If you have ever tried to look up a New York real estate agent and come up empty, there is a reason, and it is not you.
The Department of State runs two separate license search systems, and the one most people find first does not include real estate agents at all. Its own page says so: to search for real estate brokers and salespersons, you have to go somewhere else.
That somewhere else is eAccessNY: the portal that handles essentially everything about a New York real estate license. Looking one up, logging into your own, renewing it, changing brokerages, updating your address. This guide covers all of it, plus the 22.5-hour continuing education requirement and what actually happens if you let a license lapse.
The Short Version
- Real estate license lookup runs through eAccessNY, not the general DOS licensee search — that one excludes real estate
- Public search: five ways available; by name, by name and license type, by license number, by city, or by county
- Renewal: $65 salesperson, $185 broker, every two years, and you can file three months early
- You need a sponsoring broker to renew. No sponsor, no renewal
- Continuing education: 22.5 hours per two-year term, of which 11.5 hours are mandated topics and the rest elective
- If your license expires you have two years to renew late; after that you retake the state exam and file a new application. There is no grace period allowing you to work in the meantime
- DOS publishes no inactive status for real estate licensees
First: There Are Two DOS License Searches, And One Excludes You
This is the single most common dead end in New York licensing, so start here.
The general DOS Licensee Search at appext20.dos.ny.gov/lcns_public/chk_load covers 23 license types — security guards, home inspectors, private investigators, real estate appraisers and more. It states plainly that to search for real estate brokers and salespersons you must go to eAccessNY. It also searches active licenses only.
The eAccessNY Public License Search at appext20.dos.ny.gov/nydos/selSearchType.do is the real estate one.
If you have been searching an agent's name and getting nothing, you were almost certainly in the first system. Real estate appraisers are in there; real estate salespersons and brokers are not.
What eAccessNY Actually Is
eAccessNY is the Department of State's Occupational Licensing Management System. One portal, two faces:
• A public side anyone can use to look up a license, with no account needed
• A licensee side where you log in to renew, change your association, update your address and view exam results
It is also where you schedule the state licensing exam and retrieve your results. One thing worth knowing before you go looking: notary public licensing has moved to a different system, NY Business Express. Real estate has not. If you hold both credentials, they live in different places.
How To Look Up a New York Real Estate License
No account, no fee. Go to the eAccessNY Public License Search and pick one of five search types:
1) Search By Name
2) Search By Name For a Specified License Type
3) Search By License Number
4) Search By City
5) Search By County
What the results show you: name, license number, license type, status of the current license, and expiration date. Click through on a name and you get more detail; the practice location, the business name, and related license information.
Looking up a brokerage rather than a person? It is there, but it is not on the top-level menu. Choose Search by Name, then Search by Organization, and enter at least the first four characters of the firm's name. If you are checking a common personal name, use "Search by Name for a Specified License Type" instead, to filter out unrelated licenses held by namesakes.
Reading The Record
The fields you get are deliberately thin. Name, number, type, status, expiration date, practice location. That is enough to answer the three questions that actually matter:
• Is this person licensed at all, and as a salesperson or a broker?
• Is the license current, or has it expired?
• Which brokerage are they associated with?
What you will not find in the license record is disciplinary history. That lives in a separate system — see below.
Logging Into Your Own Account
If you are already licensed, do not create a new account. DOS is emphatic about this: licensees should access their existing account rather than registering, because registering creates a second record that is not attached to your license.
If you cannot remember your user ID — which is your email address — or the answer to your secret question, contact the Division of Licensing Services at (518) 474-4429, or use the email address given on the DOS real estate FAQ page. You will need to provide your name, address and license UID as proof of identity. Where DOS issues a temporary password, expect it within about five minutes of being told it is on its way.
Once you are in, the Main Menu has a "List of Licenses" option that shows every license and license number attached to you.
Three quirks of the system worth knowing before they catch you out:
• Sessions end after 15 minutes of inactivity. Have your CE certificates and payment details in hand before you start a renewal.
