TREC contract, the seller gives the Seller's Disclosure about Groundwater and Surface Water Rights unless the statements in Paragraph 7I(3) are all true. A seller who does not have to give the Seller's Disclosure Notice can still have to give it. (Source: TREC)
For a home of one dwelling unit in a property owners' association (not a condo), the seller gives the buyer the statutory notice of membership before the contract binds the buyer. Without it, the buyer can end the contract within 7 days after receiving the notice, or before the transfer if that comes first. (Source: Texas Statutes)
The association delivers its restrictions, bylaws, rules, and a resale certificate within 10 business days after a written request. The fee is no more than $375. (Source: Texas Statutes)
Water Code 49.452 covers a district, such as a MUD, whose main function is water, sewer, drainage, or flood control, financed with bonds paid from its taxes or with a standby fee (the law adds limits on the district's size). For property in such a district, the seller gives the buyer a written notice to purchasers before the contract is signed, and the buyer signs it. If the contract is signed without it, the buyer can end the contract. A buyer who gets the notice at or before closing and closes gives up that right. (Source: Texas Statutes)
For property in a public improvement district (PID), the seller gives the buyer the statutory notice of the obligation to pay the assessment before the contract is signed. From June 20, 2025, a buyer whose contract was signed without it can end the contract within 7 days after receiving it, but only if the city or county filed the district's service plan with the county clerk before the contract. (Source: Texas Statutes)
For most housing built before 1978, the seller and the agents give the buyer the EPA lead pamphlet, disclose known lead-based paint and its hazards, give the records and reports they have, and give the Lead Warning Statement, before the buyer signs. The buyer gets 10 days for a lead inspection, which the parties can change in writing and the buyer can waive. (Source: EPA)
Not in this guide
A license for a person licensed in another state, licenses for military service members and spouses, and reinstating an expired license: TREC.
The exam fee, the fingerprint fee, and how to schedule your fingerprints and your exam: TREC.
A condo resale under TREC No. 30-18: read the contract itself.
Leases, rental applications, and security deposits in Texas.
Property taxes, the homestead exemption, and appraisal protests.
Your city's ordinances, your MLS's rules, and your county's appraisal district: the local pages below, and your broker.
What the blanks of a given contract say, and whether a party can end a given contract: the contract itself, your broker, or an attorney.
Go deeper: one topic per page
Each page covers one rule or one form in this state, with a source for every fact.
