Montana

The Montana Board of Realty Regulation, under the Department of Labor and Industry, licenses salespersons and brokers and — separately — issues the supervising-broker endorsement that makes a broker able to sign a salesperson application. Pearson VUE delivers the exam. The January 2026 handbook (#092700) is the sitting: $95 per portion, national 80 scored plus 5 pretest in 150 minutes at 75 percent, state 40 scored plus 10 pretest in 90 minutes at 75 percent, for both salespersons and brokers. Sitting both papers is $190. ARM 24.210.611 is the license file: no application until the exam is passed; then twelve months to apply or the results die; salesperson education is 70 hours inside 24 months; broker education is 60 hours inside 18 months plus two years as a salesperson and 30 points in 36 months on Board forms.

That 12-month application clock is the one school blogs keep losing to Pearson's handbook sentences. Pearson also prints that exam results are good for three years, that salesperson authorization lasts five years after the first required education course, and that broker authorization lasts ten. Those are Pearson eligibility windows. The Board's 12-month fuse is what invalidates the score for licensure. Three clocks, three owners.

Montana does not print a recovery fund. It prints mandatory continuous E&O (MCA 37-51-325) and a group-policy enrollment on the Board homepage. It does not print a fingerprint vendor on the current salesperson application or the 12/2025 broker checklist; background is personal-history questions plus license verification from every jurisdiction of any professional license. Original Board fees are $80 (salesperson) and $90 (broker) on ARM 24.210.401 — the 2018 $150 checklist is dead. Renewal is annual, September 1 through October 31. CE is 12 hours every licensing year from November 1 to October 31 (ARM 24.210.667 as amended 9/7/2024), with no carryover.

The supervising-broker endorsement is the state's actual trap at both career levels. A salesperson cannot file without a broker who holds it. A newly minted broker cannot supervise without taking the 8-hour pre-endorsement course and then 4 titled hours a year inside the 12. There is no endorsement fee. A terminated endorsement cannot be reinstated. Neighbor hour-counts — Idaho 90, North Dakota 90, South Dakota's 116-hour broker associate, Wyoming's named courses — belong in the comparison paragraph, not as Montana's thesis.