Real estate exam prep course: real estate practice questions, practice exams and test prep for the national and state portions

Nearly every state splits the salesperson licensing exam into a national portion and a state portion, and the single most useful thing to understand before you start studying is that these are scored separately. The national portion covers the principles that hold everywhere: agency relationships, contracts, financing, valuation, property ownership and land use, transfer of title, and the federal statutes that apply nationwide such as the Fair Housing Act and RESPA. The state portion covers the license law of the one state you are applying in, which means the statute that creates the regulator, the rules about trust and escrow accounts, advertising requirements, disclosure forms, and the disciplinary process. Texas publishes the split precisely. Its sales agent exam is 125 items in total, 85 on the national portion with 150 minutes allowed and 50 on the state portion with 90 minutes, adding up to the 240 minutes you get for the whole sitting. Both of those item counts include unscored pretest questions that Pearson VUE is trialing, and you are not told which ones they are. Other states package it differently. Florida gives you a single 100-question paper over three and a half hours built from 19 content areas that already blend national principles with Florida statute, and California gives you 150 questions in 3 hours drawn from seven subject areas. The practical consequence is the same everywhere: the national material you can study from any decent bank, and the state material you have to get from your own state.

• The national portion covers principles that apply in every state
• The state portion covers one state's license law and is scored on its own
• Texas: 85 national items in 150 minutes, 50 state items in 90 minutes
• Item counts include unscored pretest questions you cannot identify

The figure repeated most often online is that you need 70% to pass the real estate exam. That is roughly true in some states and simply wrong in others, and the way the threshold is expressed matters more than the number. California is the clean case: the Department of Real Estate states that salesperson candidates must correctly answer at least 70 percent of the 150 questions, which is 105 correct. Florida does not use a percentage at all. Its candidate booklet says the sales associate examination is graded on 100 points for a perfect examination and a candidate who receives a grade of 75 points or higher has passed, so the effective bar in Florida is 75, five points above California. Texas is different again and is the one most commonly misreported. Texas reports a raw score rather than a percentage, and the requirement is expressed as two separate numbers: a salesperson must answer 56 questions correctly on the national examination and 28 correctly on the state examination. Getting 90 on the national portion does not carry you if you miss the state threshold by one. Texas also equates its forms, meaning a statistical adjustment is applied so that candidates who happen to draw a harder version of the exam are not penalized for it. Broker candidates face higher bars in the same states: Texas requires 60 correct on the national and 38 on the state, and California moves brokers to 200 questions over 4 hours.

• California: at least 70 percent of 150 questions, which is 105 correct
• Florida: graded out of 100 points, 75 points or higher passes
• Texas: 56 correct on national and 28 correct on state, scored separately
• Texas brokers need 60 national and 38 state; California brokers sit 200 questions

Pass rates for this exam are quoted constantly and sourced almost never, usually because the number came from a prep provider describing its own students. There is one large state that publishes the underlying counts openly, and it is worth anchoring on. The Texas Real Estate Commission reports that across the period from December 1, 2023 to November 30, 2025, 29,980 sales agent examinations were taken and 16,824 were passed, giving an overall rate of 56.12%. Over the same window 2,326 broker examinations were taken and 1,326 passed, a rate of 57.01%. TREC also calculates a minimum pass rate that education providers are held to, currently 44.94%, which tells you something about the spread: the commission expects a meaningful share of approved schools to sit well below the statewide average. Two cautions about reading any of this. First, these are per-examination rates covering every attempt in the window, not first-time rates, so the same candidate failing twice and passing on the third try appears three times. Second, pass rates are not comparable across states, because the thresholds differ, the pre-licensing hours differ enormously, and states that require more classroom time before letting you sit tend to report different numbers than states that require less. A rate quoted with no state, no date range and no candidate count attached is not evidence of anything.

