Most realtors are good. But their training, their trade group, and your closing all have holes you should know about.

Georgia requires 75 hours of pre-license education before someone can sell you a $400,000 house. The same state requires 1,500 hours before someone can cut your hair.^[1]

That's not a gotcha. It's the right way to start a conversation about what your real estate agent is licensed to do, what they aren't, and why the National Association of Realtors — the trade group most agents belong to — has spent the last two and a half years in five-act free-fall.

Most agents are competent and ethical. The people in this industry are largely professionals trying to do right by their clients. The problem isn't them; it's the structure. And the structure has gotten unusually visible in the last 24 months.

What an agent is licensed to do

Every state's pre-license curriculum covers roughly the same ground: agency relationships, fair housing, license law, the use of pre-printed contract forms, and basic real estate finance and valuation. Hours vary widely. Florida sits at the bottom of the major-state range at 63 hours.^[2] New York requires 77. Pennsylvania, 75. California, 135. Texas tops the list at 180 hours, split across six 30-hour qualifying courses.^[3] Georgia, where we started, lands at 75.

What's missing from every state's curriculum, in any meaningful depth: substantive contract law beyond fill-in-the-blanks; title curative work; tax consequences of property sales; estate, divorce, or trust-related transfer issues. These are not minor edge cases. They show up in roughly one in every four transactions.

For comparison: a cosmetologist's curriculum averages 372 hours nationwide; most states require 1,500.^[4] A financial advisor sitting for the Series 7 spends about 100 study hours, on top of a Series 6 prerequisite, FINRA registration, supervised employment by a broker-dealer, and ongoing FINRA examination. An attorney spends seven years.

Those numbers aren't a moral judgment — they're a calibration. A 60-to-180-hour curriculum is appropriate for an agent who guides you through a transaction, helps you write competitive offers, and runs the marketing. It's not appropriate for a contract draftsperson, a tax advisor, or a title curative specialist — and your agent is not licensed to be any of those things.

What an agent is not licensed to do

The line is "unauthorized practice of law," and every state defines it.

NAR's own legal page summarizes the rule: "Most states prohibit non-lawyers from drafting contracts. However, it is generally acceptable for real estate professionals representing consumers to insert factual information, like party identities, property identifiers and amounts, into blank attorney-approved form agreements."^[5]

What crosses the line, per the same page: "Providing clients legal advice or offering an opinion on the legal effect of a contract"; "Drafting legal documents that confer legal rights or obligations on a party"; "Making modifications beyond factual information or offering legal interpretations."

Several states go further. North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia require an attorney to conduct a real estate closing, period. The North Carolina State Bar's RPC 210 holds that "the performance of most acts and services required for a closing constitutes the practice of law and must be performed only by an attorney licensed to practice law in North Carolina."^[6]

In states without a closing-attorney requirement (Florida, most of the Sun Belt, much of the Midwest), the line is more porous. Your agent will hand you a contract, walk you through it, and answer your questions. Some of those questions cross into territory your agent is not legally authorized to advise on. Most agents know this and refer; some don't. Knowing where the line is — so you can ask "is this a question for a lawyer?" — is on you.

Their own paperwork tells you this. Believe it.

The most underutilized piece of real estate paperwork in the country is the one that explicitly says your agent is not an expert.

NAR's Code of Ethics, Article 11, requires that "REALTORS® shall not undertake to provide specialized professional services concerning a type of property or service that is outside their field of competence" unless they bring in someone who is.^[7] This is the umbrella national rule, and it isn't buried — it's right there in the document every Realtor pledges to follow.

State associations have spelled it out further, in forms agents are supposed to give you at the start of a transaction. The California Association of Realtors' Statewide Buyer and Seller Advisory is the cleanest example. It tells the consumer, in plain language, that real estate brokers and salespersons "do not have expertise" in matters such as soils conditions, geology, environmental issues, legal issues, tax matters, insurance, property valuation, condition of title, and various other complex matters — and recommends consulting appropriate professionals.^[8] Texas's Information About Brokerage Services form, Florida's FR/Bar contract, and the standard listing and purchase agreements in most other states all carry similar language.

The disclaimer is not a CYA flourish. It is the trade itself, in writing, telling you that the person sitting across the closing table from you is qualified to walk you through a sale — not to give you legal, tax, lending, structural, or environmental advice.

So: don't treat your real estate agent as a lending expert. Don't treat them as a legal expert. Don't treat them as an estate planner, a tax planner, a contractor, or an inspector. The industry's own paperwork tells you not to. Believe it.

When you have a question that crosses one of those lines, the right move is to stop, ask "is this a legal, tax, or lending question?", and call someone whose license actually covers that domain.

Most agents do fewer deals than you think

The Consumer Federation of America has been documenting the structural reality of the agent population for years. From its July 2023 report: "More than 1.5 million residential agents (including brokers) compete for home sales usually totaling 5 to 6 million annually."^[9] That's a market average of three to four sides per agent per year.

