Who this affects

Arrest records and real estate licences

Checked 2026-08-25

California requires you to report the bringing of a felony charge to the Department of Real Estate within 30 days — so an agent who is charged and later fully exonerated still had a mandatory filing obligation, and missing it is separately chargeable.

The duty attaches at the charge

Cal. B&P § 10186.2 requires a licensee to report in writing, within 30 days, the bringing of a criminal complaint, information or indictment charging a felony; any conviction including a plea of guilty or no contest to a felony or misdemeanour; and any discipline by another licensing authority. Failure to report is itself a cause for discipline.

That sits alongside § 480, which bars the DRE from denying a licence based on an arrest that did not result in a conviction. Both are true at once: the charge must be reported, and the arrest alone cannot be the basis for denial. The filing obligation survives the exoneration.

Texas is post-conviction but structured the same way: Occ. Code § 1101.652(a)(7) makes failure to notify the commission within 30 days of a final conviction or plea an independent ground for suspension or revocation, on top of the conviction itself. Florida allows 30 days for felonies and disciplines pleas entered regardless of adjudication. Arizona requires notice within ten days of a conviction and states that disclosure is not required at the time of arrest. Oregon allows twenty calendar days.

Everything about this job is name-searchable

Real estate is the profession on this list where the client search is the transaction. Buyers and sellers look up the agent before the first showing, and the results they see are not the licence record — they are whatever ranks.

The licence record is searchable too. Texas publishes a name-searchable disciplinary actions database with downloadable orders, and added a disciplinary actions button to each licence holder's public page. California publishes enforcement lists including accusations and desist-and-refrain orders. ARELLO pools member-jurisdiction discipline into a national database.

Your broker is exposed as well. Texas rule 22 TAC § 535.2 makes a broker responsible for the authorised acts of sponsored agents and bars relinquishing overall supervisory responsibility, so a sponsored agent's criminal matter is a supervision question for the brokerage, not a private one.

What removal work covers

Not the commission's disciplinary record or the ARELLO entry. Those are regulatory publications.

The mugshot aggregators, the county roster, the people-search profiles that surface next to your listings, and news coverage of a case that was dropped — those are the removable surface, and for an agent they are the ones that cost money, because they appear in exactly the search a prospective client runs.

Texas runs on the conviction, California on the charge

This is the profession where the reporting trigger differs most sharply between states, and getting it backwards is expensive in one direction and pointless in the other.

Texas requires a report no later than the 30th day after a final conviction, or after the entry of a guilty or no-contest plea, to a felony or any criminal offence involving fraud. A pending felony charge does not start the Texas clock. Failure to report carries a fine from $500 to $3,000 for each failure, on top of any discipline for the underlying offence — the reporting failure is a separate, independently punishable thing.

Texas also requires a complete set of fingerprints at renewal of an unexpired licence, not only at application. A conviction acquired mid-cycle therefore surfaces at renewal whether or not anyone reported it, which makes the reporting failure the only avoidable part.

Worth knowing on the licensing side: Texas identifies by rule which offences directly relate to a licence holder's duties, and lets an applicant request a fitness determination before applying rather than after being refused.

Common questions

Do I have to report a charge that was later dropped?

In California, the bringing of a felony charge is reportable within 30 days under § 10186.2, whatever happens afterwards. The later dismissal does not retroactively excuse the filing.

Can an arrest cost me my licence?

In California the DRE may not deny a licence based on an arrest that did not result in conviction. That does not mean the charge is unreportable, and it does not stop a client finding the booking photo in a search.

Will my broker find out?

Probably. Texas makes brokers responsible for supervising sponsored agents and bars them from relinquishing that responsibility, so these matters tend to reach the brokerage.

Try the free route first

Google removes your home address, phone number, email and — since February 2026 — government ID numbers at no cost. More than 10 million people have used it. It does not cover arrest records, and it will not touch a government or newspaper page, but it is free and it is worth running first.

Open Google’s Results about you tool

Sources

Every claim on this page traces to the sources above, checked on 2026-08-25. Rules in this area change — several of the ones on this page changed in the last three years. If you find something here that is out of date, tell us and we will fix it.