How to Check a California Real Estate Agent's License Before You Sign

You can check a real estate agent's license in California yourself, for free, in about five minutes, before you sign anything. The state's Department of Real Estate (DRE) says so directly: in April 2026 it told consumers to "always verify the license of a salesperson or broker" before choosing one.

The check is simple. The useful part is knowing what the record is telling you, and what it cannot. Here is the check, step by step, and what we found when we followed the license numbers on 43 Sacramento-area brokerage websites on November 3, 2026.

Step 1: get the license number

Every California agent has an eight digit license number, and the law says you should not have to hunt for it. Business and Professions Code section 10140.6 requires a licensee to show "their name, license identification number" and their "responsible broker's identity" on first contact materials and "on real property purchase agreements." The state's regulation lists websites, business cards, flyers and online ads among those materials (10 CCR 2773).

So look in four places: the agent's business card, their page on the brokerage website, any ad or listing flyer, and the agreement you are about to sign. It usually reads "DRE #" or "CalDRE #" followed by eight digits that start with a zero.

If you only have a name, that works too. You will just have more results to sort through.

Step 2: look it up on the DRE site

Open the DRE's Public License Lookup. It is free and needs no account.

• By number: type the eight digits in the License ID box and press Find. This is the fastest and the least ambiguous.
• By name: type it last name first, then a comma, then part of the first name, such as "Smith, J". The DRE's help page says you need at least three letters. Add the city to narrow a common name, but the DRE notes the city it searches is the mailing address, which may not be the office.

If you type a number that does not exist, the page says "No matching public record was found" and asks you to report any unlicensed person who has approached you. We tested that with a made-up number.

Step 3: read the record

A record opens with a few lines that matter to a seller:

• License Type. Salesperson, broker or corporation. A salesperson must work under a broker.
• Expiration Date. Licenses run four years. An expired license is not a working license.
• License Status. The word you most want to see is LICENSED.
• Comment. On every one of the 43 brokerage records we opened, this line read "NO DISCIPLINARY ACTION."

The status word is where a quick look can mislead you. These are the DRE's own definitions (status codes, form RE 292, revised June 2024):

Two of those are easy to misread. Licensed NBA still starts with the word Licensed, but the license is not in working order. For a salesperson, NBA means No Broker Affiliation: they cannot represent you until they are working under a broker again. For a broker or a brokerage, it means No Business Address: they cannot do licensed work until they give the DRE a current main office address. Restricted means the agent can work, under conditions the DRE set after disciplinary action. Neither is a reason to panic. Both are a reason to ask.

For a salesperson, the record also names the broker they work under; state law requires the DRE to publish it (B&P 10083.2). That name should match the brokerage on the agent's card and on your agreement. If it does not, ask why before you sign.

Step 4: know what the record leaves out

The lookup is a record of what the state has done, not a review site. Three limits are printed on the record page itself or in the law behind it:

• Old discipline can disappear. The law lets an agent petition to remove a disciplinary item that has been posted for at least ten years. The record page says discipline information may still be available on request, or by calling the DRE at 1-877-373-4542.
• It can lag. The page says it "will not reflect pending licensing changes."
• It cannot prove who you are talking to. A license number is public, which is the point, but it also means anyone can copy one.

Step 5: make sure the person is the licensee

That last limit is not theoretical. On April 27, 2026, the DRE warned that scammers are "using the names, license numbers, photos, and information of actual real estate agents" on fake social media accounts and listings.

The DRE's advice is to find the agent's phone number yourself, from a genuine directory or the brokerage's main line, not from the message that reached you. Call it, and confirm that the agent works at the office the DRE lists and really did contact you. Its warning signs are worth memorising: requests for money before any service is performed, payment in cash, and wire transfers.

If you are also getting a mortgage, the same April 2026 alert points you to a different register for loan officers, the Nationwide Multistate Licensing System (NMLS).

What we found on 43 brokerage websites

We took the same 43 Sacramento-area brokerage websites from our seller's website checklist and asked a narrower question: if a seller copies the number off the site and types it into the lookup, do they land on that brokerage?

• 21 show a license number on the homepage, and 25 show one on the homepage or one of two other pages we read. 18 show none we could see; two of those have a number only inside a closed pop-up or a collapsed team bio.
• 19 lead straight to the firm. The number on the site is the brokerage corporation's own, and the record that opens is that company.
• 6 lead to the broker who runs the firm instead. The number is the designated officer's personal license, which is on the firm's record but opens a different record from the company's. A seller still gets to a licensed broker; they just do not see the company's own record without a second search.
• No site sent a seller somewhere else entirely. On every site that showed a number, at least one of them was on the firm's own record.
• All 43 firm licenses were current. Every corporation record read LICENSED, with no disciplinary action noted, on the morning we checked.

A missing number on a website is not proof that anyone is unlicensed. It just means you will have to ask for it, and a two-second answer to that question is a good sign in itself.

For the agent pages behind those numbers, our real estate agent pages audit counted how many of these sites even name the person you would be calling.

How to check a real estate agent's license in five minutes

1. Find the eight digit number on the card, the website or the agreement.
2. Type it into the DRE Public License Lookup.
3. Read four lines: type, expiration, status and comment.
4. Ask about anything other than LICENSED, and about any broker name that does not match.
5. Call the agent on a number you found yourself, and never wire money on instructions from an email or a text.

How we did this, so you can check it

• The sample. The 43 Sacramento-area brokerage corporations with working websites from our two earlier audits (residential and commercial), the same sites as our seller's checklist. Each firm's license number comes from the DRE's own licensee file those audits were built from.
• The read. On November 3, 2026 we looked up each firm's corporation license on the DRE's public lookup, then loaded each homepage and two linked pages in Chrome with a normal desktop browser identity and read the visible text for license numbers. Each number was compared with the numbers on that firm's DRE record. One site was read by hand after a bot check, and one over a plain connection because its security certificate is not trusted.
• What we did not do. We looked up firms, not people, and no agent or firm is named. Numbers inside hidden page elements were not counted as visible. Forty-three firms, one region, one morning.