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About Us and Our Site Is your 45Hour package really the least expensive available? Procedural Questions What must I do to renew my license after I have passed my courses? How can I challenge the correctness of one of your exam’s answers? How can I pass your 45HOURS package in as little as six days? What are DRE's new examination rules effective April 1st, 2011? License Renewal/Continuing Education What if DRE’s renewal site is down on my license expiration day? Why the waiting period of two days for your 15HOURS package? Why the waiting period of four days for your 45HOURS package? What is the difference between a statutory course and a CE course? I have more than 45-hours of CE, can I apply the surplus to my next renewal? General What are the special advantages to eBooks in Adobe Reader (PDF) format? About Us and Our Site
This site went online May 2006. Its purpose is to conveniently provide continuing education to California real estate licensees.
Chuck Milbourne is 45HourOnline’s owner, textbook author, and
website developer. Prior to his founding of 45HoursOnline, he was
a computer application developer for thirty years. In 2005,
he began development of this site while studying real estate. By
2006 he earned his broker’s license and went live with this site.
If you need to speak
with him, he will be sure to answer your questions correctly and
succinctly (45HoursOnline@pobox.com
or 818/716-1028).
Why should I choose your school? Cheap: We know of no other continuing education (CE) school offering complete renewal packages at prices lower than ours (details). Our prices are low because our site is fully automated, our overhead is minimal, we own our course materials, and our principal advertising method is word-of-mouth. Fast and Easy: We designed our site for convenience and ease-of-use. Our books have the least number of pages permitted by the DRE – 10 pages per course-hour. Unlimited Retakes: Unlike most of our competitors, should you fail a final exam twice in succession, we do not charge you to re-register for the course or package. Should you fail any exam twice, you pay only a "time penalty"; that is, you must wait for the expiration of that course's study period before you may re-take the course's final (or any other final). This "time penalty" (aka, "study period") is three hours for our three-hour courses and two days for our 15-hour exams (details). Specialized: We provide CE only to California real estate licensees. In contrast to most CE providers, we do not offer courses to licensees from other states and we do not offer pre-license courses needed to sit for DRE's licensing exams. We do not, unlike most of the larger schools, offer CE for other licensed professionals such as appraisers, contractors, and insurance brokers. Because we are specialized, we are always current with California law, our course materials are specific to California real estate brokerage, and we are current with DRE’s license renewal regulations. Above Board: Unlike most other schools, we provide a detailed explanation of how our courses are administered. We provide samples of our materials and a Demonstration Course so you may know what to expect should you choose to purchase our package. DRE Compliant: Unlike many of our competitors, we comply with all of DRE's regulations. Consequently, our customers need not fear our course approvals will be suspended or revoked by the DRE for non-compliance with their regulations.
Quality Course
Materials: Our materials are current, well-written,
and relevant to the practice of California residential real estate
brokerage.
To view the first one third of any course’s textbook, including its
table of contents, just click its name in the following list:
Ethics
I don’t like computers – should I take your courses? Probably not. We assume you’re familiar with your browser’s basics — registering and paying for services, reading PDF files, linking to outside sites and returning, navigating pages, and printing. If you lack these basic computing skills you should use a correspondence school (a school which ships its course materials and exams to you). If you are unsure you have the requisite online
skills, try our
Demonstration Course. If you can read the Demonstration
Course’s textbook, pass its 10-question
exam, and print its certificate then you should have no trouble
completing our packages. By taking the
Demo you will also become familiar with our approach and earn a 15%
discount on the purchase of any one of our packages.
Do you provide technical support? Yes. We are always available via
e-mail and frequently
available by phone (818) 716-1028.
Are your courses approved by the State? Yes, all our courses have been extensively reviewed and approved by the California Department of Real Estate. To view our DRE listing,
click here, and then enter
What is the “Certificate”? The Certificate lists all courses you passed (to see a sample of the certificate, mouse over the arrow on the [Display Certificate] button on the below figure). For each course, our Certificate shows the course’s “Certificate No.”, the date you passed, its name, and DRE’s official classification (aka, “designation”) for the course (e.g., “consumer services”, “consumer protection”, “risk management”, etc.).
