How Often Do Georgia Real Estate Licensees Need Continuing Education?

Compared to other states, Georgia's real estate licensees are fairly lucky. While other real estate salespeople have to worry about renewing their licenses fairly frequently, you only have to think about license renewal every four years. Still, though, it pays to stay on top of the process — and that includes completing the required continuing education.

Because the Georgia Real Estate Commission (GREC) requires 36 hours of continuing education for many real estate licensees, it’s not easy to knock the hours out at the last minute. To help you stay ahead of the curve, let’s take a look at how often you need to take continuing education based on your Georgia real estate license.

Who needs Georgia real estate continuing education?

You may or may not need continuing education to maintain your Georgia real estate license. It all comes down to your license number. If your license number is less than 100,000, congratulations. You’re off the hook.

But if your license number is greater than 100,000, you’ll need to take 36 hours of continuing education before you can renew your license. Three of those hours need to focus on real estate license law, too.

Make sure you take your continuing education with a GREC-approved school. Fortunately, some of these education providers offer online Georgia real estate continuing education courses. Go this route and you can knock out your hours whenever you find a time that’s convenient for you. And you can take your hours from any computer with an internet connection.

When do you need to complete your continuing education hours?

You need to have your hours finished before you can complete your license renewal, which is due every four years.

You have some flexibility concerning when you complete your hours. While you can only renew your license when you’re within 120 days of your expiration date, you can take your continuing education hours at any point during the four-year renewal cycle. If you want to break it down and take eight hours a year, for example, you can.

By your expiration date, you’ll need to be able to show that all 36 hours are completed and that you’ve taken three hours on real estate license law. Fortunately, your education provider should report your hours to the GREC for you using their Online Course Completion System. In fact, reporting your hours to the GREC is a requirement for a school to get GREC approval.

To make sure your education provider can get your course completion info to the GREC before you need to renew, it’s helpful to finish your continuing education at least a couple of weeks before your renewal is due.

Within the GREC’s Online Services platform (the same one you use to complete your renewal), you can check on your continuing education status. This is handy if you know you completed hours earlier in the renewal cycle but can’t remember how many.

Ultimately, because you have four years to complete your continuing education, it shouldn’t be overly burdensome. The trick is to get a start on the hours early so you can chip away at them without feeling rushed or stressed. Take your hours online to make it a breeze to complete your Georgia real estate continuing education by your renewal date.