Hi Guys, I’m gonna do for you guys is just to make sure you guys know the overall process of how to become real estate broker because the steps and the information out there is not all in one place and it can be very confusing process so before you decide to get a career in real estate as a broker or if you’re a salesperson when they’ve become a broker. You know the overall process before jumping into it.
Steps to Become a Real Estate Broker
So here we go we’re gonna talk about the steps to become a broker. So basically five overall ones you got to fill the requirements and then you also then have to send in your application once you’ve done and fulfilled all those requirements.
Once you have the application in the bureau of the cruise it once it’s approved you can go take stage man once you take the state exam and pass it you receive your license. So that’s kind of how it goes but we’re gonna go and talk about each of these separately and a little bit more in-depth and details for you.
1. Requirements
So requirements become a real estate broker. You need to be at least 18 years old or older and most people I don’t think there’s a broker out there I think at least 20 years old. Because as we talk about the experience and get to that in a second.
Honesty
So we talk about honesty because it is a government license you do need to make sure you just close everything because the bureau wants to make sure of it, so if you want more information on popular causes of denial for real estate license.
So you can see if for some reason you know you might not be eligible to get a license from California to practice real estate before deciding you know going and investing all this money for the education the exam preparation and then the fees to the bureau.
But you know if you really want to get your career in real estate we don’t you never know if you live what they’re going to accept they’re not going to. So just make sure you disclose anything that you might have happened in your past no matter how long it’s been.
The biggest thing for brokers that’s the biggest differentiation between salesperson and brokers and their requirements is the experience (you have to have two years full-time real estate experience within the last five years) this experience has to be provable verifiable.
So if you’re a salesperson you have your license under a broker they can sign off on approximately how many listings you’ve done on sales property management, syndications, how much money you made just kind of a guesstimate so the bureau can see okay yes you have been practicing for two years at least within the last five year.
If you’ve been practicing 20 years ago and you haven’t been practicing within the last five and you can’t prove it the bureau is not going to accept it because it needs to be within the last five years from when you send in that application to them.
Experience
So just know two years full-time real estate experience it can be five years part-time here and there but you know what I just have to equate to overall two years full-time they look at full-time to approximately forty hours a week for two years that would be basically the amount of time that you need to fulfill but everything’s a little bit different that’s.
If you had licensed experience of course for that for the broker signing off on it if you’re licensed in another state you would just have to prove that. If you have the unlicensed experience you would have to show that it’s very similar to having a license that would equate to the experience needed to be a real estate broker.
The key thing to remember is that it’s the unlicensed experience that you’re doing you can’t show tell them oh I was doing license type experience no unlicensed experience that would qualify so usually lending sometimes of you know certain things like that.
Biggest thing I know is that people were in the loan processing field they have that experience for years and years and then they want to go over and get their broker’s license it is doable but then again anything that is experience equivalency the bureau has to approve it so you’re kind of challenging the requirement to them rather than having that license to experience that the broker but the Bureau has a record of from the broker how long your license was under them.
So sometimes it can be harder if you’re coming from a different state or with the unlicensed experience to be unapproved so in that sense, you may not be able to go for your brokers but you can definitely go for your salesperson.
So I would contact the bureau just to verify that the experience you do have is something that they would approve then again with the bureau the people you talk to are not the people that would approve your experience or any of that stuff. so it’s kind of like just going and putting in there hopefully it gets you to know what you want but you know they do deny it you can’t challenge it so that’s the great thing about it.
But it can get kind of time-consuming and costly to challenges, okay you know what if you really wanna get that broker’s license I say go for it but you know there’s always other situations and stuff. To contact you or call us and we can make sure you know we can give you an idea of what we’ve seen with our experience and what’s gotten approved and what happens.
So you know if you don’t have this experience but you have a four-year degree with a major or minor in real estate that would count towards being equivalent to this kind of experience that you have the education for it. The big thing to know though is it has to be a degree in real estate it can’t be general business engineering any of this stuff even these really cool degrees it has to be in real estate.
However, if you are an attorney who has passed the bar there are things where you’re able to get basically you know not having to do these course requirements but you still have to prove that you have experience in real estate.