When you have passed all your courses, we provide you a link to DRE’s license renewal site – named “eLicensing”. Their eLicensing site steps you through the process of renewing your license. In the course of renewing your license, DRE’s eLicensing site prompts you for the certificate number and corresponding date of completion for each CE course you have completed. In a final step, the eLicensing site prompts you for the payment of your renewal fee. As an alternative to eLicensing you may renew through the mail. If you are renewing a restricted license, a corporate license, or an officer’s license you must renew by mail. We recommend all other licensees use eLicensing since it is the fastest and most reliable of the two methods (online v. mail). To renew by mail print DRE form
RE#251: Continuing Education Course Verification
Are your exams easy? Our exams are easy if you are familiar with basic real estate principals and terminology and have read and understood our course materials. If you are unfamiliar with four or more of these terms, you may have to study:
Consistent with DRE regulations, all exams consist of 90% multiple choice and 10% true/false questions. The multiple choice questions all have the minimum number of choices: three. Passing is 70%. If you randomly choose your answers your expected score will be 35%; that is, half of what you need to pass. All exams are "open book." In the online context this means that you can open the examination in one window (or tab) and the course's eBook (a PDF file) in another and switch (i.e., <Alt><Tab>) between them. However, since the courses are timed at one minute per question, you won't actually have much time to research the book for answers while taking exams. The better strategy is to note down the questions and associated topics which you feel you may have missed and, should you fail the exam, study the topic in the course textbook. We provide a paper which describes our recommended
test taking strategy (click
here to see it).
What have some of your students said about your courses? Our site provides a Comments Page permitting students to leave comments regarding our packages. Almost all of our comments are favorable. In particular, we are proud of the comments from these two students (used with their permission):
Is your 45Hour package really the least expensive available? About once a quarter we conduct a survey of our competitor's prices for their 45-hour packages. Our last survey was conducted in November 2011. That survey revealed that our base (undiscounted) price of $45 was the second lowest among all our competitors but that our discounted Demo price $38.25 ($45 * .85=$38.25) is the lowest price. The lowest price is $39.00 from CaliforniaRealEstateCourse.com (CREC). CREC's courses are actually provided by 360Training — a Texas provider. 360Training offers hundreds of different CE courses across many disciplines and for many states. Their California 45Hour package consists of 12 exams and scores of mandatory quizzes (we provide seven exams and our quizzes are optional). 360Training provides the following disclosure:
Moreover, their refund policy is very strict. Should you not wish to proceed, they retain a $25 "non-refundable registration fee." We have never denied a full refund and we do not ever charge our customers to retake exams. Given 360Training's indirect costs, we feel justified in claiming that our price of $45 is the lowest price available — a slightly higher price in nominal terms but effectively cheaper when you factor in the possibility of having to pay for a failed exam or $25 should you decide not to proceed with their package. When comparing our price with that of another provider, you should seek the answers to these three questions:
What is the Referral Discount? To encourage our customers to tell other licensees about our services, we offer a 25% Referral Discount. To take advantage of the Referral Discount, you must enter the license ID of a former customer when registering for one of our products. We define "customer" as someone who has purchased one of our products and has passed at least one course (not including the Demo or our Practice course). The Demo Discount may not be taken with the Referral Discount.
Procedural Questions
Should I take the quizzes? They're optional. But if you do take a
course's quiz and take care to understand our explanations then your chances of passing the course's final will be
considerably improved.
What happens when I fail an exam? Unlike our competitors, we permit you to retake any final exam until you pass without any additional "re-registration fees." However, should you fail the exams for any course twice in succession you must endure a "time penalty" as described in the following paragraphs. To "complete" a course; that is, to earn credit for the course, you must pass the course's final exam. There are two final exams for each course: a "first exam" and a "second exam." Each exam has different questions (a DRE requirement). If you should fail the first exam, you may immediately make a second attempt to complete the course by passing its second exam. BUT if you should fail the second exam, you must wait for the course's study period to pass before starting over with the course's first exam. During the study period, we can not permit you to take the exam for any other course. The study-period for our five three-hour courses is just three hours and the study period for our two 15-hour exams is two days (48 hours). Note: The method just described for "re-enrolling" a participant who fails both exams is our implementation of Commissioner's Regulation 3007.3(k) which says that a "... participant who fails the re-examination has failed the course and receives no credit from that course. Such a participant is not barred from re-enrolling and attempting completion of the same course, but must re-complete the credit hours and pass the final examination to receive credit for the course." Our implementation of this regulation has been approved by the Education Section of the DRE. Should you fail a course's original exam, we recommend you take the course's quiz (we provide an optional quiz for each exam). By studying the detailed answers provided in the quiz you will substantially improve your chances of passing the course's second exam. When you re-take any exam, we carry forward the answers you gave on your previous attempt. For example, if your last answer to question 15 on the first exam was 'B,' when you retake the exam 'B' will be initially checked for question number 15 (and, of course, all other questions). This carry-forward approach benefits the test taker since it allows him to concentrate on the questions he thinks most likely are wrong.
What must I do to renew my license after I have passed my courses?
