Keeping a Texas license: continuing education, sponsorship changes, inactive status, and assumed names

Four checks for keeping a Texas license

Education, license status, sponsorship, and advertising names are separate requirements. A fee payment alone does not establish sponsorship or authorize inactive practice.

Education and renewal

For an ordinary CE renewal, Texas requires 18 hours, including 4 hours of Legal Update I, 4 hours of Legal Update II, and 3 hours of approved real estate contracts coursework. The 6-hour broker responsibility course applies to specified license holders, including delegated supervisors and brokers who sponsored sales agents during the license period. First renewal is different: a sales agent must complete the additional required education before filing the renewal application and meet the applicable legal update and broker responsibility requirements. Confirm current requirements and fees with TREC when acting on them.

An inactive license may be renewed without CE as a condition of that inactive renewal, but renewal fees remain due. Required education must be satisfied before returning to active status. Inactive is not expired and does not authorize licensed activity.

Sponsorship and reactivation

Either party ending sponsorship must immediately notify the other in writing and terminate sponsorship through TREC's approved online process or appropriate form. A form termination takes effect when TREC receives the completed form and applicable fee. Termination makes the sales agent inactive. The sponsoring broker's death or the expiration, suspension, revocation, or inactivation of that broker's license also triggers inactivity.

Reactivation requires documentation of required CE, certification that no licensed activity occurred while inactive, establishment of broker sponsorship through the required process, and the appropriate fee. A private agreement with a new broker is insufficient.

Advertising names

An alternate name is an individual's name other than the licensed name; register it before advertising. Common derivatives such as Bill for William count as the licensed name. A team name identifies one or more license holders under the same broker, ends in team or group, and cannot imply independent brokerage. The broker registers it before advertising. An assumed business name is the broker's business name; before advertising, the broker registers it with TREC and supplies written evidence of legal authority to use it in Texas.

Within 10 days after stopping an alternate name, the license holder notifies TREC and the sponsoring broker. The broker gives TREC written notice within 10 days after a team name or the broker's assumed business name stops being used.