Calif. Business & Professions Code §§30; 135.5

Amended and added by S.B. 1159

Effective date: January 1, 2016

Beginning January 1, 2016, the California Bureau of Real Estate (CalBRE) will no longer deny licensure to an applicant based on their citizenship or immigration status. Individuals who apply for California Bureau of Real Estate (CalBRE) real estate licenses may provide an individual tax identification number (ITIN) in lieu of a social security number or Federal Employee Identification Number.

Editor’s note — This law gives CalBRE oversight over real estate practitioners who previously practiced real estate in the unlicensed grey market. Instead of retroactively addressing abuses based on complaints received from aggrieved clients, CalBRE is now able to proactively discipline bad actors through formal enforcement processes. For more on how CalBRE handles complaints, see the October 2013 article “CalBRE debuts its online complaint submission system.

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