This is a frequent question that I get asked.  The short answer is that it costs around $500, but can cost much more depending on where you go to school.

  • Application fee that is paid to the state of Florida $62.75
  • State exam fee $57.75 each time you take it.  In other words, you can pay $57.75, or you can pay a lot more.  If you are taking the exam three or four or five times, this starts to add up.
  • The fingerprint fee is quite variable.  You shouldn’t pay more than about $80 for this.  If your school does the fingerprints and they are charging a lot more, that’s likely because the school is getting a kickback from the fingerprint company.  If it is worth it to you for convenience, that’s fine.
  • The largest variable in cost is the price of real estate school.  Schools range from less than $100 to more than $600.  Typically (but not always), online classes cost less than in-person classes.  Some schools have an all-inclusive price that includes a pre-licensing class, state exam review, and a bunch of other material.  Other schools charge a separate price for each class.  The all-inclusive real estate school package might actually be costing you more money.

For both in-person or online classes, there is very little correlation between the quality of the instruction and the cost of the class.  There are great schools at all price points and terrible schools at all price points.

Several years ago, before I owned a school, a cousin of mine asked me where she should go to real estate school.  I recommended School A.  She ended up going to School B.  She and several friends thought that School A might be inferior because it was the cheapest in town.  School B was the most expensive in town.

She ended up getting a teacher who was less than stellar.  My cousin, who had a decent knowledge of real estate just from growing up in our real estate family, called me on every break to ask me if certain things the teacher said were correct.  Most of them weren’t.  It was a bad situation for everyone.  My cousin and several of her classmates hired me for tutoring just to help them get through the class test.  It was the perfect demonstration that in the real estate school business there is no correlation between price and quality.