TREC Rules & Standards

TREC — the Texas Real Estate Commission — is the regulatory body behind every license holder's ability to practice in this state. Understanding what it actually does (and doesn't do) is foundational to nearly every other topic on the state portion.

TREC's core role

TREC's primary role is licensing and regulating real estate license holders — setting education requirements, promulgating standard contract forms, investigating complaints, and enforcing the Texas Real Estate License Act (TRELA). It is not a trade association or a service that represents license holders' interests; it's the state regulator.

Where the rules actually come from

TRELA itself is Texas Occupations Code Chapter 1101 — the underlying statute passed by the legislature, enacted by the legislature and recodified in 2001 as Occupations Code Chapter 1101; TREC administers it. But most of what governs day-to-day conduct — advertising rules, trust account handling, the specific Standards of Conduct — comes not from TRELA's text directly, but from TREC's own rulemaking authority under it, codified separately in Texas Administrative Code, Title 22, Chapters 531 through 543. When something is referred to specifically as a "TREC Rule" rather than "the Act," this is the source being pointed to.

The Real Estate Recovery Trust Account

Texas maintains a specific consumer-protection fund — the Real Estate Recovery Trust Account — that can compensate a member of the public who obtains a court judgment against a license holder for certain violations and is unable to actually collect on that judgment. It's a narrow, last-resort remedy, not a general insurance fund, and a claim against it generally requires having already pursued and been unable to collect a judgment through the normal court process first.

Staying active

A Texas license is issued for 24 months. A new sales agent must complete 90 additional qualifying hours (SAE, including the 30-hour real estate brokerage course) before the first renewal. After that, each renewal requires 18 hours of CE, including the four-hour Legal Update I and Legal Update II courses and three hours on real estate contracts. A license holder generally may not practice real estate while their license is inactive or expired — this isn't a minor paperwork issue; practicing on an inactive license is itself a violation.

Enforcement authority

Team names and advertising

Team and advertising rules are a frequent exam trap because they've changed over time — team names must generally comply with current TREC advertising rules, which govern how a team may hold itself out (including required license-holder identification), separate from whatever informal branding a team might use internally.