First print your certificate using the
Second, decide if you wish to renew via eLicensing (DRE’s online renewal service) or by mail. We strongly recommend DRE’s online renewal service — it is immediate and final. Note: If you have a restricted license or if you hold a corporate or officer license, you must renew by mail. To renew using eLicensing, click the eLicensing icon at the bottom of this section (you may have to register first) and choose [Salesperson|Broker License Renewal]. eLicensing will prompt you to complete two online forms: 1) Continuing Education Course Verification, and 2) Renewal Application. Finally, eLicensing will prompt you to make an online payment via a secure connection (for the DRE’s current license renewal rates click here). Once eLicensing accepts your payment your license is renewed. Note: If you have a salesperson license and you are employed by a broker then your broker must validate your renewal in a subsequent eLicensing transaction (eLicensing will provide you with instructions). Your broker’s validation is not required for your new license to be effective. If you are renewing by mail, you will need to print and complete form RE#251: Continuing Education Course Verification (see below note) and, if you are a salesperson RE#209: Salesperson Renewal Application or, if you are a broker, form RE#208: Broker Renewal Application. You then need to make out a check for your renewal application (for renewal rates click here) and then send in your check and forms to the DRE (the forms have instructions printed on page two). Note: If you renew by mail, do not send your certificate to the DRE. The purpose of the certificate is to list the certificate numbers and corresponding dates of completion for you to copy onto form RE#251. Click this icon to open DRE’s renewal site in
another window:
Can I take my final exams the same day I purchase your package? Sorry, but no. The minimum waiting period is dictated by the DRE. The waiting period begins from the moment you pay. For our 15HOURS package, the minimum waiting period is two days (48 hours). After the two-day waiting period you may take all your exams. You may take them at one sitting or you may take them over one year (we guarantee our courses will be accepted by the DRE providing you pass them within one year of your purchase date). For our 45HOURS package, the minimum waiting period is four days (96 hours). After the four-day waiting period you may complete no more than 15 hours of CE in any 24-hour period. This means that after the fourth day you may complete 15-hours of CE, on the next day another 15-hours of CE, and on the day following your final 15-hours of CE. You may also take as long as one year to complete your CE. Effectively, then, because of DRE restrictions, the soonest you may complete all 45-hours of your CE is about six days and two hours (six days of waiting plus two hours spent taking the tests). The penalty for renewing late is 150% the cost of DRE’s on-time renewal rate (current renewal rates) and the DRE prohibits you from conducting activities for which a real estate license is required while your license is expired. If you can not complete your CE on time to avoid a
late fee, please do not call us to ask us if we can make for you an
exception. We won’t. If our refusal to grant you an
exception means that you wish to a) use another service, or b)
change your mind about renewing your license then we will have no
objection in giving you a full refund.
Is it safe to use my credit card? Absolutely. We provide four types of security: First, the details you enter on our Payment Page (see figure at the bottom of this section) are sent by your browser to our server via a secure connection (using https protocol). This means your credit card number can not be intercepted by a hacker en route to our server. Second, your browser automatically verifies our site’s identity using an SSL certificate from Geotrust (aka, Equifax Secure Inc.) – this means you can be confident you’re sending your credit card number to us and not to a site pretending to be us. Third, our server transmits your payment details to Authorize.net, the Internet’s largest payment gateway, without recording your credit card number in our database. This means that should anyone ever hack our site and steal our database they would not find your credit card number. We never know your credit card number. If we need to give you a refund, we do so by reference to a unique number assigned to your transaction by Authorize.net.
If, in spite of our security, you still don’t feel comfortable using your credit card, we’ll be happy to accept a check or PayPal payment. To pay by check or PayPal, register first but when prompted for payment, push [Don’t Pay] instead of [Process Payment]. When you push [Don’t Pay], we give you instructions for mailing a check or for making a PayPal payment.
Do you accept checks? Yes. To pay by check Register without paying. To do this, register for the product you want but when prompted for a credit card push [Pay Later] — the page following will give you instructions where to send your check. When we receive your check, we will mark your online record
as “paid” and send you a confirming email (which you will have
entered when you register). Your waiting
period (the time you must wait before you can take your first
exam) starts when we mark your registration record as paid.
Since this method of payment is error prone due to glitches in
mail delivery, please contact us
by email (45HoursOnline@pobox.com)
if you don’t receive payment confirmation within three business
days.
Do you accept PayPal?
Note: If you don't know what
PayPal is, ignore this answer.
Yes. To pay by PayPal:
PayPal will automatically send us a notice of your payment.
When we receive it, we will mark your registration record as “paid”
and send you a confirming email. If you do not receive
confirmation within one business day, you should contact us at
45HoursOnline@pobox.com.
