Real Estate Agent License Renewal in Georgia

Georgia’s four-year cycle is the longest in this reference, and the number attached to it moved. Plenty of course vendors still quote 24 hours. The Commission’s own rule has said 36 since July 1, 2015, and it applies to salespersons and brokers alike.

Thirty-six hours, for everyone

Rule 520-1-.05 puts it plainly: to renew an active license, a licensee furnishes evidence of 36 instructional hours of continuing education completed during the renewal period. There is no separate, smaller number for salespersons. If a source tells you 24, it is quoting a rule that was superseded more than a decade ago.

At least 3 of the 36 must be license law, a requirement effective since July 1, 2016.

Brokers: half your hours are now spoken for

This is the recent change worth knowing. Since July 1, 2025, a broker or associate broker must spend at least 18 of the 36 hours on broker education specifically. Combined with the 3 license-law hours, that leaves a broker just 15 genuinely free hours out of 36.

Broker CE courses run a minimum of three credit hours each and have to cover one of four subjects: training licensees, supervising licensees, reviewing brokerage agreements, or managing a firm. The total did not go up, the flexibility went down.

One detail that catches people: the credit is not retroactive. A course you took previously that has since been approved for Broker CE does not earn Broker CE credit, because it was not approved for that purpose when you took it. Confirm a course carries Broker CE approval with the school before you buy it, not after.

Salespersons and community association managers were not affected by this change.

New salespersons owe a separate 25 hours

Independent of continuing education, a new Georgia salesperson must complete a 25-instructional-hour post-license course within one year of the original license being issued, under O.C.G.A. 43-40-8(d). A six-month extension is available in the circumstances the statute allows, and a non-resident who completed a substantially similar post-license course in their home state can have it counted. This is a condition of keeping the license, not part of the 36 hours.

Two exemptions

Georgia keeps a genuine grandfather clause. A licensee who obtained a license before 1980 and holds a license number with fewer than six digits is exempt from continuing education entirely, and the 2025 broker change did not disturb that.

A non-resident broker may satisfy Georgia’s CE requirement by submitting proof of active licensure in their resident state, showing an expiration date later than the Georgia expiration.

The cycle and the fee

Renewal runs on a four-year period tied to your birthday month. The standard fee is $125.00, discounted to $100.00 if you renew online, which makes online the obvious choice: you save $25 for using a faster channel.

How this compares

Georgia asks 9 CE hours a year, matching Texas and above Pennsylvania and Florida at 7. On cost it is the cheapest per year of any state here, roughly $25 to $31 depending on how you renew, against Ohio’s $61 and Illinois’s $100. The tradeoff is the same one California makes with its four-year cycle: a long gap between deadlines, and a 36-hour bill that is easy to leave until it is too late to spread out.