How many continuing education hours do Virginia real estate agents need?

It depends on where you are in your career. A new Virginia salesperson must complete 30 hours of post-license education within the first year, and doesn’t take regular continuing education before that first renewal. After that, active salespersons need 16 hours of continuing education every two-year license term, and active brokers need 24. For licenses expiring on or after June 30, 2026, 11 of those hours are required topics. Inactive licensees don’t need CE to renew, but they do need it to go active again.

Keeton & Co publishes this article, and we recruit agents. The rules below come from Virginia’s statute, the Real Estate Board’s regulations and DPOR, linked throughout.

What are the Virginia CE requirements by license type?

License	Requirement	Per	Source
New salesperson (first renewal)	30 hours of post-license education (PLE)	Within 1 year of licensure	18VAC135-20-95
Salesperson (after first renewal)	16 hours CE: 11 required + 5 elective	Each 2-year term	Va. Code § 54.1-2105.03
Broker	24 hours CE: 11 required + 8 broker management + 5 elective	Each 2-year term	§ 54.1-2105.03
Inactive salesperson or broker	None to renew	—	18VAC135-20-101(A)(4)

Licenses expire two years from the last day of the month they were issued (18VAC135-20-90), so your CE clock runs on your own license dates, not the calendar year.

What are the 11 required CE hours?

Per DPOR’s continuing education page, HB 383 and SB 330 raised the required hours from 8 to 11, adding legal updates, agency and contracts. DPOR says licensees whose licenses expire on or after June 30, 2026, must meet the new requirement.

Required topic	Hours
Ethics and standards of conduct	3
Fair housing	2
Real estate agency	2
Real estate contracts (including contract forms, escrow deposits and accounts)	2
Legal updates and emerging trends, including flood zones and the National Flood Insurance Program	2
Total required	11

The other five hours for salespersons are electives from the board’s approved list in 18VAC135-20-101(B), which includes topics like financing, title, appraisal, property management, land use and zoning, commercial real estate, common interest communities and cyber security and data protection.

Brokers take the same 11 hours plus 8 hours on supervising agents and managing a brokerage, two of which must cover the broker supervision requirements, plus 5 electives.

A few details that trip people up:

• The one-time agency course. § 54.1-2105.03 also requires every active licensee to have completed, at least once, a three-hour course on the residential standard agency changes that took effect July 1, 2011.
• Fair housing affidavit. If you certify by notarized affidavit that you don’t practice residential real estate, you take training in other discrimination laws instead of fair housing.
• Military deployment. Active licensees called to active duty or deployed can finish CE within six months of release (18VAC135-20-101).
• Multiple states. The regulation spells out how Virginia’s 16- or 24-hour requirement works if you hold active licenses in more than one jurisdiction.

What’s in the 30-hour post-license education?

DPOR’s post-license page and 18VAC135-20-95 list nine courses:

PLE course	Hours
Fair housing, ADA and civil rights	2
Real estate law and regulations	6
Ethics and standards of conduct	3
Current industry issues and trends	2
Agency law	3
Contract writing	6
Risk management	3
Escrow requirements	3
Real estate-related finance	2
Total	30

The deadline is one year from the last day of the month your license was issued, whether your license is active or inactive. If you miss it, the board places your license on inactive status until you finish.

My advice to new agents is to finish PLE early instead of leaving it to month eleven. Contract writing and escrow rules matter on your first deals, not after them.

What if your license has been inactive?

Under 18VAC135-20-70:

How long inactive	What you need to activate
More than 30 days	CE completed within the two years before activation
Not active with a firm for more than 3 years	You must meet the current prelicense education requirements again

You can’t do licensed work with the new firm until the board issues the license. The activation application fee is $90 under the fee schedule in 18VAC135-20-15. The same schedule sets renewal at $100 for salespersons and $120 for brokers. DPOR’s current application forms also note a technology fee of $7.25 per year under 2026’s House Bill 30, so check the current form before you pay.

Is the state minimum enough training?

No. Sixteen hours every two years keeps your license current. It doesn’t teach you to price a listing in a shifting market, write a clean offer at 9 p.m. or handle an inspection negotiation. That training comes from your brokerage, your mentor and your own reps.

When you compare brokerages, ask:

Question	Why it matters
Is there scheduled training every week, or only when you ask?	Consistency builds skill faster than one-off classes
Will someone review my first contracts before they go out?	PLE teaches contract writing; a reviewer catches your mistakes
Who answers when I’m stuck on a deal?	A managing broker or hotline you can actually reach
Is coaching included or extra?	Separate coaching programs can cost real money

How does Keeton & Co support agent development?

At Keeton & Co, our Licensed to Launch program for newly licensed agents includes a mentor on your first deals, a launch kit, weekly training and AI role-play practice. Every agent has broker and sales hotlines, a managing broker in each major market and about one staff member for every 4.5 agents, per our join page as of Nov. 9, 2026. Those programs don’t replace your state CE and PLE, which you complete through a board-approved provider.

On cost: our Individual Agent Commission Plan runs from 70/30 to 92/8 with a $20,000 annual cap, then 100% with a $200 transaction fee per deal. Transaction coordination is $387 per deal, with $0 E&O and $0 office fees. For a 20-deal agent with $200,000 in gross commission income, that’s $28,940 in total fees and $171,060 kept before the agent’s own business expenses and taxes, plus a President’s Club trip. Company appointments are available through a separate leads plan. Your numbers will differ, and we don’t promise any level of income or leads.

Related reading: how mentorship works for a new Virginia agent, what a new agent’s first year should look like and what it costs to be an agent in Virginia.

The bottom line

New salespersons: 30 hours of PLE in year one. Everyone after that: 16 hours (salespersons) or 24 hours (brokers) each two-year term, with 11 required hours for licenses expiring on or after June 30, 2026. Inactive licensees skip CE to renew but need it to reactivate.

If you’re weighing where to grow your career, book a confidential brokerage-fit conversation with our team, contact us or call (804) 556-1228.

Sources: Va. Code § 54.1-2105.03; 18VAC135-20-15, -70, -90, -95 and -101; DPOR Real Estate Board continuing education and post-license education pages; DPOR broker license application (form A490-0225BLIC, v16, 07/01/2026) for the technology fee note. All accessed Nov. 9, 2026. Keeton & Co plan details from keetonco.com/join, Nov. 9, 2026. By Daniel Keeton, Broker & Founder, Keeton & Co Real Estate. Updated Nov. 9, 2026.