TREC online course requirements for first time license renewal, is it CE or SAE and how many hours do I need?

Two years have quickly passed since I received my real-estate certificate.  I have done several transaction successfully and have enjoyed both the business and making some extra money on the side doing real-estate in Houston and Katy.

I have received a notice from TREC that my license is expiring soon and I have to take some required CE (continuing education) or MCE (mandatory continuing education) courses in order to qualify for renewal.

As of the time of this writting, Friday, July 14, 2017, I was surprise how confusing it was to try to find out WHAT COURSE and HOW MANY HOURS do I need to take exactly?

Here are a few of the different iterations:

• 18 hours CE (consisting of 10 electives + 8 legal update courses)
• 90 hours of CE / SAE (consisting of 30 + 30 + 30 hours of real-estate law courses)
• 98 hours of CE / SAE (consisting of 90 hours above + 8 legal update courses)
• 270 hours SAE package courses
• 278 hours SAE package courses

After looking at all of those conflicting information ... I was frustrated and decided to go to TREC website to check my status (what courses TREC have recorded in their database that I have taken).

I went to https://www.trec.texas.gov and went to the License Holder Search

The result looks like this:

Obviously I have forgotten how many hours of courses was required 2-years-ago when I first took the exam to become a realtor. After summing up my hours, I realized that I have completed 180 hours.

Since TREC website said I have to complete 278 SAE hours in order to renew, this starting to make sense because 

180 hours completed already  +   98 hours of SAE = 278 hours exactly!!!

Once I know this information then I can start looking for which course to exactly shop for an eventually buy it.

I shopped around for about 15 min and found the cheapest price to be $288.75 from 360Training.com.

Well actually 360Training.com is very tricky, if you go straight to their website, they want to charge you $385 for the same course. If you sign-up your email they will send you 10% off coupon. 

However I found one of their subsidiary website Online Classroom

and they had the same exact course for the same price but they have 25% OFF Coupon (the coupon code that I used was SUN25), so I ended up buying my SAE 98 hours course from Online Classroom which is actually powered by 360Training anyways for $288.75 (see the details for the courses I bought below)

I hope this helps someone to figure out what you need to do to renew your TREC sales person license for the first time. :-)