Real Estate License

Real Estate License

Real estate licenses are those authorizations issued by a state administration that gives agents and/or brokers the legal ability to represent a home seller or buyer in the process of buying or selling real estate in the United States.

A Real estate agent and/or Real estate broker is required to be licensed when conducting real estate transactions in any of the fifty States of the United States of America (USA), as well as in many countries internationally.

Through a complicated arrangement, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) sets the policies for most of the Multiple Listings Services and, in the late 1990s with the growth of the internet, NAR evolved regulations allowing Information Data Exchanges (IDX) whereby brokers would allow a portion of their data to be seen on the internet via brokers' or agents' websites.

There were attempts to limit access to some or all of that data to certain brokers operating solely on the internet and, in 2005, this prompted the Department of Justice to file an antitrust lawsuit against NAR alleging its MLS rules in regard to these types of limitations on the display of data were the product of a conspiracy to restrain trade by excluding brokers who used the internet to operate differently from traditional "brick and mortar" brokers.