Where to take the 96-hour sales associate course
Both schools hold current Commission approval as proprietary schools and appear on the state provider database for pre-licensing, post-licensing and continuing education. The difference is accuracy.
The CE Shop
- Sells both courses you will need — the 96 hours to get licensed and the 48-hour post-licence package, correctly broken out as 32 mandatory hours plus 16 electives
- Gets the background-check cost right at $18 for the Commission's current electronic FBI channel, where stale guidance elsewhere quotes roughly $25 more
- States the nine-hours-a-day credit cap, which is the rule that stops anyone finishing 96 hours over a long weekend
- Free trial of the Kentucky course before you commit
- ⚠ Its product names call this a “salesperson” course. Kentucky issues a sales associate licence — the course is right, the label is not.
Colibri Real Estate
- Also sells both required courses, with the 48-hour post-licence course correctly split 32 mandatory and 16 elective
- Names PSI as the exam vendor and the $100 exam fee correctly
- Self-paced online across four tiers, so you can leave out exam prep
- ⚠ Its Kentucky page says the exam is 130 questions. It is 120 — 80 general and 40 state — and 75% applies to each portion separately, which matters because you can retake just the one you failed.
- ⚠ Its Kentucky requirements page does not mention errors and omissions cover at all, in a state where the statute makes it a condition of an active licence.
How to get your Kentucky licence
Six steps, and the one that catches people is fourth on most lists and first here: the background check has to be done before you test.
Order the FBI background check first
The Commission is explicit: national criminal history checks must be completed before taking the exam. Sit first and your scores are invalidated. The current electronic channel is $18 and takes about a week; a Kentucky State Police route is $51.25.
Complete the education
Six academic credit hours — the 96-hour Kentucky pre-licence course, or six semester hours of university real estate coursework, which the Commission accepts as legally equivalent. A course hour here is fifty minutes.
Pass the PSI exam
80 general questions and 40 state questions, 75% on each. $100 whether you sit one portion or both. Pass one and fail the other and you retake only the failed portion.
Apply within 60 days
A passing score is valid for sixty days. Miss it and both portions die and you pay the $100 again — which is exactly the window people burn looking for a brokerage.
Choose active or inactive
$120 for an inactive licence, $130 for an active one. The extra $10 is the errors and omissions processing fee. You do not need a principal broker to be issued a licence, only to make it active.
Then the 48 hours of post-licence education
Due within two years, and the clock starts when you affiliate with a principal broker, not when the licence is issued. Miss it and the licence "shall be automatically cancelled the following day."
From the Kentucky Real Estate Commission, KRS 324.040, 324.045, 324.046(2), 324.085 and 324.395, and 201 KAR 11:011, 11:170 and 11:210 (§§ 4, 12(4) and 14(2)), verified August 2026. Course prices are omitted because neither school publishes confirmable Kentucky package pricing. The Commission's background-check instructions PDF is not used here: it is dated 2017, quotes higher fees and cites a regulation that has since been repealed — the figures above come from the Commission's current live page.
Kentucky FAQs
Is Kentucky pre-licensing 96 hours or six credit hours?
Both, and the distinction matters. KRS 324.046(2) requires "six (6) academic credit hours or their equivalent in real estate courses from an accredited institution or approved real estate school." 201 KAR 11:011 defines an academic credit hour as one college semester hour, or sixteen fifty-minute hours of classroom attendance. Six of those is 96 fifty-minute hours — which is 80 actual clock hours, so Kentucky is lighter than the headline number suggests.
Can I use college credit instead of a real estate school course?
Yes. The Commission states the requirement as the 96-hour pre-licence course "or six (6) academic credit hours from a college or university in real estate courses," and several Kentucky community colleges sit on the approved provider list alongside the proprietary schools. If you already hold real estate credit, or can earn it at community-college tuition, the merchant course is optional rather than compulsory.
How long is my passing exam score good for?
Sixty days. 201 KAR 11:210 § 4 says "a successful passing score on required portions of the real estate examination mandated by KRS 324.045(2) shall be valid for sixty (60) days." PSI's Kentucky bulletin still carries an older four-month figure; the regulation is the controlling text and it is the one the Commission applies.
When is the 48-hour post-licence course due, and what happens if I miss it?
Within two years, and the consequence is automatic. 201 KAR 11:210 § 14(2) states that "the license of a licensee who fails to complete his or her post-licensing education on or before the licensee's deadline shall be automatically cancelled the following day" — no hearing, no notice, no grace period. The two years run from when you receive or activate the licence, so putting a licence in escrow does not start the clock until you affiliate with a principal broker.
Do new Kentucky licensees need continuing education?
Not for two years. 201 KAR 11:210 § 12(4) says "a licensee shall not be required to comply with KRS 324.085(1) during the first two (2) full education cycles from the date of issuance of a sales associate license," and an education cycle runs 1 January to 31 December. New sales associates do the 48-hour post-licence course instead — the two obligations do not stack.
Does Kentucky require errors and omissions insurance?
Yes. KRS 324.395 requires all real estate licensees other than those on inactive status to carry errors and omissions cover as a condition of an active licence, with minimums set in 201 KAR 11:220 and a carrier-and-policy certification filed on the Commission's own form. The statute caps the group programme premium at two hundred dollars a year.
Can I finish the 96 hours in a weekend?
No. 201 KAR 11:170 caps pre-licence courses at nine hours of credit in a calendar day, which puts a floor of roughly eleven days on the 96 hours however fast you read. The course also ends in a proctored final at 75%, monitored by someone who is not a relative or business associate and who certifies the result in a notarised statement.