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Getting a real estate license on Oahu

By Josh Lin, licensed Hawaii real estate agent · updated 21 August 2026 · figures from the Hawaii Real Estate Commission FY2025 report

Oahu is where most of Hawaii's real estate business happens, and where most of its licensees already are. If you are weighing the study hours and the money, start with what the state's own numbers say about the island you would be working.

Oahu holds more than half the state's licensees

Hawaii Real Estate Commission figures for FY2025 count 8,274 active licenses on Oahu: 2,017 brokers, 4,932 salespersons, 399 sole proprietors, and 996 corporation, partnership, or LLC licenses. That is 58% of the 14,181 active licenses statewide. Around 6,900 of the Oahu total are individual brokers and salespersons — the people you would be sitting across from at the closing table, or competing with for the same listing.

Entry has slowed, though. Hawaii issued 775 new salesperson licenses and 169 new individual broker licenses statewide in FY2025, down from 1,240 salesperson licenses in 2019. Read that in both directions: fewer people entering each year, and fewer people concluding this is easy money.

The 60 hours, and where you can sit in a classroom

A salesperson license starts with 60 hours of pre-licensing education from a Hawaii-approved provider. A broker license requires 80 hours. Only approved providers count toward the requirement, so choosing one is the first real decision — the school comparison is where to start.

Oahu's practical advantage is format. Honolulu is where in-person instruction actually exists; Abe Lee Seminars, for instance, teaches in a Honolulu classroom. If you learn better with an instructor in the room and classmates to ask questions of, that is a genuine option here rather than a workaround. Online pre-licensing runs from about $377, and Honolulu classroom courses roughly $400 to $600. The course is one line item among several — the full cost breakdown covers the rest.

The exam is the filter, not the course

In FY2025, 4,518 candidates took the salesperson exam and 1,497 passed — 33.1%. The broker exam was 38.8%, with 258 of 665 passing. Most attempts do not pass. That figure counts tests rather than people, so it cannot tell you how many individuals eventually get through - but it does say that finishing the coursework is not evidence you will pass. Plan your study time and your budget on the assumption that a retake is possible, and see what the exam actually covers before you pick a course.

What one Oahu transaction is worth

The median Oahu home price is above $1.1 million. One side of a sale at 2.5% grosses roughly $27,500 before your brokerage split, your own costs, and taxes. That is the honest appeal of working this island: the deals are large.

It is also exactly why 8,274 licenses point at it. Oahu is the highest-volume market in the state and the most competitive one, and those are the same fact viewed twice. High dollars per closing attract everyone who can pass the exam. Nothing about the license itself gets you a client.

Keeping the license once you have it

Renewal runs on a biennium: 20 hours of continuing education, of which 6 are core — Parts A and B at 3 hours each — plus 14 elective hours. Details are on the CE requirements page.

Deciding

The requirements are not the hard part. Sixty hours and a state exam are a few months of evenings and a few hundred dollars. The hard part is that you would be entering a market where roughly 6,900 other individual licensees already work, most of them with the referral base you do not have yet. If you already have a network on this island — a community, a congregation, a former career full of people who trust you — Oahu's price points make that network unusually valuable. If you do not, the license is a starting cost, not a plan.