Real Estate Agent License Renewal in Indiana

Indiana’s renewal looks light. Three years, $60, 36 hours. The structure underneath is what actually catches people, because those 36 hours are not 36 hours.

Twelve a year, and the year is July to June

The unit of account is the continuing education year, running July 1 to June 30, and you owe 12 hours in each one. Three CE years fit inside a three-year licensure period, which is where the 36 comes from.

Then comes the rule that makes it strict: hours above 12 in a CE year do not carry forward. A broker who sits down in the final spring of the cycle and knocks out all 36 hours has completed one CE year and failed the other two. The hours are not bankable and they are not retroactive.

Two smaller versions of the same idea: taking the same approved course twice in one CE year earns credit once, and courses that duplicate content you already claimed do not count again.

Managing brokers and instructors spend four of the twelve

The extra requirements are carve-outs, not add-ons:

• Managing brokers: 4 of the 12 hours must cover business and management skills and the legal knowledge a managing broker needs. It applies in any CE year the broker functions as a managing broker for any period of time, so taking the role in May pulls the whole year into the requirement.
• Instructor permit holders: 4 of the 12 must be instruction-specific, and those hours also count toward the broker requirement.

What does not count

Indiana names the exclusions outright: exam preparation, sales meetings, in-house training sessions, correspondence, and motivational classes or seminars. A brokerage’s own Tuesday training is not CE here no matter how substantive it is.

Approved subjects, by contrast, are broad: agency law and license and escrow law as they apply in Indiana, environmental issues, ethics and standards, time-shares and condominiums and cooperatives, investment real estate analysis, and anything else the Commission approves that genuinely builds skill.

New brokers do 30 hours of post-licensing instead

A broker licensed after June 30, 2014 must take and pass 30 hours of post-licensing education during the first two years. That is not on top of continuing education, it replaces it for those years. Failing to complete it exposes the broker to action under the general licensing statute, not merely a renewal problem.

Inactive and referral status stop the clock

If your license sits in inactive or referral status, you owe no CE to renew it. Active and unassigned licenses do. Reinstating an expired license is the expensive path: 36 hours within the three years before you apply, though CE you earned in your last licensed period can count if you file within three years of expiring.

The fee

$60 for the three years, plus $50 if your renewal is postmarked after expiration. Renewal runs through mylicense.in.gov, and the form asks you to affirm, under penalty of perjury, that the education is done.

How this compares

Per year, Indiana’s 12 hours is one of the lighter loads here, near Massachusetts’s 12 per two-year cycle doubled and well under Washington’s 30 per two years. The $60 across three years makes it the cheapest state on this list by a distance. What Indiana asks instead is steadiness. Georgia lets a licensee bank 36 hours anywhere across four years and Ohio spreads 30 over three; Indiana counts the same 36 in three sealed compartments and lets none of it move.