• Texas: 16,824 of 29,980 sales exams passed from Dec 2023 to Nov 2025, 56.12%
• Texas brokers over the same period: 1,326 of 2,326, or 57.01%
• TREC holds education providers to a 44.94% minimum pass rate
• Rates cover all attempts, not first attempts, and do not compare across states

Split your preparation the way the exam is split, and weight it toward the half you are more likely to fail. The national portion rewards understanding rather than recall, because most items are applied: you are given a short scenario and asked which duty was breached, which contract exists, or what a lender would actually advance. Working questions and reading the rationale for every option is a far better use of an hour than rereading a chapter, and it is the only way to get comfortable with the small number of calculations that appear. Expect commission splits, loan-to-value, discount points, proration at closing, and simple area problems. None of the math is hard, but it is done under time pressure with no formula sheet, so the goal is to make it automatic. The state portion is different work. It is largely a memorization exercise against one specific statute and rule set, covering trust account handling, advertising rules, disclosure timelines, license renewal and the grounds on which a license can be disciplined. National banks do not cover it, so pull your own state's content outline directly from the regulator or the testing vendor and study against that document rather than against a summary of it. Every state publishes one, and the candidate handbooks from Pearson VUE and PSI include the full outline with the weight of each topic area. On timing, most candidates who pass report four to eight weeks of consistent study after finishing their pre-licensing course, and the strongest single predictor is scoring consistently above the state threshold on realistic practice questions before booking.

• Weight your study toward the state portion, which national banks do not cover
• Expect commission, loan-to-value, discount points, proration and area math
• Pull your state content outline from the regulator or the testing vendor
• Book the exam once you are consistently clearing the threshold in practice

Failing one portion is common and it is not a reset. In Texas you retake only the portion you failed, provided you do so within one year from the date your application was filed with TREC, and your score report comes with diagnostic information showing how many questions you got right in each content area, which is the most useful study guide you will ever be handed. You must wait 24 hours before scheduling the retake, reservations cannot be made at the test center, and the fee is charged again at $43 for a sales examination. Texas allows three attempts before the application expires. Fail three times and you cannot retest or file a new application until you complete additional qualifying education: 30 hours if you failed either the national or the state part, and 60 hours if you failed both. If the application simply expires without you passing, you reapply under whatever the current requirements are. States also differ on whether you get to see what you missed. Texas does not release examination questions to candidates for review at all, citing exam security. Florida takes the opposite position and entitles candidates who fail to review the questions they answered incorrectly, subject to conditions set by the department. If you are testing in a state that offers a review, take it, because a list of your own wrong answers is worth more than any general study plan.

• Most states have you retake only the portion you failed, not the whole exam
• Texas: 24-hour wait, $43 again, three attempts before the application expires
• Three Texas failures means 30 extra hours, or 60 if you failed both portions
• Texas releases no questions for review; Florida lets failed candidates review misses

Be clear about what a question bank can and cannot do for you, because the two things get conflated in advertising and the distinction is a legal one. Before you are allowed to sit the exam at all, every state requires you to complete a set number of hours of state-approved pre-licensing education from a provider the regulator has approved by name. The hour requirements vary widely, and Texas sits at the demanding end with 180 hours of qualifying education required before a sales agent application will be accepted. That coursework has to come from an approved school, and the regulator verifies it before issuing the eligibility that lets you book a test date. Aspirants.ai is not an approved pre-licensing provider in any state, and practice questions do not count toward those hours no matter how many you complete. What we do is the second job: getting you from having finished the required course to actually passing the exam, which as the Texas figures show is where a large share of candidates come unstuck. Use your approved course to satisfy the legal requirement and to learn the material, then use unlimited practice questions with worked explanations to convert that into a passing score. If a service tells you it can replace your state-approved hours, check the regulator's list of approved providers before you pay for anything.

• State-approved pre-licensing hours are a legal prerequisite to sitting the exam
• Texas requires 180 hours of qualifying education before you can apply
• Practice questions do not count toward approved pre-licensing hours anywhere
• Verify any provider against your regulator's approved list before paying