Can I get a refund if I change my mind? We always will give a full refund provided you haven't passed any exams (other than the practice exam and the Demo). We will also give a full refund even if you passed some or all of your exams if your license has permanently expired (in other words, if you don't renew your license within the two-year grace period following your license expiration date). Otherwise, we will give you a partial refund using a refund in the amount calculated using this formula: PERCENT-OF-UNPASSED-HOURS x .5 x COST. For example, if you passed only our three hour Ethics course in our 45HOURS package for which you paid $45, we will refund you 42/45 x .5 x $45=$21. To obtain a refund, please e-mail (45HoursOnline@pobox.com) or call us at (818) 716-1028. Be sure to give us your DRE#. We will need your DRE# to find your Authorize.NET approval code in our records (Authorize.NET is the payment gateway we use for processing your credit card payment). Please understand that we don’t store your credit card number and we don’t need it to give you a refund. If you do request a refund, we would welcome knowing the reason but if you choose not to tell us we will provide your refund with no questions asked. We will also grant full refunds to students who, because of time restrictions, can not possibly renew their licenses on time or to licensees who are renewing late (within the two-year grace period) and because of time restrictions can not renew their license in time to avoid the permanent expiration of their license. If, because of DRE’s time restrictions, you can not possibly
complete your CE in time to avoid a late fee, please do not call to
ask us to make for you an exception. We won’t. We will
however, give you a full refund at your request.
How do I take an exam with an “open PDF book”? To open a textbook while taking a test, do the
following: 1) Login, 2) Click the PDF icon corresponding
to the course for which you are taking the exam
– this opens
the textbook in a new window/tab, 3) switch back to the
originating window (using <Alt><Tab> or by clicking its tab), 4)
Click [Take Test]. See the below figure for
details.
Why won’t you let me see which answers I got wrong? Again, this is a DRE requirement. It is based on Commissioner’s Regulation 3007.3(a)(1) which reads:
The DRE maintains that if an education sponsor were to tell a student which answers he got wrong, this would be tantamount to giving him the answer key. Some have complained that the DRE's prohibition
against giving the student the answers once he has passed the final
defeats its purpose as a learning exercise. But the final was
never meant to be an educational exercise -- only a tool to assess
the student's understanding of the course material. The
quizzes we provide and which accompany each final exam are designed
as an education opportunity. For each quiz question we not
only provide the answer but we also explain our answers in detail.
How can I challenge the correctness of one of your exam’s answers? We welcome your challenges to any of our answers. To do so, just email us with a list of up to five questions and we will respond with our detailed justification with supporting citations from the course material. Please reference the exam and question number for each answer you wish explained. To view your answers after you have passed an exam,
click the green check mark (
Are your exam questions tricky? About once a month we get a complaint alleging our
questions are unfair. The usual claim is that the answers to
our questions can not be determined from the content in our
textbooks. This is untrue. Every question has been
rigorously researched and justified with either direct citations
from the exam’s textbook or with reasoning based upon principles
and concepts explained in the exam’s textbook. (If you want
to have an explanation for up to five answers, please email us with
the exam name and the question numbers for the answers you wished explained.
You may see your answers after passing an exam by clicking the green
check mark ( Most of our questions are based on straight-forward statements from the exam’s textbook. For example, consider two variations of a question based on a sentence from our Consumer Protection Reader: “Auto noise comes from tires.”:
The answer to Variation #1 is easily found by searching the textbook for ‘auto noise’ but the answer for Variation #2, although based on the same sentence, can not be easily found via a word search of the textbook. In the case of Variation #2, it would be wrong for the student to conclude that it was not based on information contained in the exam’s textbook because a search for the words ‘engines’, ‘traffic’, or ‘cumulative’ yielded no results. A minority of questions require the student to understand and apply one or more general concepts to answer a question correctly. Consider the following:
To answer this question, the student needs to understand one of two legal concepts underlying the Fair Housing Act. First, discrimination is only illegal when based on one of the thirteen “protected classes” (the book makes this point repeatedly). Since “Choice-of-Apparel” is not one of these classes, Mrs. Cohen’s discrimination is not illegal. Second, the student should know that the Fair Housing Act has exemptions. Cited in §2.3.3.3 is this exemption: “Owners of multi-family buildings of four-or-less units are also exempted [from the Fair Housing Act].”) Consequently, Mrs. Cohen’s discrimination against Mr. Maktoum is legal for two independent reasons. Some students may regard this as an unfair question
because the textbook does not state that discrimination based on
Choice-of-Apparel is legal or because a search for the term
“burqa”
yields no results. Some may regard the question as tricky
because they assume Mrs. Cohen may be discriminating against
Mr. Hakim because he is a Muslim, or because he is a polygamist, or
Mrs. Cohen might find it intolerable to have as her neighbors people
she assumes are “enemies of Israel”. But the question is
fair because it is important for realty agents to be able to
distinguish between legal and illegal forms of discrimination.
How can I pass your 45HOURS package in a little over six days? The soonest a participant may complete all 45-hours while adhering to DRE’s Study Time and Completion Rate restrictions is about six days and two hours.
