Texas TREC License Search Scraper

Search Texas Real Estate Commission (TREC) license-holder records — real estate brokers, sales agents, inspectors, easement/right-of-way agents, appraisers, and appraisal management companies. Search by license holder name or jump straight to a license number. Get license status, issue/expiration dates, license type, and (for sales agents) the sponsoring broker. HTTP-only against TREC's own official public license dataset — no login, no CAPTCHA, no proxy required.

Data source & limitations

TREC's interactive search UI (trec.texas.gov/apps/license-holder-search/) is currently unreachable from standard internet infrastructure (a persistent connection-level block/timeout, not a CAPTCHA or rate limit). This actor instead uses TREC's own official license-holder datasets, published directly by the Texas Real Estate Commission on the Texas Open Data Portal (data.texas.gov) as public, structured APIs — the same underlying license records the search UI draws from, refreshed on a daily schedule. No functionality is lost: name search, license number lookup, license-type/status filtering all work the same way, across all five TREC-regulated license categories.

What this actor does

• Two modes: search by license holder / business name, or direct license number lookup
• Five license categories: Real Estate Broker/Sales Agent, Real Estate Inspector, Easement/Right-of-Way Agent, Real Estate Appraiser, Appraisal Management Company — searchable individually or all at once
• Filters: license type (within category), license status, active-only shortcut
• Sponsoring broker: for Sales Agent records, the broker the agent is sponsored by (name + license number) is automatically resolved and surfaced
• Empty fields are omitted — a field only appears when TREC actually published that data for the license

Output per license

• licenseNumber — TREC license number (category-suffixed, e.g. 854692-SA, 490032-BB)
• licenseCategory / licenseCategoryLabel — which of the 5 TREC categories this license belongs to
• licenseType — TREC-defined license type (e.g. Sales Agent, Broker Individual, Certified Residential)
• fullName, firstName, middleName, lastName, suffix — license holder name (business licenses populate fullName only)
• licenseStatus — TREC's own published status (e.g. Active, Expired less than 6 months, Revoked)
• isActive — true/false, derived from licenseStatus == "Active"
• originalLicenseDate, licenseExpirationDate — ISO dates
• isDesignatedSupervisor — true/false, when TREC publishes this flag for the license
• currentlySupervisesTrainees — true/false, for Appraiser/AMC licenses that publish this flag
• relatedLicenseType, relatedLicenseNumber, relatedLicenseFullName, relatedLicenseSuffix, relatedLicenseStartDate — the license's linked/associated license (e.g. a Sales Agent's sponsoring broker, or a Broker Company's designated broker)
• sponsoringBrokerName, sponsoringBrokerLicenseNumber — friendly alias of the related license, populated specifically when the related license is a broker
• agencyIdentifier — TREC's internal identifier for the license holder
• recordUpdatedAt — the date TREC last updated this specific record, when published
• datasetLastUpdated — the date the underlying Texas Open Data Portal dataset itself was last refreshed
• sourceUrl — a live, queryable link to the official record on the Texas Open Data Portal
• recordType: "license", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string	byName	byName or byLicenseNumber
licenseCategory	select	brokerSalesAgent	One of 5 categories, or all
nameQuery	string	Smith	License holder or business name (mode=byName)
licenseNumber	string	854692-SA	TREC license number (mode=byLicenseNumber)
licenseType	select	–	Exact TREC license type within the chosen category
statusFilter	select	–	Exact TREC license status
activeOnly	boolean	false	Shortcut for statusFilter: Active
sortBy	select	licenseNumber	licenseNumber, fullName, or expirationDate
sortDirection	select	asc	asc or desc
maxItems	int	20	Hard cap on emitted license records (1–5000)

Example: search by name

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "licenseCategory": "brokerSalesAgent",
  "nameQuery": "Smith",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: active sales agents named Garcia

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "licenseCategory": "brokerSalesAgent",
  "nameQuery": "Garcia",
  "licenseType": "Sales Agent",
  "activeOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Example: direct license number lookup

{
  "mode": "byLicenseNumber",
  "licenseCategory": "brokerSalesAgent",
  "licenseNumber": "854692-SA"
}

Example: search across every license category

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "licenseCategory": "all",
  "nameQuery": "Johnson",
  "maxItems": 100
}

Example: browse active real estate appraisers

{
  "mode": "byName",
  "licenseCategory": "appraiser",
  "nameQuery": "a",
  "licenseType": "Certified Residential",
  "activeOnly": true,
  "maxItems": 50
}

Use cases

• Buyer/seller vetting — confirm a real estate agent or broker's TREC license is active and see who sponsors them
• Brokerage compliance — verify all agents at a brokerage are properly licensed and sponsored
• Home inspection & appraisal — confirm an inspector or appraiser's license status before hiring
• Lead & vendor validation — confirm a TREC license number resolves to a real, active license
• Market research — enumerate licensed real estate professionals by type and status

FAQ

What is the data source? The Texas Real Estate Commission's official license-holder datasets, published on the Texas Open Data Portal (data.texas.gov). This actor is an independent, third-party tool and is not affiliated with or endorsed by TREC or the State of Texas.

Why not scrape the TREC search website directly? The interactive search UI was unreachable during testing (a persistent connection-level block/timeout affecting all external access, not a CAPTCHA or IP rate limit). The Texas Open Data Portal serves the identical underlying license records as a stable, public API, so no data or functionality is lost.

How fresh is the data? The Texas Open Data Portal datasets are refreshed by TREC on a daily cadence. They are not a live real-time feed of the search UI, but reflect the same licensing records.

Why does licenseCategory: all return fewer results per category than searching one category alone? When searching all 5 categories at once, maxItems is a combined cap shared across categories (fetched in category order), so each category may only get a share of the budget. Set licenseCategory to a specific category and raise maxItems for a deeper single-category pull.

Why do some records lack a county field? TREC's published datasets do not reliably populate a county column for these license types (it is blank or contains non-geographic codes on virtually every row), so it is omitted from this actor's output rather than shown as an unreliable/garbage value.

Does this actor need a login, CAPTCHA solve, or proxy? No. The Texas Open Data Portal is fully public. The actor uses Apify's free AUTO proxy group only as a courtesy fallback.

How is isActive determined? It's derived by comparing licenseStatus to TREC's exact string "Active" — TREC's own status field already distinguishes active from every inactive/expired/revoked/suspended state, so no separate date-based derivation is needed.