NAR's own 2025 Member Profile shows the median Realtor doing 10 sides — meaning roughly five deals — and 29% of NAR members working part-time as agents.^[10] CFA's regional case studies of agents in Jacksonville, Minneapolis, and Albuquerque found that agents with five or fewer yearly sales captured 25–30% of all commission income in those markets.^[9] In other words, a meaningful share of every commission paid in your market is going to an agent who sees fewer transactions in a year than a busy agent sees in a month.

This is a quality-control problem you can ask about. "How many transactions did you close last year? How many in this neighborhood?" is a clean question for a buyer or seller interview, and the answer is informative. An agent who's done four deals in your zip code in three years is not the same agent as one who's done forty.

NAR's five-act collapse

The trade association most agents belong to has been having a complicated couple of years.

August 26, 2023. The New York Times publishes an investigation into NAR's internal culture. Twenty-nine former employees describe a "culture of fear." Nineteen members allege on-the-job sexual harassment. Then-president Kenny Parcell is specifically named.^[11] Two days later, he resigns.

October 31, 2023. A Kansas City jury, after deliberating for two hours and twenty-eight minutes, returns a unanimous verdict against NAR and two large brokerages in Burnett v. NAR. Damages: $1.78 billion, eligible for trebling to $5.4 billion under the Sherman Act. It is the largest known antitrust jury verdict in U.S. history.^[12]

November 2, 2023. NAR CEO Bob Goldberg resigns, effective immediately.

January 8, 2024. The new NAR president, Tracy Kasper, abruptly resigns. NAR's statement says she received "a threat to disclose a past personal, non-financial matter unless she compromised her position at NAR." She reported the threat to law enforcement and stepped down.^[13]

March 15, 2024. NAR settles the commission cases for $418 million over four years. The settlement requires nationwide practice changes effective August 17, 2024: offers of buyer-broker compensation are removed from MLSs, and buyers must sign a written buyer-broker agreement specifying compensation before any showing.^[14]

November 24, 2024. Two days before the court holds the final approval hearing on the settlement, the U.S. Department of Justice files a Statement of Interest warning that the settlement's mandatory pre-tour buyer-broker agreement provision "bears a close resemblance to prior restrictions among competitors that courts have found to violate the antitrust laws."^[15] In other words: the settlement itself may be illegal.

January 13, 2025. The U.S. Supreme Court declines to take up NAR's appeal of an earlier D.C. Circuit ruling, clearing DOJ to reopen its 2018 antitrust investigation into the association.

July 2, 2025. Compass — the largest brokerage in the country — formally announces it "has not and will not" follow NAR's Clear Cooperation Policy, the rule that requires listings to be published on NAR-affiliated MLSs.

The membership numbers reflect the turbulence. NAR peaked at 1.6 million members in October 2022. By mid-2025, membership had dropped to about 1.45 million — roughly a 9% decline.^[16] Four major brokerages — RE/MAX, Anywhere, Keller Williams, and Redfin — agreed in their settlements to no longer require their agents to be NAR members.

What "Realtor" actually signals

A "Realtor" with a capital R is a real estate agent who pays NAR dues and pledges to follow NAR's Code of Ethics. That code requires ethics training of "not less than 2 hours, 30 minutes of instructional time" every three years.^[17] Roughly fifty minutes of mandatory ethics instruction per year.

Realtor membership doesn't signal additional state licensing, additional training, or any consumer-vetting beyond what your state requires of any agent. It signals dues-paid membership in a trade association that is structurally embattled and may, if DOJ has its way, look very different in 2027 than it does today.

A non-Realtor real estate agent has the same legal authority as a Realtor — they hold the same state license. They simply chose not to pay NAR dues.

What this means for you

The structural critique is not "agents are bad people." It is: the licensing bar is low, the financial incentives are misaligned, the trade association has been captured by anti-competitive policy and a rotten internal culture, and consumer information about individual agent quality is poor.

Five questions that take that critique and turn it into something useful at your kitchen table:

1. "Are you full-time?" Roughly 29% of NAR members work part-time. Ask the agent directly.
2. "How many transactions did you close last year? How many in this neighborhood?" Trust the specific number more than the marketing.
3. "Is your fee negotiable? Will you commit to a flat fee or a hybrid?" As of August 2024, this conversation is supposed to happen before you tour your first home. Have it.
4. "If a contract issue arises that's not in the standard form, who handles it — you, your broker, or do I need an attorney?" The right answer involves a name and a phone number.
5. "Are you also representing the seller?" Dual agency is illegal in eight states (Alaska, Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Maryland, Texas, Wyoming, Vermont). In states where it's legal, it is structurally adversarial to whichever side has less leverage.

Most real estate agents in this country will navigate a transaction for you competently. Some won't. Knowing the difference is the work of a few specific questions, asked early, before you owe anyone a commission.