Given these two DRE-imposed limitations, consider the following example where Sally completes her 45-hours in only six days and three hours:
In this example, the elapsed time from when she registered to the time she completed all 45 hours was
six days and three hours. This schedule meets the DRE’s
Study Time requirement because the total amount of time she had
available to study during this period was six days. This
schedule also meets DRE’s Completion Rate requirement since
Sally was restricted to the completion of 15 CE hours in any
24-hour period.
What are DRE's new examination rules effective April 1st, 2011? New Examination Rules: Beginning April 1st, 2011 we are implementing new examination rules mandated by the DRE for all providers of continuing education. Students registering for our packages after April 1st will be subject to the new rules. Students who have registered before April 1st will not be subject to the new rules even for examinations taken after April 1st. Old Rules (pre-April 1, 2011): Exams could consist of only True/False questions. If the student failed an exam, he could retake the exam until he passed without any delay between retakes. New Rules: Ninety percent of an exam’s questions must have multiple choice answers. If a student fails his original exam (the "original exam), he may immediately attempt to pass the course again by taking a second exam (the "retake" exam) which must must consist of different questions. Should he fail the retake exam, he must wait for the course’s study period (see below) to pass before attempting to pass any more exams. After the study period expires, he may start over with the original exam. Study Periods: The study period for each of our three-hour courses is three hours but the study period for each of our 15-hour exams is two days. (Note: The exam for our 30-hour Consumer Protection Reader is administered in two parts each of which provides 15 hours of CE; however, both parts must be passed to get full credit for the course.) Example: Mary passes the exams for the first four of our three-hour courses on her first try. But when she takes the primary exam for our Risk Management course she fails. She immediately makes a second attempt to pass Risk Management by taking the course's secondary exam (an exam with different questions) but she fails it too. After failing the course's secondary exam our system prevents her from taking any exam until that course's three hour study period expires. When it expires, Mary makes a second attempt to pass the the course's primary exam but fails again. She immediately makes a second attempt to pass the course's secondary exam and this time succeeds. What stays the same: The time limit for an exam is one minute per question. If the student fails to pass in the allotted time (15 minutes for our each of our five, three-hour courses; 35 minutes for each of our two, 15-hour exams) all answers are lost. Passing is 70%. Exams are open book. Recommendations:
Why do you provide quizzes? New CE regulations effective April 1st 2011 require us to provide quizzes for each course (see DRE Reg. 3006.3(p)). We recommend you take the quizzes. Each quiz has as many questions as its corresponding final. As the quizzes are more difficult than the finals, if you pass any quiz with a score of 70% or better you may feel confident you will pass its corresponding final. But the most important part of the quiz is not your score but your understanding of our explanations for its answers. For each question we provide an answer with a detailed justification based on citations from the book. The quizzes are structured as a learning experience while the final (for which the DRE forbids us to give you the answers — see DRE Reg. 3007.3(a)) is only measure of your understanding of the course's content. Click
here
for a sample quiz.
Do you have a final final? We get this question a lot. No, we do not have
a single comprehensive final examination that tests your
understanding of the content for all courses comprising the package
you purchased. We have one
final exam for each course except for our 30-hour Consumer
Protection Reader for which we have two exams because the DRE
limits the number of course hours which may be passed in a single
24-hour period to 15 (see
DRE Reg.
3007.3(c)).
License Renewal/Continuing Education
What are my CE requirements? All California real estate licensees require 45-hours of DRE-approved continuing education to renew their licenses. There are only two minor exceptions:
The following DRE documents provide further details:
How does the daily 15-hour restriction work? Note: This section only applies to licensees requiring 45-hours of continuing education (CE). The DRE requires CE providers to limit the number of hours their students may complete to a maximum of 15-hours in any 24-hour period. In this context, “complete” means pass the course’s final examination. It is for this reason that it is necessary to split the exam for our 30-hour consumer protection course, Consumer Protection Reader, into two equal parts. Part 1 is composed of questions based on the first half of the book (the first 120 pages) and Part 2 is composed of questions based on the second half (the last 120 pages). You must pass Part 1/2 of it’s examination in one 24-hour period and Part 2/2 in another 24-hour period before you earn credit for the full 30-hours of this consumer protection course. If, for example, you first pass your Ethics exam for three hours of CE credit, then you may not take either Part 1/1 or Part 2/2 of the exam for the Consumer Protection Reader until 24 hours have passed (because each part covers half of this 30-hour course) however you may take the examination for any other course of twelve or less hours (the 15-hour cap less the three hours of credit earned for passing Ethics). (Important: Although the exams for the Consumer Protection Reader are administered in two equal parts, you must pass both parts to earn full credit for this 30-hour course. We do not provide you with its “certificate number” unless you pass both parts.) With the advent of the daily 15-hour restriction (March 1st, 2008), the minimum number of days needed to pass 45Hours of education is a little over six:
My license has expired. Can I renew it? Probably. The DRE provides a two-year grace period beginning the day after your license expires. During the grace period you may not practice real estate (or, as the DRE puts it, “perform any activity for which a real license is required”). If you renew an expired license, the starting date for your new license will be the day after you renew. For example, suppose your license expires May 25th 2012 and you renew it on the last day of your grace period, May 25th 2014; then your new license will be valid from May 26th, 2014 to May 25th, 2018. If you renew late, the DRE charges a renewal fee
of 50% over the
prevailing rate.
