In 2022–23 there were 35.4 searches about getting a real estate license for every search about renewing one. Now there are 20.6. Fewer people are researching a way into the business, while working agents keep renewing at the same pace (+8%).
Stagingmate ResearchMonthly volumes summed for each 12-month window; joining searches divided by renewal searches in the same state and window.
Google reports rounded monthly search volumes, and very small volumes show as 10 or nothing, so small states and rare queries are noisy. Google may group close variants of a query. Search volume measures interest, not transactions. The planned measure, searches for quitting real estate ("how to quit real estate", "leaving real estate" and similar), averages only 83 US searches a month combined, too few to compare states, so this study measures new-entrant interest against renewal interest instead. Searches show interest, not licensing counts.
change in US searches about getting a real estate license, 2022–23 to 2025–26.
change in searches about license renewal and continuing education.
joining searches per renewal search, then and now.
Searches about getting a license per search about renewing one, Sep 2025 to Aug 2026. 27 states with enough renewal searches to measure.
| New Jersey | 46 | 39 | 18 | -42 |
| Georgia | 30.5 | 46.7 | -35 | -36 |
| Michigan | 30.4 | 43 | -29 | -34 |
| Virginia | 29.7 | 53.9 | -45 | -35 |
| California | 26.5 | 38.9 | -32 | -48 |
| Texas | 25.5 | 38.1 | -33 | -36 |
| South Carolina | 24.2 | 46.4 | -48 | -31 |
| Alabama | 23.8 | 60.4 | -61 | -14 |
| Illinois | 23.7 | 86 | -72 | -38 |
| Arizona | 21 | 42.3 | -50 | -44 |
| Ohio | 20.3 | 27.4 | -26 | -16 |
| Maryland | 20 | 43.3 | -54 | -43 |
| Tennessee | 19.8 | 28.4 | -30 | -28 |
| New York | 18.2 | 25.4 | -28 | -37 |
| North Carolina | 18 | 27.3 | -34 | -29 |
| Indiana | 17.9 | 32.8 | -46 | -24 |
| Washington | 17.9 | 19.7 | -9 | -30 |
| Pennsylvania | 17.8 | 71.8 | -75 | -35 |
| Florida | 17.3 | 34.8 | -50 | -42 |
| Colorado | 15.9 | 27.7 | -42 | -24 |
| Missouri | 15 | 53.5 | -72 | -25 |
| Connecticut | 14.1 | 33.9 | -59 | -32 |
| Nevada | 13 | 28.9 | -55 | -15 |
| Minnesota | 11.9 | 12.9 | -8 | -26 |
| Oregon | 11.8 | 16.4 | -28 | -18 |
| Massachusetts | 10.6 | 17.2 | -38 | -24 |
| Utah | 10.4 | 16.9 | -39 | -24 |
change in searches by people researching how to become a real estate agent.
| Query | Monthly, 2022–23 | Monthly, 2025–26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| real estate license | 69,083 | 40,283 | −42% |
| how to get a real estate license | 6,292 | 2,625 | −58% |
| real estate school | 45,600 | 33,658 | −26% |
| real estate classes | 26,967 | 15,225 | −44% |
| real estate exam | 4,142 | 3,317 | −20% |
| real estate license online | 2,892 | 2,483 | −14% |
| real estate license renewal | 1,767 | 1,950 | +10% |
| real estate continuing education | 2,608 | 2,792 | +7% |
Quitting is hard to measure in search: few agents type it. But the inflow is visible. Interest in getting licensed has dropped on every query we track, while renewal searches by working agents are flat to slightly up.
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Stagingmate Research (2026). Searches for getting a real estate license fell 37% while renewals held steady. https://stagingmate.com/research/real-estate-agent-burnout-signals
Free to use under CC BY 4.0 with a link to this page. For the full dataset or a local cut, email press@stagingmate.com.
Search interest suggests so: searches about getting a license are down 37% in three years. Licensing counts are published by each state and aren't part of this data.