• Three invalid login attempts blocks further attempts, and the fix is not a password reset. DOS's instruction is to close the browser entirely, open a new session, and try again.
• Add the DOS sender address to your safe-sender list, or the system's emails will land in spam. The address is given on the DOS renewal pages.
Renewing Your License
Your license runs two years, and you can renew as early as three months before it expires. DOS sends a reminder by email and a postcard at that three-month mark. Renewal costs $65 for a salesperson and $185 for a broker, and both licenses require the same 22.5 hours of continuing education.
You must have a sponsoring broker to renew. This trips up agents between firms — if you are unsponsored when your renewal comes due, you cannot file it.
Complete your continuing education first. DOS is explicit that CE must be finished before you submit the online renewal, not after.
Online or paper? DOS gives two answers, and it is worth knowing both. The FAQs say that under New York's Green Initiative all real estate licenses must be renewed online. The renewal pages, meanwhile, publish a downloadable paper form — DOS-0016-f, revised February 2026 — say the Division "encourages applicants to apply online," and then give instructions for paper submission: include your name, license number (UID), address and expiration date. So DOS plainly contemplates paper filings. The practical reading: online through eAccessNY is the designed path and the fast one, but paper is a live option on a current form.
The 22.5 Hours of Continuing Education
Every licensee (salesperson and broker alike) must complete 22.5 hours of approved continuing education within the two years immediately preceding renewal. The requirement is set by Real Property Law § 441(3)(a).
What most sources get wrong is the breakdown. Six topics are mandated by statute with specific hour minimums:
| Mandated Topic | Hours |
|---|---|
| Fair housing and/or discrimination in the sale or rental of real property | 3 |
| Ethical business practices | 2.5 |
| Cultural competency | 2 |
| Implicit bias awareness and understanding | 2 |
| Law of agency | 1 |
| Recent legal matters governing the practice of real estate in New York | 1 |
| Mandated subtotal | 11.5 |
| Total required | 22.5 |
The law of agency requirement is one hour per renewal cycle — except in a salesperson's initial two-year licensing term, when two hours of agency instruction are required. If you are renewing for the first time, you need two; every cycle after that, one. Sources that say salespersons always need two hours have misread the statute.
The statute sets each mandated topic as an "at least" minimum, so 11.5 is a floor rather than a fixed allocation. The balance up to 22.5 (eleven hours if you take exactly the minimum in each mandated subject) comes from elective approved courses, with no requirement to spread them across particular subjects. Take extra fair housing and your elective balance shrinks accordingly.
Who is Exempt?
Attorneys admitted to the New York State Bar are exempt from the continuing education requirement. DOS's own phrasing is that all licensees "with the exception of Attorneys admitted to the New York State Bar" must complete the 22.5 hours.
The old 15-year broker exemption is gone. A legislative amendment removed it, and brokers who were previously exempt have been required to complete continuing education since July 1st, 2021. If you are relying on advice that you are exempt because of long service, that advice is at least five years out of date.
One credit worth knowing about, with a catch. A salesperson who completes an approved broker qualifying course within their current term (passing its final exam) receives continuing education credit for it. But it does not cover everything: DOS states that if you use the broker course for continuing education, you must still complete 2.5 hours of ethical business practices and 1 hour of recent legal matters to satisfy the requirement. Budget those 3.5 hours separately.
No carryover. Continuing education must be completed within each license term. Hours banked in one cycle do not roll into the next.
What Happens If Your License Expires
This is where the stakes are highest and the internet is vaguest, so here is the exact position.
You have two years from your expiration date to renew. DOS, verbatim: "You have two years from the date your license expires to renew your license. If you fail to renew within that period, you will be required to pass the state written examination and submit a new salesperson/broker application and fee. No continuing education will be required to repeat the licensing process again." Real Property Law § 441 says the same thing.
