Part-time · Texas
What it costs to be a part-time real estate agent in Texas
Texas doesn’t set a minimum number of hours. You do pay to keep your license active, however much you work. Here is every fee, when it’s due, and who charges it.
Written by the brokerage side of 6th Ave Homes. We recruit agents, so you should know that up front. Every figure below comes from TREC, the Texas statutes, NAR or the Fort Worth association, and each source is listed so you can check it yourself.
Pay figures online
Agents are paid on commission, so salary figures don't fit.
The pay figures you find online are mostly salary averages built from job postings. A Texas agent is paid a share of each sale they close, so those averages describe a different kind of job.
Salary vs. commission
An agent gets paid when a sale closes.
Commission is a share of each sale you close. A salary average describes people paid for their time, so it can’t tell you what an agent on commission will earn.
Job postings
Those averages come largely from job postings.
A salary average, built largely from job postings, for work that is paid in commission. What an employer advertises is not what an agent actually takes home, and the job sites don’t say how far apart the two are.
What we can show you, with sources, is the cost side: the charges that come due on a schedule, from the organizations that print their prices. We don't publish an earnings figure, because we couldn't back one up.
Costs to stay licensed
Three fees to keep a Texas license, each on its own schedule
You owe all three whether you sold anything or not. They come due on different schedules, so we list each one with its own timing instead of adding them into one yearly total.
TREC license renewal
$110
every 24 months
Owed on the same cycle whether you closed thirty deals or none.
TREC Fee Schedule, effective December 15, 2025
NAR dues and the Consumer Advertising assessment
$201
a year
NAR's own combined figure for 2027 — $156 in dues plus a $45 assessment. The dues are pro-rated monthly in the year you join; the $45 is not.
NAR — 2027 National Membership Dues
NTREIS MLS access through GFWAR, REALTOR® Agent
$153
no period stated
Its source page never says what $153 buys — a quarter or a year. It does say new-user fees are pro-rated by which month of the quarter you join, and that there are no refunds once a billing quarter has begun.
GFWAR — Matrix MLS fees
For the MLS fee we show only the published figure: the figure is published without a period, so we quote it and let GFWAR tell you what it covers. Its page does say new-user fees are pro-rated by which month of the quarter you join, and that nothing is refunded once a billing quarter has begun.
And this is only the standing cost. The one-time cost of getting licensed in the first place — the application, the exam, the fingerprints, the 180 hours — is itemized on our page about getting a Texas license.
Renewing late
If your license stays expired six months or longer, you start over.
TREC issues and renews a sales agent license for 24 months. Renew late and the fee goes up. Wait six months or longer and there is no renewal at all.
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Renewed on time
$110
the ordinary fee, every 24 months
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Expired 90 days or less
$143
the $66 license fee at one and a half times, plus the same fixed add-ons
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Expired more than 90 days but under six months
$176
the $66 license fee doubled, plus the same fixed add-ons
Expired six months or longer
“If a person’s license has been expired for six months or longer, the person may not renew the license. The person may obtain a new license by complying with the requirements and procedures for obtaining an original license.”
You apply for a new license, under the requirements for an original one.
The law allows no waiver
“The commission may not waive the requirements for renewal under this section.” That is the full text of the statute. TREC can’t make an exception for hardship, so don’t count on explaining a missed deadline later.
Your first renewal
Your first renewal carries a much larger education requirement than every renewal after it, and those hours cannot be deferred. It is itemized on our page about getting a Texas license — if you work another job, put that deadline on your calendar the day you’re licensed.
The unpublished costs
Two costs you have to ask for directly.
Three organizations print their prices, so we can show you those three charges. These two aren't published anywhere: your local association's dues and whatever your brokerage charges.
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Your local association's annual dues
GFWAR does not publish a dues figure anywhere on its site — the join page is a contact form. Ask them directly.
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Whatever your brokerage charges
Every brokerage sets its own, and none of it is public. Ask for every line in writing before you sign — not just the split.
The Fort Worth association will tell you its number over the phone: 817.336.5165. While you have them, ask what the MLS fee covers. Then you’ll know four of the five costs on this page.
Your sponsoring broker
Your sponsoring broker sets your hours and what the brokerage charges you.
Texas requires a sponsoring broker before you can do anything at all — “A sales agent must be sponsored by a licensed Broker in order to perform any act of real estate services.” The state leaves your hours and brokerage fees open. Your agreement with that broker sets them, so that agreement is what to ask about. Here are four to put to any broker before you sign.
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If I close nothing for six months, does anything change about my standing here?
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Which of the association and MLS charges do you pay, and which land on me?
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If I need to go inactive for a year, will you sponsor me again afterwards?
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Is any of what you have just told me in the agreement, or only in this conversation?
Ask us those four. You should ask them of every brokerage you talk to, and it’s worth having the answers before you discuss a commission split. Separately: what this brokerage does for agents, and, if you are already licensed somewhere else, moving to a new sponsoring broker.
Common questions
Questions about working part-time as a Texas real estate agent
Every one of these is settled by a statute, a fee table or a published rule rather than by our opinion, and every source is linked at the bottom of this page.
How many hours a week do you have to work to be a real estate agent in Texas?
The state does not say. Texas requires eight things of a sales agent license holder, and not one of them is an hours, availability, production or income condition. The only party who can set hours for you is your sponsoring broker, in the agreement you sign with them.
What does a Texas real estate license cost to keep if you barely use it?
You still pay to keep it, and the figures are above. Three organizations publish a price, and each bills on a different schedule, so the charges don't add up neatly into one yearly figure. Two more costs aren't published at all. So any single annual number for this is partly a guess: it has to estimate the two unpublished costs and pick a period for the MLS fee, which has none.
Can you put a Texas real estate license on hold for a year?
Close to it. If your part-time work stops for a while, you can renew the license as inactive. TREC's own words: “You may renew your license on inactive status without completing CE. You cannot engage in real estate brokerage activity with an inactive license.” So the license survives a slow year without the continuing education, as long as you renew it — and you cannot take a client while it is in that state. Coming back is a separate conversation with a broker rather than with TREC.
What happens if you let a Texas real estate license expire?
For the first six months it is a fee, and the fee escalates — the figures and the arithmetic behind them are set out above. After six months it stops being a fee at all: the statute removes renewal as an option and sends you back to the beginning, and the Commission is forbidden by that same statute from making an exception for you. So a missed renewal costs a little in the first 90 days, more after that, and after six months it costs you the license.
Do you have to tell people you are an agent when you buy a house for yourself?
Yes, in writing. This one matters for part-time agents, because many of their deals are for themselves or their family. TREC Rules, 22 TAC §535.144 covers buying or selling for yourself, your spouse, your parent or your child, a business you own more than 10% of, or a trust you are trustee or a beneficiary of. In any of those, you have to disclose in writing that you are licensed — in the contract, or in a writing given before it, and you may not use what you know as a license holder to that person's disadvantage. It is one sentence of paperwork, and it is easy to miss.
Ask us anything this page doesn’t answer Working in Mansfield? Which association covers it
Working part-time in Fort Worth? Agents vs. homes sold
Sources for every figure and quotation on this page, verified September 2026: TREC — Become a Real Estate Sales Agent · TREC — Renew a Real Estate Sales Agent License · TREC Fee Schedule, effective December 15, 2025 · TREC Rules, 22 TAC §535.144 · Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1101 · NAR — 2027 National Membership Dues · GFWAR — Matrix MLS fees. Fee schedules and dues change; each figure above is quoted with whose it is, so you can check it against the same page we did. We are real estate agents, not lawyers or accountants — what any of it means for your situation is a question for one of those.
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