Real Estate License Reciprocity by State (2026)

The pathways, applied to real estate

Full reciprocity (honor-all states)

A handful of states accept any active US real estate license: verify your license history, clear the background check, pass the state-law exam where one exists, and you are licensed. These states treat your existing license as proof of competence and reserve their scrutiny for their own contract law.

Named agreements and mutual recognition

The middle of the map runs on lists. Florida's mutual-recognition roster, Georgia's everyone-but-Florida rule, the New England cooperative cluster — each is a negotiated deal with its own conditions, and each is directional: your origin state must appear on the destination's list, not the other way around. If your state is on the list, you typically skip pre-license education and the national exam.

Endorsement without an agreement

Some commissions publish no partner list but still evaluate out-of-state licensees individually — credit for the national exam, waived coursework, case-by-case. The paperwork resembles reciprocity; the certainty doesn't. Where this is the rule, the state page says exactly what the commission has committed to in writing.

Full re-qualification (the no-reciprocity states)

Seventeen-odd states, including the two biggest markets, recognize nothing. The honest playbook: enroll in the required pre-license education early (much of it is online and self-paced), schedule both exam portions, and treat your experience as a study advantage rather than a credential. Some of these states waive the national exam portion for recently licensed transferees — the state pages flag where.

Broker licenses ride stricter rules than salesperson licenses almost everywhere — experience minimums (typically 2-3 years active practice) survive even full reciprocity. The data on this site tracks the salesperson path; broker specifics are on each commission's site, linked from every state page.