Hundreds of practice questions covering the National Portion of the real estate salesperson licensing exam, including contracts, agency relationships, property ownership, financing, appraisal, fair housing, and settlement procedures. Questions include worked explanations with full solution steps.
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A buyer signs a purchase agreement that includes a financing contingency. The buyer's mortgage application is denied. Under the terms of a standard financing contingency, what is the buyer entitled to?
A property is held by two owners as tenants in common. One owner dies. What happens to the deceased owner's interest in the property?
A borrower obtains a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage. The loan has a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio of 92%. Which of the following will the lender most likely require?
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Continue practicing for freeReal Estate Salesperson Licensing Exam is a CBT exam of Varies by state (roughly 75–200) questions over Varies by state (1.5–4 hours).
8 practice areas in the Real Estate Salesperson question bank, each with its own questions and analytics.
Every question in the bank is written in one of these formats.
There is no single national real estate salesperson exam. Each state's real estate commission licenses agents under its own statute and sets its own eligibility rules, and most contract a testing vendor (usually PSI or Pearson VUE) to deliver the exam. Most states use the same structure. The national portion covers the general principles of real estate practice that apply everywhere, and a state portion covers that state's license law and regulatory requirements. Some states, California and New York among them, write a single exam of their own. This page and its practice bank cover the national material in depth, which is where most of the questions sit.
The national portion is built around eight content areas: contracts and agency, real estate practice, property characteristics and legal descriptions, valuation and appraisal, forms of ownership and title transfer, disclosures and environmental issues, financing and settlement, and real estate math. If you have no background in property law, budget the most time for agency and contracts. If you come from sales, budget it for math and finance. The practice questions here are tagged by content area so you can see which of the eight is costing you.
| Content area | What it covers |
|---|---|
| Real Estate Contracts and Agency | Elements of a valid contract, listing and buyer-representation agreements, purchase agreements, options, leases, contingencies, breach and remedies; creation and termination of agency, fiduciary duties, dual agency and designated agency, disclosure of agency relationships. |
| Real Estate Practice | Fair housing (the federal Fair Housing Act and its protected classes), advertising rules, antitrust (price fixing, market allocation), handling of earnest money, property management basics, ethics and the licensee's duties to clients and customers. |
| Real Property Characteristics Legal Descriptions and Property Use | Real vs. personal property, fixtures, water and air rights, metes-and-bounds, rectangular (government) survey, lot-and-block descriptions; zoning, building codes, easements, encroachments, deed restrictions, and other public and private controls on use. |
| Property Value and Appraisal | Market value vs. price vs. cost, the three approaches to value (sales comparison, cost, income), comparative market analysis, principles of value (substitution, conformity, highest and best use), and factors that affect value. |
| Forms of Ownership Transfer and Recording of Title | Estates in land (fee simple, life estate), concurrent ownership (joint tenancy, tenancy in common, tenancy by the entirety), deeds and their covenants, title insurance, recording, constructive notice, adverse possession, and involuntary transfers. |
| Property Disclosures and Environmental Issues | Seller property condition disclosure, material-fact and stigmatized-property rules, lead-based paint disclosure for pre-1978 housing, radon, asbestos, mold, underground storage tanks, wetlands, and flood zones. |
| Financing and Settlement | Mortgages and deeds of trust, promissory notes, loan types (conventional, FHA, VA), amortization, points, PMI, the loan estimate and closing disclosure under TRID, RESPA, Truth in Lending, and prorations at closing. |
| Real Estate Math Calculations | Commissions and splits, area and acreage, loan-to-value and debt ratios, interest and monthly payments, property tax and transfer tax, prorations, appreciation and depreciation, and net-to-seller problems. |
The national portion is typically around 80 questions and the state portion typically 30 to 50, but the exact split, the total question count, and the weighting of each content area are set by your state and published in its candidate information bulletin. Read that bulletin before you build a study plan. The state portion is not covered by a national question bank and must be learned from your state's license law.
