Comments on North Carolina Real Estate License Law and Commission Rules 1
INTRODUCTION
These comments on selected North Carolina Real Es-tate
License Law and Real Estate Commission Rules
provisions are intended to assist real estate licens­ees,
preli-censing
course students and ­others
in understanding the Li-cense
Law and Commission rules. ­The
comments are orga-nized
in a topic format that often differs from the sequence
in which the topics are addressed in the License Law and
Commission rules. The topics selected for comment here
are not only of particular impor­tance
in real estate broker-age
practice but also are likely to be tested on the real estate
license examination. The appropriate references to the Li-cense
Law and Commis­sion
rules are provided beside each
listed topic.
REQUIREMENT FOR A LICENSE
General [G.S. 93A‑1 and 93A‑2]
Any person or business entity who directly or indi-rectly
engages in the business of a real estate bro-ker
for compensation or the promise thereof while physical-ly
in the state of North Carolina must have a North Caro-lina
real estate broker license. In North Carolina, a real es-tate
licensee may only engage in brokerage as an “agent” for
a party to a transaction. Thus, a real estate licensee is com-monly
and appropriately referred to as a real estate “agent”
even though the latter term does not actually appear in the
License Law. Note that a real estate “licensee” is NOT au-tomatically
a “REALTOR®.” A licensed real estate agent is a
REALTOR® only if he/she belongs to the National Associa-tion
of REALTORS®, a private trade association. Thus, the
term REALTOR® should not be used to generally refer to all
real estate licensees.
License Categories [G.S. 93A-2]
There is only one “type” of license, a broker license;
however, there are several license status categories as de-scribed
below:
Provisional Broker – This is the “entry level” license sta-tus
category. A person who has met all the license qualifi-cation
requirements (including a 75-hour prelicensing course
and passing the Commission’s license examination) is initially
issued a broker license on “provisional” status and is re-ferred
to as a “provisional broker.” A provisional broker
generally may perform the same acts as a broker whose li-cense
is NOT on provisional status so long as he or she is su-pervised
by a broker who is a designated broker-in-charge.
A provisional broker may not operate independently in any
way. G.S. 93A-2(a2) defines a “provisional broker” as “...a
real estate broker who, pending acquisition and documentation
to the Commission of the education or experience prescribed by
either G.S. 93A-4(a1) or G. S. 93A-4.3, must be supervised by
a broker-in-charge when performing any act for which a real
estate license is required.”
This license status category is comparable to a “salesper-son”
license in most other states except that it is a tempo-rary
license status category. Provisional brokers may not
retain this status indefinitely – they must complete required
postlicensing education (one 30-hour course each year for
the three years following initial licensure – total of 90 hours)
to remove the “provisional” status of their licenses and to re-main
eligible for “active” license status.
Broker – A “provisional broker” who satisfies all postli-censing
education requirements to terminate the “provision-al”
status of such license becomes a “broker” without hav-ing
to take another license examination. A broker is NOT
required to be supervised by a broker-in-charge in order to
hold an “active” license. An applicant who is a licensed bro-ker
in another US jurisdiction may be licensed directly as
a North Carolina broker NOT on provisional status by
passing the “State” section of the North Carolina license ex-amination.
All others must first be licensed in North Caroli-na
as a provisional broker and then satisfy the postlicensing
education requirement to become a non-provisional broker.
Most frequently, brokers elect to work for another bro-ker
or brokerage firm. Brokers may also elect to operate in-dependently
as a sole proprietor; however, with limited ex-ceptions,
such broker will have to qualify for and designate
himself or herself as a broker-in-charge in order to operate
independently and perform most brokerage activities (dis-cussed
further below under “broker-in-charge” and also in
a subsequent section on brokers-in-charge that appears near
the end of this appendix).
Broker-In-Charge – G.S. 93A-2(a1) defines a “broker-in-
charge” as “...a real estate broker who has been designat-ed
as the broker having responsibility for the supervision of real
estate provisional brokers engaged in real estate brokerage at a
particular real estate office and for other administrative and
supervisory duties as the Commission shall prescribe by rule.”
Commission Rule A.0110 requires that each real estate of-fice
must have a broker who meets the qualification require-ments
to serve as “broker-in-charge” of the office and who
has designated himself or herself as the broker-in-charge of
that office. As is the case with “provisional broker,” broker-in-
charge” is not a separate license, but only a separate license
status category. A broker who is to serve as the broker-in-charge
(BIC) of an office (including working independent-ly)
must be designated as a BIC with the Commission.
LICENSE LAW AND RULE COMMENTS
Comments on Selected Provisions of the
North Carolina Real Estate License Law
and Real Estate Commission Rules