But there is no grace period for working. DOS again, verbatim: "If you do not renew your license, you cannot conduct any real estate activities that require a New York State real estate license in accordance with Article 12-A of the Real Property Law. There are no grace periods that allow you to continue working while not licensed."
Read those two rules together, because they are easy to conflate. The two years is a late-renewal window, not permission to keep practising while you sort it out. Note how carefully DOS words the second one — the grace period that does not exist is a grace period for working. Between expiry and renewal you cannot transact, and commission earned in that gap is commission earned without a license.
To reapply after a lapse you will need the application fee, a copy of your expired license or pocket card or proof of completing the salesperson course, and proof of any additional education required.
Changing Brokerages
The sequence matters, and getting it backwards stalls the whole thing.
Step 1: Your outgoing broker terminates you. It is Department of State policy that the existing representative broker terminates a licensee within five days of their leaving the broker's employment. There is no fee for a termination.
Step 2: Your new broker files the change of association. It is the new employing broker who performs this transaction in eAccessNY, not you. The fee is $20.
The termination must come first. A new broker cannot file a change of association while you are still associated with the previous firm. If your change is stuck, this is almost always why — chase your former broker, not DOS.
Name, Address, and Other Updates
| Update | Fee | How |
|---|---|---|
| Change of personal name and/or address | $10 — no fee if the name change results from a change in marital status | Address in eAccessNY; name is paper only, via Change Notice DOS-1473-f (Rev. 04/19) |
| Duplicate license or photo ID card | $10 | eAccessNY |
| Change of association | $20 | Filed by your new broker in eAccessNY |
| Termination of association | No fee | Filed by your outgoing broker |
| Branch office application | $185 | — |
| Change of branch office | $10 | — |
| Change of branch address | $10, plus $10 per license associated with the office | — |
| Change of principal office address | $10, plus $10 per license associated with the office | — |
| Change of company name | $185 | Requires a new broker application, and cannot be submitted online |
Note that name and address are a single $10 fee, not two — DOS publishes it as "Change of Personal Name and/or Address." If you are moving and changing your name at once, it is one transaction.
Name changes cannot be done online. DOS directs you to download, complete and submit the Change Notice form to the address printed on it. Address changes can be done in the portal; click the address hyperlink for the one you want to change.
Two things that catch brokerages out. Changing a principal or branch office address costs $10 plus $10 for each license associated with that office, so for a firm of any size a move is not a $10 transaction. And changing your company name is not a change notice at all — DOS requires a new broker application, at $185, which cannot be filed online.
Payment is by check or money order payable to the Department of State, or by MasterCard or Visa using the authorization form. Cash is not accepted, and a returned check costs $20.
Is There An Inactive Status?
The Department of State publishes no inactive or voluntary-inactive option for real estate licensees. We looked across both licensee FAQs, both renewal pages, both licensing pages and the Division of Licensing Services pages. Nothing describes one.
What DOS does publish points the same way structurally: a sponsoring broker is required to renew, and a departing salesperson is terminated by the outgoing broker rather than parked in a held status.
To be precise about what that means: this is an absence of any published option, not a confirmed prohibition. If you are stepping away from the business and want to preserve the license, call the Division of Licensing Services at (518) 474-4429 and ask directly rather than relying on a third-party summary.
Verifying Someone Else's License
For one person, use the eAccessNY Public License Search. You get name, license number, license type, current status and expiration date, and on drill-down the practice location and business name. That is enough to confirm someone is licensed, current, and associated with the firm they claim.
For disciplinary history, you need a different system. The license record's published fields (name, number, type, status, expiration, practice location) do not include it.
Instead, the Department of State's Office of Administrative Hearings runs two searches from its administrative hearings page: one for administrative hearing and appeals decisions ("Search Decisions") and one for consent orders ("Search Consents"). These cover matters where the Department's Office of General Counsel proceeded against a licensee or an applicant. Sanctions available in a complaint proceeding include reprimand, fine, suspension or revocation.