The salesperson exam is scored by the testing vendor and reported as pass or fail, usually on screen at the test center before you leave. Most states score the national and state portions separately and require a passing mark on each, commonly in the region of 70% to 75% correct, though the exact cut score is set by the state commission. In most states, if you pass one portion and fail the other, you only retake the portion you failed, within a period the state specifies.
Questions are four-option multiple choice, there is no penalty for wrong answers, and calculators are usually permitted for the math questions (typically a basic, non-programmable model, or an on-screen calculator supplied by the vendor). In most states the score is a straight percentage of correct answers against a passing mark the commission sets, with no scaling, so every content area counts the same per question. That is why the small, learnable areas such as math and disclosures are worth the time.
Most candidates prepare over 4 to 8 weeks alongside or immediately after their pre-licensing course. The plan below assumes about 8 to 10 hours a week and treats the national portion and your state's license law as two parallel tracks, because they are tested and scored separately.
Salesperson distractors are near-synonyms and local habits. From the correct answer the writer builds the option that names the right duty owed to the wrong party, the term that describes a customer where the question is about a client, the practice that is normal in your own market and wrong as a statement of general principle, and, on the math questions, the figure you get from a proration counted to the wrong day. Each of them looks familiar, which is exactly why it is there. PassExams explains on every question and on every plan why the option you chose looked right, so a near-miss on agency vocabulary turns into a distinction you keep.
On Pro every wrong option is labelled with its trap type (reading trick, rule swap, wrong party, partial answer, calculation slip), and your analytics group those labels by content area. Finding out that contracts and agency costs you vocabulary confusions while financing and settlement costs you proration arithmetic tells you where the next two study evenings should go. Miss a math question and the variant engine writes it again with a new closing date and new figures, so the retry tests the formula and not your memory of the number. Hints knock out the most tempting choice and return you to the definition. Around ten math formulas repeat every sitting, so mastering the mistakes you actually make there is the cheapest score on offer.
Treat the national content areas and your state's license law as two separate subjects, because most states score them separately and require a pass on each. Pull the question count, the time limit, the calculator rule and the pass mark from your own state's candidate bulletin instead of assuming a national figure. Drill the math formulas until they are automatic and get the agency vocabulary exact, because the exam trades on terms that sit one shade apart. Finish with timed mock exams at your state's length and review every miss by content area.
It depends on the state. In states that use a national-plus-state format, totals are usually 100 to 140 questions (roughly 80 national and 30 to 50 state). States with their own single exam differ, from New York's 75-question state exam to California's 150-question exam. Your state's candidate bulletin gives the exact numbers.
Each state sets its own passing score, and most set it in the region of 70% to 75% correct, scored separately on the national and state portions. In most states you must pass both portions, and if you fail one you retake only that one.
The material is not conceptually difficult, but the volume of precise legal vocabulary is large and the exam is written to exploit near-synonyms. Candidates who complete the pre-licensing course and then do several hundred reviewed practice questions generally find it manageable. Candidates who try to pass on the course alone often do not.
No. Every state licenses through its own commission and its own exam. The national portion covers similar content areas across states because the underlying principles are the same, but the state portion is unique to each state, and the total length, time limit, and pass mark all vary.
Usually yes, with a basic, silent, non-programmable calculator, or an on-screen calculator supplied by the testing vendor. Financial calculators, phones, tablets, and anything with a keyboard are generally prohibited. Check the rule for your state and vendor in the candidate bulletin.
Most candidates prepare for 4 to 8 weeks after finishing their pre-licensing course, at 8 to 10 hours a week. The largest share of that time should go to timed practice questions with review, split between the national content areas and your state's license law.
You can retake it. The waiting period, the number of attempts allowed before repeating education, and whether you retake only the failed portion are set by your state. Your score report shows performance by content area, which is where a retake plan should start.
The broker exam covers the same national content areas at greater depth and adds brokerage management: trust and escrow accounting, supervision of licensees, office policy, and more advanced finance and valuation. Most states require 2 to 3 years of active experience as a salesperson before you can sit for it. See the real estate broker exam page for details.
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