Cameron Academy Makes Its Real Estate Course Free for Florida Teens and Adults Starting Over

Florida students aged 15 to 17 take the course free, and so do adults rebuilding after domestic violence or incarceration.

ORLANDO, FL, UNITED STATES, October 13, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Cameron Academy of Real Estate gives its licensing coursework away for free to three groups of people who rarely get handed anything: Florida teenagers, survivors of domestic violence, and people rebuilding a life after incarceration.

The school has been doing it quietly for years. Michael Cameron Sidawi, who became the family-owned school’s owner and director in January 2013, is done being quiet about it.

“A license doesn’t care where you’ve been. It cares whether you passed,” he said. “For somebody starting over, that might be the only door in the whole economy that works like that. No resume gap to explain. No reference who won’t call you back. You pass the exam, and you apply like everyone else.”

FAST FACTS

• Cameron Academy’s Florida real estate pre-license coursework is free for students aged 15 to 17.

• Florida released 25,990 people from state prison in fiscal 2024-25 (Florida Department of Corrections annual report).

• Florida requires a personal financial literacy course to graduate, starting with students who entered ninth grade in 2023 (Dorothy L. Hukill Financial Literacy Act, 2022).

• Cameron Academy runs no-cost seats for survivors of domestic violence and for people rebuilding after incarceration.

HOW A GIVEAWAY BUILT A NETWORK

The free seats aren’t a side program. Sidawi says they’re most of the reason the school has 15 campuses.

“You give a seat to a woman starting over and five years later she’s a broker sending us her whole office,” he said. “That’s happened enough times that I stopped calling it generosity. It’s just how this place grew.”

A SECOND DOOR

The no-cost seats go to people trying to get back into the working world after life has gone sideways. Cameron Academy does not publicize who takes them and does not ask applicants to tell their story to qualify.

“Dignity is most of it,” Sidawi said. “Nobody should have to perform their worst year to get a seat in a classroom. They show up, they sit down, they do the work like everyone else in the room.”

Under Florida real estate license requirements, an applicant must be eighteen to hold a license, and the state exam is the same for everybody. Nothing about the coursework is a lesser version.

THE PART FOR TEENAGERS

Students aged fifteen to seventeen take the same 63-hour real estate course in Florida that adults pay for, free, at any campus or online. Sidawi wants it in the public school system, and not to produce agents.

“We’re the first people to sit a seventeen-year-old down and explain what a security deposit actually is, what a landlord can and can’t do, how credit decides whether you get a mortgage and what really happens at a closing table,” he said. “Nobody else is teaching that. Housing is the biggest bill of their adult life and we hand them a diploma without mentioning it once.”

“I’m not trying to turn teenagers into agents. I want them to graduate knowing what a deed is. That’s the whole ask.”

HOW IT IS ACTUALLY TAUGHT

The free seats come with the same method the paying students get, which is not a lecture and not a slideshow.

Cameron Academy built its own mnemonic approach decades ago: songs, rhythms, repeated phrasing and stories, designed so a rule survives the exam and shows up years later on a real transaction. Much of that methodology has since been adopted into the industry’s leading course materials and is now relied on by instructors and education providers across the field. Cameron Academy educators also produced the first Spanish-language version of the Florida real estate pre-license course.

“Somebody restarting their life doesn’t have a semester to lose,” Sidawi said. “And a seventeen-year-old will not sit through a lecture. The method exists because both of those things are true.”

WHAT COMES BACK

The part Sidawi talks about most isn’t the network or the numbers.

“People find me years later. At an event, or they walk into a class I’m teaching, and they tell me what happened to them,” he said. “They bought their mother a house. They got out of something. They’re the first person in their family who owns anything. I’ve had grown men cry telling me about it.”

“I don’t know how many businesses get that. We built a school and it turned into people’s life stories. Twenty-three years of that, and it’s still the reason I’m in the room.”

WHY THE SCHOOL CAN AFFORD IT

Cameron Academy has taught more than 100,000 students across 800-plus licensing and continuing education courses offered in all fifty states through its partner network. Linda Cameron founded it in 2003 and it has stayed in the family since, through the 2008 collapse and through a decade in which most of Florida’s independent real estate schools were bought by national education companies. It said no and expanded instead, to 15 campuses spanning roughly 380 miles.

It has spent most of its history arriving early. It was the first real estate school in Florida, and among the first in the country, to move testing onto computers. It built the first mobile exam-prep app for real estate students in the United States in 2013, and was first in the state to livestream classes. That app is being rebuilt now as the foundation of a wider student platform.

“We’ve never waited for permission to try something,” Sidawi said. “Nobody asked us to teach teenagers either.”

Sidawi is a licensed Florida real estate broker who still teaches his own classes and has published two books, “Real Estate Agent Guide: Thriving in a Down Market” and “The Midlife Method: Life’s Too Short for Later.”

Parents, school administrators and organizations working with people re-entering the workforce can contact Cameron Academy to arrange seats.

ABOUT CAMERON ACADEMY OF REAL ESTATE

Cameron Academy of Real Estate runs the largest real estate campus network in Florida, is the oldest real estate school in Central Florida still under independent ownership, and has been family owned and operated since Linda Cameron founded the school in 2003. Its mission: “Teach it so it stays. Treat every student like the point. Keep a seat open for anyone starting over.” It has been licensed by the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation as a real estate school under permit ZH1002075 since June 9 of that year, stayed open through the 2008 housing crisis, and employs 35 people today. That permit is one of the 40 oldest of Florida’s 558 active real estate school permits. Her son, Michael Cameron Sidawi, helped run the school from the start and became its owner and director in January 2013. He holds its state permit, is a licensed Florida real estate broker (BK3198873) with an active Florida real estate instructor license (ZH1002785), and still teaches his own classes. Linda Cameron remains with the school as its instructor coordinator. Cameron Academy has taught more than 100,000 students across a catalog of 800-plus licensing and continuing education courses, offered in all fifty states through its partner network, and holds a 5-star average across more than 3,000 reviews on various platforms, such as Google, Yelp, and others; more than 150 student testimonials have been filmed in its classrooms and published. It was among the first schools in the country to put real estate testing on computers, shipped the first mobile exam-prep app for real estate students in the United States, and ran livestreamed classes in Florida years before remote learning became standard. Its educators built the school’s mnemonic teaching method of song, rhythm, phrasing and story, since adopted into the industry’s leading course materials, and created the first Spanish-language version of the Florida real estate pre-license course; Linda Cameron is credited as an editor of earlier editions of Dearborn’s “Florida Real Estate Principles, Practices and Law.” It teaches from 15 Florida campuses spanning roughly 380 miles from Key Largo to Palm Coast, with brokerages, real estate law firms and title agencies that have named it their exclusive education provider, and hired 18 instructors statewide this year. The school provides its coursework free of charge to Florida students aged 15 to 17, and runs no-cost seats for people re-entering the workforce, including survivors of domestic violence and people rebuilding after incarceration. Cameron Academy is a registered trademark of Cameron Academy LLC, USPTO Reg. 5610857, in continuous use since June 9, 2003. The school turned down an acquisition approach from a national education company and is not for sale. It’s growing through exclusive education partnerships and welcomes conversations with brokerages, title agencies and law firms in new markets, in Florida and beyond. Main office: 7009 Dr. Phillips Blvd., Suite 110A, Orlando, FL 32819. Telephone (407) 251-0051. Web: cameronacademy.com

Michael Cameron Sidawi
Cameron Academy of Real Estate
407 251 0051
info@cameronacademy.com
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