What if DRE’s renewal site is down on my license expiration day? Several days a year DRE’s online renewal service goes down either for scheduled maintenance or because of an unanticipated technical problem. (We have seen it go down without notice on Saturday morning and not be restored to online service until Monday afternoon). If eLicensing happens to be down the day you wish to renew and if that day is your expiration day, the DRE will not grant you an extension. If eLicensing is down on your license
expiration day and you must renew on that day to avoid a late fee,
then you should renew by mail. As long as your renewal application is
postmarked by midnight of that day, the DRE will accept your renewal
application without insisting you pay a penalty for being late. If that day happens to be a Sunday or
postal holiday, the DRE will accept your mailed application as
"on-time" providing it is postmarked by midnight the next day postal
service resumes.
When may I take CE and when may I renew my license? You may complete your CE (i.e., pass your exams) at anytime during the term of your license or during the two-year grace period following the expiration date of your license. The two-year grace period begins the day after your license expires. If you renew on time, the four year term for your
new license will begin the day after your current license expires
but if you renew late it will begin the day after you renew.
What if I already have some CE hours? If you already have CE hours earned during your current license period, then you may not need to take every course in our package. If you have CE hours from another sponsor, then that sponsor should have issued you a certificate. His certificate should list for each course you completed its DRE-approval code, the date you completed the course, and the course’s “designation” (explained below). The completion date for each course must be within your current license period for it to be applicable towards your 45-hour CE requirement. The sponsor’s approval code will be in the format aaaa-bbbb where aaaa is the sponsor’s unique four-digit number (assigned by the DRE — ours is ‘4295’) and bbbb is the course’s four-digit approval code. If you can’t find the certificate for a CE course you should call the sponsor to request a copy of your certificate. All sponsors are required to keep records with sufficient details to reproduce a certificate of completion for any course completed by one of their students during the preceding five years (DRE Reg. 3012.2). If you know the name of the sponsor but not the name of the course, you may be able to find the sponsor’s phone number or the name of the course using DRE’s online list of sponsors. Note: DRE’s online list of sponsors shows the courses which are currently approved by the DRE. Courses are approved for two year periods. This means that you could complete a CE course today with a license term which expires at midnight today. If you checked the list today for the course you would see it listed but if you checked it tomorrow it would not appear. The CE credits earned, however, would still be valid since you completed the CE during the two-year term during which the sponsor’s license for that course was valid. Every CE course must be approved for one of the following eight “designations”:
Designations 1-5: Ethics, Agency, Trust Fund Handling, Fair Housing, Risk Management Both our 15HOURS and 45HOURS packages include one three-hour course approved for each of these five designations. We name our courses after their designations; for example, the name for the course which the DRE approved under the Ethics designation is Ethics, 2nd Edition. Sponsors are free to call their courses by any name they choose; for example we could have named this same course What Would Jesus Do?. If you have taken a course of at least three hours from another sponsor approved for one of these five designations, then you need not take the corresponding course included in our package. That is, you may purchase our package and ignore that particular course. For example, if you have a certificate from another sponsor for a course named Avoiding Lawsuits from your Clients which the DRE approved under the designation “Risk Management” for five hours of CE credit, then you need not take our three-hour risk management course, Risk Management, 2nd Edition. Designations 6-7: Consumer Protection and Consumer Services. Note for Salesperson Licensees (brokers should ignore this note): If you are renewing a salesperson license for the first time and if your original license was issued prior to 10/01/2007, then any CE you may have completed under these two designations (Consumer Protection/Consumer Services) during your first four year license (all licenses are issued for a term of four years) does not count toward your 15-hour CE requirement and may not be applied to your CE requirement for your second renewal. In other words, CE taken during the term of your first license under these two designations has no CE value. If you are taking our 45Hour package and have 30 or more hours of CE credit under the designation Consumer Services (up to a limit of 18 hours) or Consumer Protection (no limit), then you shouldn’t purchase our 45HOURS Package. If you have not fulfilled your CE requirement for the first five designations but have sufficient CE credits from other sponsors for Consumer Protection and/or Consumer Services, then you should purchase our 15HOURS Package even though it is advertised for first-time renewing salespersons. Designation 8: Survey If you took a six-hour course under the Survey designation from another sponsor and if you are a first time renewing salesperson with an original license issued prior to 10/01/2007, then you need only a three-hour risk management course (we sell a standalone version of our risk management course). Otherwise, our 45HOURS package is probably not a good fit for you since it provides 30-hours of Consumer Protection and you will need 33-hours of consumer protection (45hours less 6 (Survey) less 3 (risk management) = 33hours) and/or consumer services (limited to 18 hours). STILL CONFUSED? Call (818/716-1028) or
email us. We will want to know your DRE# and the hours and
designations of the courses you took from other sponsors.
