How is the North Carolina Real Estate Exam Structured?
The North Carolina real estate exam is administered by testing company PSI and is broken out into two sections: the national section and the state section.
Most applicants must pass both sections. The only exception is applicants who are licensed in another state: they only need to pass the state section.
- The state section is 40 questions
- The national section is 80 questions
State and National Pretest Questions
Additionally, there will be 5-10 pretest questions in the national portion and 5 pretest questions in the state portion. Pretest questions are questions that the exam provider is auditioning for future tests and don’t count toward your score.
Question Format
All the questions in the exam are multiple-choice questions with four answer choices. This format should look familiar from the end-of-course exam you took after completing your pre-licensing education.
What’s a Passing Score?
How many questions do you need to get right to pass?
- For the state section, you must answer 29 out of 40 questions correctly
- For the national section, you must answer 57 of the 80 questions correctly
Retaking the Test
If you don’t pass the exam on the first try, you can retake it.
If you only pass one section of the exam, you can retake just the section that you failed. Note that every time you retake the test, you have to pay the $100 application fee and the $56 exam fee all over again, even if you’re just taking one section of the test. Yikes! Better study hard for your wallet’s sake!
What Topics Are Covered on the North Carolina Real Estate Exam?
So what’s on the test, anyway? The North Carolina Real Estate Commission (NCREC) provides a candidate handbook and pre-licensing course syllabus that have extremely detailed information about what is tested and taught. Here are the highlights of what you’ll see on the exam:
- Basic real estate concepts
- Property insurance basics
- Basic construction
- Basic real estate investment
- Property ownership and interests
- Property taxation and assessment
- Transfer of title to real property
- Federal income taxation of home ownership/sale
- Land use controls
- Environmental issues in real estate
- Brokerage relationships: law and practice
- Agency contracts (sales) and related practices
- Basic contract law
- Sales contracts and related procedures
- Real estate financing
- Closing a sales transaction
- Real property valuation
- Landlord and tenant
- Property management
- Fair housing
- Real estate license law and commission rules
- Agent safety
- Real estate mathematics
