Real Estate Agent License Renewal in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania’s 14 hours are not fully yours to spend. The Commission reserves the right to mandate topics for a given biennium, and for the cycle that started June 1, 2026 it has done exactly that.

Fourteen hours, two of them assigned this cycle

Every standard-license broker and salesperson completes 14 hours of Commission-approved CE per two-year period, and courses count in blocks of at least two hours, so you cannot assemble the total out of one-hour fragments.

For the June 1, 2026 to May 31, 2028 period, the Commission adopted a special notice at its May 5, 2026 meeting requiring at least 2 of the 14 hours in a named topic: Protecting Consumer’s Real Property, Personal Property and Information. The remaining 12 are your choice among approved courses.

Because the mandated topic is set per biennium rather than permanently, the correct move is to check the Commission’s announcements page at the start of each cycle rather than assuming this cycle’s topic carries into the next one.

Your first renewal works differently

A salesperson renewing for the first time does not take the mandated topic. Instead you complete the Commission’s required new-licensee coursework: a general module plus one practice-specific module. This is a different curriculum from ordinary CE, and buying a standard 14-hour package in your first cycle means buying the wrong courses.

Who is exempt entirely

The CE requirement does not reach reciprocal licensees, cemetery brokers and salespersons, builder-owner salespersons, timeshare salespersons, campground membership salespersons, or rental listing referral agents. If you hold one of those, the 14 hours are not yours to worry about. Every standard broker and salesperson license is covered.

The cycle, and no grace period

Pennsylvania licenses expire May 31 of every even-numbered year, a single statewide date, with the new biennium starting June 1. The Commission emails a renewal notice roughly 60 days out to whatever address you have registered in PALS, which is worth keeping current since that email is the only notice.

There is no grace period for any license or registration. Renewal happens through PALS and nowhere else, paper applications are no longer accepted.

Reactivating a license that has gone noncurrent takes 14 hours completed within the two years before you apply, and the rule is explicit that the same coursework cannot be used to satisfy both a renewal and a reactivation. You cannot spend the same hours twice.

The fee

A salesperson or associate broker pays $96 per biennium. A broker, branch office, or broker of record pays $126. Both come from the fee section of the Commission’s regulations.

How this compares

Pennsylvania sits in the middle of the states covered here: 14 hours matches Florida’s ongoing requirement, costs less than Illinois’s $200 and Texas’s $110, and asks fewer hours than New York’s 22.5. What sets it apart is the rotating mandated topic, which means a Pennsylvania licensee has to re-read the rule every two years rather than learning it once.