Why the minimum pass rate of 70%? The minimum pass rate of 70% is set by DRE Reg. §3007.3(o); it reads:
This regulation was put into effect on March 1st,
2008. Prior to that date the minimum pass rate was 60 percent.
Why the waiting period of two days for your 15HOURS package? The DRE requires sponsors to enforce a Study-Time restriction: the time needed to read the course materials before the student takes his final exams. The formula used by the DRE for calculating Study-Time is the number of CE hours divided by eight rounded up to an integral number of days. Thus the Study-Time period for our 15HOURS package is two days (15/8=1.875 rounded up to 2). The DRE derives its authority for this requirement from two sentences in the Commissioner’s Regulations:
In enforcing these regulations, the DRE makes the
assumption that students read at a rate of ten pages per hour for no
more than eight hours per day. Therefore, the DRE requires the
course materials for a 15-hour package contain at least 150 pages
and the corresponding Study-Time be at least two days.
Why the waiting period of four days for your 45HOURS package? The DRE requires sponsors to place two restrictions on how quickly students may complete their continuing education. 1) A Study-Time restriction, and 2) a Completion-Rate restriction. Study-Time is the time needed for students to read the course materials before taking the course’s final exam. The formula used by the DRE for calculating Study-Time is the number of CE hours divided by eight rounded up to an integral number of days. Thus the Study-Time period for our 45HOURS package is six days (45/8=5.625 rounded up to 6). The DRE derives its authority for this requirement from two sentences in the Commissioner’s Regulations:
In enforcing these regulations, the DRE makes the assumption that students read at a rate of ten pages per hour for no more than eight hours per day. Therefore, the DRE requires the course materials for a 45-hour package contain at least 450 pages and the corresponding Study-Time period must be at least six days. Completion-Rate is the rate at which students may complete their CE requirement. The DRE imposed a Completion-Rate restriction beginning March 1st, 2008. Prior to that date, students were permitted to take and pass all examinations at one sitting. Indeed, some sponsors conducted half-day seminars during which licensees could complete their entire 45-hour CE requirement. The DRE considered this practice an abuse and so enacted its Completion-Rate requirement. As written in the Commissioner’s Regulations it reads as follows:
Note: Internet offerings are considered by the DRE as “correspondence” courses. (The DRE has been slow to adapt its rules to courses offered online. Thus a minimum of two days must pass between the
time the student completes his 1st hour of CE to when he
may complete his 45th hour. This two days, when added to
the four-day Study-Time requirement adds to a total of six days –
thus satisfying the Study-Time requirement of six days.
What is the difference between a statutory course and a CE course? Statutory courses (aka, college-level courses) are courses which must be completed before an applicant may sit for an examination to obtain a real estate license. CE courses are real estate courses which have been approved by the DRE to satisfy the CE requirement for renewing your license. We do not provide statutory courses; only CE courses.
I have more than 45-hours of CE, can I apply the surplus to my next renewal? No, all CE hours must be earned during the
term of your current license or, if your full license is
expired, during the two-year grace period allowed by the DRE
following your license expiration. The CE hours for a
given course are considered earned when the student passes its exam.
Will the DRE grant me an extension? Note: By “extension”, we mean an extension to the term of one’s license period. The best answer is “no” but, in truth, we have heard of stories where the DRE has granted licensees extensions. For example, in the days immediately following the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, the DRE did grant numerous hardship extensions for licensees residing in the Northridge area. We have also heard of a few other recent situations where the DRE has granted an exemption but we do not know the details – for all we know these stories may be urban legends. The DRE has a policy for granting 90-day extensions (details). Their policy is to grant an extension for one of three reasons: 1) health, 2) active duty in the military, and 3) “other compelling cause beyond the control of the applicant while engaged in the real estate business.” Personally, I (Chuck Milbourne – the author of this site), have never spoken with anyone who has ever been successful in persuading the DRE to grant them an extension (if you were granted an exemption, please email me the details). The DRE reasons that since you have four years in which to earn your CE hours, any set-back you may have had in the last few weeks prior to your expiration date is probably not a good excuse for granting you an extension. We suspect, also, that the DRE’s willingness to grant exemptions is at an all time low because the DRE, as is the rest of the State, is suffering revenue shortfalls and extensions mean less revenue for the DRE (rates for licenses renewed during the grace period are 50% higher than for on time renewals).