So the only thing if you do not have experience on the other basically equivalent factor would be you have a degree in real estate so if you don’t want to go and get that experience you’re like you know what let’s just go get a minor and we’ll say add that on that could be an option.
Education
So that’s one way to do it now once you fulfill those once it’s the education and so you have to make sure you fulfilled all of these course requirements there are five courses that are mandated for you there are Real estate practice, Legal aspects of real estate, Real estate finance, Real estate appraisal and Real estate economics.
But one thing that I say about the economics factor of it if you have macro or microeconomics in college that could fulfill that if you have Financial Accounting in college that could fulfill the real estate economics course requirement and then the comeback comes down to you basically what you have in college what would count and we can help you out with that the bureau can help you out with that just know if you have some college classes.
Something they count towards it so figures out what you’ve done we might be able to see if it counts towards any of these courses. So those are the five mandated ones and then there are three electives that you have to complete.
California monastic principals are one of the electives but you know if you’re a salesperson right now you’re good that was a required course. So the cool thing is if you did not have the salesperson then you know that already counts and you’re good to go so principals it’s required as a salesperson not technically required for brokers but we highly highly recommend it because that’s a really great course.
Then you know you can choose property management escrow mortgages loan broker in if you have business law in college that could count towards it but basically is choose three out of those.
So once you have these three electives or something like that or you’re not sure which ones you’ve done and before if you’re a salesperson or what you have in college we can figure out exactly what you need in one count. So the best thing knows to call us or call a bureau how your official transcript or what you’ve done previously through a private school or something for these courses and we can tell you exactly the number of courses and the remaining ones the topic and everything that you need to fulfill this requirement.
Because there are things that you can’t exchange for one of them for the topic and I’m not gonna go into depth on it here because it can’t get pretty you know pretty confusing because it all depends on the situation.
2. Send in your Application to the Cal BRE
So now once you’ve finished all of these requirements for the brokers you can then send in your application to the Cal BRE and one be sure you get the right application and you fill it out completely and correctly in its entirety and then you’ll also want to make sure you have the appropriate fees and documentation along with it.
Now this application process there’s a lot of forms especially for brokers and you’ll want to check that out just to make sure you’re doing everything correctly because the bureau if they receive it and something is wrong they will reject it and then they send it back to you guys send it back in with the correct info and you have to wait for that whole other processing timeframe again.
So we want to make sure it’s completely correct the first time and so follow all instructions and then you just wait for it to get approved the current processing timeframe estimations the approximations for it.
3. CalBRE Approve Application
So once the Bureau approves your application you got notified from them you can go they basically will let you go online and use their system of e licensing on their website to schedule your state exam or it would be assigned a date and it all depends on the original application what route you went.
4. Take State Exam and Pass!
So once you have that exam date you can go take the State Exam that’s a great thing at one of their locations now for the brokers it is electronic format no matter what location you go to and it’s two hundred multiple-choice questions.
The weird thing about it though it is it’s a hundred multiple-choice questions in the morning session and a hundred multiple-choice questions in the afternoon session. So there are two sessions involved and so 100 each and you have two and a half hours to complete each session.
You can do left but it’s two and a half hours and then it’s a weeded 75% or higher to pass. The State Exam is a pretty nasty one and because it’s weighted you can’t be like oh it’s 200 questions I only need to get 75% of them to pass.
No! that doesn’t work so basically you’d say that you have to do well no questions because one questions be weighted a lot heavier than another one and so you know if you just miss a few questions but those were the heavy hitter ones you might have failed it even though you got the majority of the questions right.
5. Receive Real Estate Broker License
Then once you pass date you’re like the huffing goodness that’s done with you can then receive your license, but it always comes down to how you originally applied with the bureau if you did the examination application only or if you did the examination and license combination application.
So if you just did the examination you now have to get the license application to fill out all that send it into the bureau of the fees the live scan, fingerprinting waitperson processing for maps get approved which is about maybe four weeks maybe less maybe more don’t depend and then you can go practice.
But you know what if you did the examination and licensed combination application you get your license then in there and you’re good to go because the results for the state exam are provided immediately.
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