How Many Real Estate Agents Are There in Texas?

Updated October 16, 2026 from Texas Real Estate Commission records.

As of October 16, 2026, Texas has 140,207 active real estate sales agents and 33,397 active individual brokers — 173,604 active individual licensees in total. Computed from TREC's own license records, recomputed daily.

An active license is not the same as a working agent

This is the number's most important limit, and it applies to every count on this page. An active license means a person may legally act for a broker's clients — not that they did so this year. Plenty of licensees transact rarely or not at all: they keep the license current for occasional deals, or alongside another job, or simply so it does not lapse. Nothing in TREC's license file records transaction activity, so no honest reading of it can tell you how many Texans are actively selling houses. If that is the question you came with, treat 140,207 as the ceiling rather than the answer.

The scale of that gap is visible in the renewal data: 89,325 licenses sit in TREC's "expired less than six months" grace category at any given moment, which is what a population with a long tail of low-engagement holders looks like.

Why every source gives a different number

Search this question and you will get several answers that disagree by tens of thousands. They are not all wrong. They are counting different populations, and almost nobody says which.

A REALTOR^® is not the same thing as a licensed agent. REALTOR is a membership of the National Association of REALTORS and its state and local boards; a license is issued by TREC. Many licensees are members and many are not, so the two counts are never interchangeable, and any page that treats them as synonyms is producing a number that answers neither question. Membership figures are also published on a slower cycle — a figure from a Texas REALTORS post drawn from a December 2018 profile still circulates widely today.

The largest single source of confusion is the last row of that table. TREC's file holds 326,203 license records in total, but most are not active people practising today — the file includes expired, inactive and revoked licenses and other license types. Quoting the file's row count as "real estate agents in Texas" overstates the working population by more than double.

Active sales agents by county

Every Texas county with at least one active sales agent, largest first. The final row matters as much as the rest: 45 active agents — 0.0% of the total — have no county recorded in TREC's data. Including that row is what lets the column reconcile to 140,207 exactly. A county table that quietly omits it looks precise and does not add up.

Computed from TREC license records, October 16, 2026. Counties with a page are linked — each shows who sponsors the agents there; the 40 largest side by side The last two rows are not counties: 1,752 active licensees give an out-of-state address, and 45 have no county recorded at all. Both are shown so the column reconciles to 140,207 rather than appearing to fall short. A pending count of 0 means TREC currently reports no applications in progress from that county.

How this is counted

An "active sales agent" here is a TREC record with license type Sales Agent and status Active — the people who can legally act for a broker's clients today. Brokers are counted separately because a broker license is a different license, and totalling them without saying so is one of the ways published figures drift apart. Expired, inactive and revoked licenses are excluded from the active counts and reported separately above.

Recomputed daily from data.texas.gov. If a figure here disagrees with TREC, TREC is right and we want to hear about it. Method and known limits are on our methodology page. This site sells nothing to agents or brokerages.

Every one of those agents works under a sponsoring broker, and TREC's records say which. How that is distributed — and who is taking on new agents — is on the sponsorship page.

Common questions

How many real estate agents are there in Texas?

As of October 16, 2026 there are 140,207 active real estate sales agents in Texas, plus 33,397 active individual brokers, for 173,604 active individual licensees in total. Computed from TREC license records and recomputed daily.

How many REALTORS are in Texas?

REALTOR membership and real estate licensure are different things and produce different counts. A REALTOR is a member of the National Association of REALTORS and its state and local boards; a licensed agent holds a license issued by the Texas Real Estate Commission. Membership totals are published by the associations, while TREC publishes license records.

What is the difference between a real estate agent and a REALTOR in Texas?

A real estate agent holds a sales agent license issued by TREC and may act for a sponsoring broker's clients. A REALTOR is additionally a member of the National Association of REALTORS. Every REALTOR in Texas is licensed, but not every licensed agent is a REALTOR.

How many real estate brokers are in Texas?

There are 33,397 active individual broker licenses in Texas as of October 16, 2026, a separate license type from the 140,207 active sales agents.