In short: Don’t count on the
DRE’s leniency in granting you an extension.
Can I be exempted from my continuing education. There is one permissible exemption. If you are over seventy years of age providing 1) you have been a licensee for thirty or more continuous years, 2) you have never renewed late, and 3) you have never had a restricted license (details).
Note: As of this
writing (July 1, 2011), a change in the definition of "good
standing" is pending and could be approved at any time.
The proposal is that "good standing" should include licensees
who, in the preceding 30 years, had renewed late but had never
allowed their license to permanently expire (i.e., they had
renewed their license during the two-year grace period which the
DRE provides following license expiration (details).
Will you grant me an exclusion from DRE’s waiting periods? No! Our compact with the DRE requires us to enforce the waiting periods. The DRE may suspend or rescind any sponsor’s license should they break their rules. We will not acquiesce to any customer request to waive any portion of the DRE-mandated study period (two days for our 15HOURS package and four days for our 45HOURS package) or, for licensees taking our 45HOURS package, waive the Completion-Rate Restriction; that is the restriction which limits the rate at which students may complete their CE to no more than 15 hours of CE in any 24-hour period. Sorry. L
But we are willing to grant any student
who, faced with having to pay a 50% penalty for late renewal, wishes
a refund.
And we will also grant a full refund to any customer whose license
will irrevocably expire because he can not complete his CE
requirement before his license expires for good.
What are the CE requirements for a corporate license?
If you have a corporate license, the
corporation must have a “designated officer.” The
corporation’s designated officer must be a broker with an active
license when the corporation is originally licensed but it is not
necessary that the corporation’s designated officer be licensed to
renew a corporate license. If you are your corporation’s
designated officer and you have an active broker’s license, then you
must take CE to renew your license and the CE you take may be
applied by extension to the renewal of your corporation’s license.
If you are your corporation’s designated officer and you are not
licensed, then you must take CE as the corporation’s officer before
renewing your corporation’s license (details).
What is a script?
A script is a computer program which writes
web pages. The scripts written for this site control the
basic student management functions: registering students, logging
students into the site, displaying the status of the student’s
courses, and administering the final exams.
What are the special advantages to eBooks in Adobe Reader (PDF) format?
For
more information, read our paper
Using Adobe Reader.
How long do you keep your records? We keep your records indefinitely. You may
login in at any future time to see your records; however,
once you pass a test, you may not take it again.
How can I send my evaluation of your courses to the DRE? You can send your evaluation of our courses to the
DRE by clicking
here. |
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Who are you? Why are you here?
. 
This
course was TREMENDOUS. I recommend it highly. The
materials were clear. I could study where and when I
wanted. And not only did I qualify to renew my license,
but, more importantly, I learned things that will keep me our of
trouble and keep smiles on my client’s faces. Four stars,
two thumbs up, this is the course to take.
Hi,
I just recently completed your course. I have been an
agent for 21 years and taken many courses over the years.
I have found that the content in the majority of courses,
especially for continuing education and licensing requirements,
has very little relevance to practicing real estate day to day.
It basically feels like a waste of time. Your course, in
particular the Consumer Protection Reader portion, is profoundly
relevant and helpful for practicing day to day! It is
truly the best content and style I have ever seen for helping
agents have an overview of what they need to know to be a
helpful and efficient to our clients. I think it should be
mandatory reading for any agent, especially as a new agent
license requirement. If you haven’t made this into a book
that can be purchased, I think you should. With your
permission, I would like to print the entire CPR and keep it for
reference. Your whole site/ program is set up very well.
I am so glad I found it. Congratulations, job well done!!
Feel free to post this feedback on your site. I will be
referring your site to other agents in my office. Thank
you! 
Note:
While you may complete your continuing education at any time during
the term of your license, you may not renew your license
with the DRE any earlier than three months prior
to your expiration date.
button
from our
Course Selection Page (the page following our Login Page).
The certificate contains the details needed for renewing your
license (see figure to right). 
Fourth,
you may verify our status as a registered merchant with
Authorize.net by
clicking their seal (we display it on our Payment Page
– see sample to left). When
clicked, your browser sends our server’s
domain name to Authorize.net. Authorize.net sends back a
report which your browser displays in a popup window (see sample to
right). The report states that the server’s
domain is ours (not a domain pretending to be us) and that our
domain is registered as a merchant with Authorize.net.
)
on the Course Work page. 
Mrs.
Rachel Cohen lives in her duplex. She refuses to rent her other
unit to Mr. Abdul-Hakim Maktoum because one of the three women
he lives with always wears a burqa when in public. Susie is in violation of the
Fair Housing Act. True or False?
All of our textbooks
and are formatted as PDF files
for viewing with the free Adobe Reader (click