To file a complaint, DOS uses a form called the Preliminary Statement of Complaint, available in several languages. It can be posted to the Division of Licensing Services Complaint Review Office at PO Box 22001, Albany NY 12201-2001, or emailed. Both the licensee and the complainant are kept informed as the matter proceeds. There is no public complaint-status lookup.
Checking Many Licenses At Once
For bulk work (a brokerage auditing its roster, a title company, a researcher) New York publishes licensee data on Open Data NY. The parent dataset is Active Real Estate Salespersons and Brokers, with filtered views for brokers, salespersons and offices. Fields include licensee name, license number, license type, expiration date, business name and address, and county.
Two caveats that matter more than the dataset does:
• It covers active licenses only. A licensee who has lapsed simply drops out of the file.
• It contains no status field. The columns are licensee name, license number, license type, expiration date, business name and address, and county; so you can see who is licensed, but not the status of anyone who isn't.
On currency it is better than you might expect: the dataset is published on a daily update cycle. For a single license, though, the eAccessNY search remains the authoritative check, because it is the system of record rather than an extract of it.
FAQs
How do I look up a New York real estate license?
Use the eAccessNY Public License Search at appext20.dos.ny.gov. You can search by name, by name and license type, by license number, by city or by county. No account is needed. Note that the general DOS licensee search does not include real estate salespersons and brokers — it explicitly directs you to eAccessNY.
Can I search for a brokerage by company name?
Yes, though it is not on the top-level menu. Choose Search by Name, then Search by Organization, and enter at least the first four characters of the firm’s name.
Why can't I find a real estate agent in the DOS licensee search?
Because that system covers 23 other license types and excludes real estate brokers and salespersons. Real estate lookups run through eAccessNY.
What is eAccessNY?
The New York Department of State’s Occupational Licensing Management System. It handles public license lookups, licensee accounts, exam scheduling and results, renewals, changes of association and address updates for real estate licensees.
How much does it cost to renew a New York real estate license?
$65 for a salesperson and $185 for a broker, every two years.
How early can I renew my New York real estate license?
Three months before your expiration date. DOS sends an email and a postcard reminder at that point.
How many continuing education hours does New York require?
22.5 hours per two-year term. Of those, 11.5 are mandated: 3 hours fair housing and discrimination, 2.5 hours ethical business practices, 2 hours cultural competency, 2 hours implicit bias, 1 hour law of agency, and 1 hour recent legal matters. The remaining 11 hours are electives.
How many hours of agency law do I need?
One hour per renewal cycle; except in a salesperson’s initial two-year licensing term, when two hours are required.
Who is exempt from New York real estate continuing education?
Attorneys admitted to the New York State Bar. The former 15-year broker exemption was repealed and has not applied since July 1st, 2021.
Does the broker qualifying course count as continuing education?
Yes, for a salesperson who completes it (including its final exam) within their current term. But it does not cover the whole requirement: DOS states you must still complete 2.5 hours of ethical business practices and 1 hour of recent legal matters. Continuing education also cannot be carried over between license terms.
What happens if my New York real estate license expires?
You have two years from the expiration date to renew. After that you must meet the current education requirements and pass the state written exam again. Critically, there is no grace period — you cannot conduct licensed real estate activity between expiry and renewal.
Do I need a sponsoring broker to renew?
Yes. You cannot renew a salesperson license without one.
How do I change brokerages in New York?
Your outgoing broker terminates the association in eAccessNY, which they are required to do within five days of your departure and which costs nothing. Your new broker then files the change of association, which costs $20. The termination must happen first.
Can I put my New York real estate license on inactive status?
The Department of State publishes no inactive-status option for real estate licensees. Call the Division of Licensing Services at (518) 474-4429 to discuss your situation.
Where can I see whether an agent has been disciplined?
Not in the license record, whose published fields cover only name, number, type, status, expiration and practice location. Use the Office of Administrative Hearings pages on dos.ny.gov, which offer separate searches for hearing decisions and for consent orders.
