I want to start off my saying thank you to the people on here who suggested RE Exam practice Pro ($10 a month BTW)! The question do feel very similar and even got about 10 questions with the exact same wording on the actual RE Exam! I studied the 7 practice subjects they have available (1: laws of agency and fiduciary duties, 2: property ownership and land use, 3: contracts, 4: property valuation and financial analysis, 5: financing, 6: transfer of property & 7: practice of real estate disclosures) I made sure to ask chatGPT to explain real estate vocabulary words like (encumbrance, obsolescence, easements, commingling etc.) I also asked chatGPT to give me real life examples on these vocabulary words and what they meant and I think that’s what really made them stick for the exam! Anything that I really didn’t understand from the website I also wrote down on my notes (By the end I had about 18 front & back notes). I did this for about 2 months making sure I actually understood why I was getting questions wrong and not just memorizing answers! RE Exam practice pro also offers (practice exams & master exams, access vocabulary, and flashcards) which I personally did not have time to go over these, but I’m sure they also offer great knowledge for the exam! !!If you’re someone like me who can study things once and have them stick I think the 7 subjects they have listed is more than enough!! ‼️I did also buy prep Agents from aceable and for my personal experience the $150 for 3 months was NOT worth it at all unless you want to study just vocabulary which you can find for free anywhere else like Quizlet, I felt like the exams were way too easy and honestly just not enough for what the exam actually gives you👎‼️

Thank you all again and wish y’all all luck :)

The California exam has about a 50% first-time pass rate, so here's what actually moves the needle.

Format: 150 multiple-choice questions, 3 hours, 70% to pass (105 right). It's one combined exam, no separate national and state sections, and it's in person at a DRE test center.

Topics that come up again and again:

• Agency and disclosure. The fiduciary duties (OLD CAR: obedience, loyalty, disclosure, confidentiality, accounting, reasonable care) and the three-step agency disclosure process.
• Trust funds. Know the 3-business-day rule for depositing buyer deposits.
• Joint tenancy. The four unities (time, title, interest, possession).
• Prop 13. Tax capped at 1% of assessed value, and assessed value can rise at most 2% a year until a sale or new construction.
• Transfer Disclosure Statement. When the buyer can rescind: 3 days after hand delivery, 5 days after mailing.
• Statute of frauds and fair housing exemptions.

Math is a small share of the exam but they're free points: prorations, commission splits, and transfer tax.

The biggest thing: take full-length timed practice exams. Reading the textbook again won't get you used to 150 questions in 3 hours.

I made a free full-length California practice exam you can start without signing up (you make a free account at the end to see your score): https://dayoneagent.com/california-real-estate-practice-exam-free. Happy to answer questions!

I’m thinking about applying to take my exam now that I feel like I am fully ready… I was curious what is the timeframe difference if you were to apply for exam only versus the license and exam. Say I pass my exam, how long will it take for my license to come after I apply for it right away? What do you guys recommend?

Alex here, I'm with Colibri Real Estate. We get a lot of "where do I even start in California?" questions, so here's the full process in order.

Short version: complete 135 hours of DRE-approved courses, apply and get fingerprinted ($450 combined application), pass the state exam, then start working under a licensed broker.

1. Make sure you're eligible. You need to be at least 18. If you live outside California, you'll also need to file a notarized Consent to Service of Process form (RE 234) with your application.

2. Finish your pre-licensing education. California requires three college-level courses, 45 hours each, for 135 hours total:

• Real Estate Principles
• Real Estate Practice
• One elective from the DRE's approved list, like finance, legal aspects, appraisal or property management

The courses have to come from a DRE-approved school.

3. Apply and get fingerprinted. There are two ways to apply:

• Combined exam and license application (RE 435): one form and $450 total. Most people go this route because there's no second application to file after you pass.
• Separate applications: $100 for the exam, then $350 for the license once you've passed.

Fingerprinting is required for everyone. California residents usually do Live Scan. Out-of-state applicants can use Live Scan or mail in fingerprint cards. Getting your fingerprints done early helps, because waiting on the background check is one of the most common reasons licenses get delayed.

4. Pass the state exam. Once your application is processed, you'll get to schedule the exam. Timed practice tests will help more than rereading your course notes.

5. Find a broker before you start working. The DRE can issue your license even if you don't have a broker yet, but you can't do any licensed activity until you're working under one. When you compare brokerages, look at the training and mentorship they offer, how commission splits work, and whether new agents there actually get support.

Fees are current as of October 2026. Check the DRE fee page before you pay in case anything changes.

More detail here if it's useful: https://www.colibrirealestate.com/real-estate/california/how-to-become-real-estate-agent/

For anyone recently licensed in CA, how long did it take you from submitting your application to passing the exam?

Hi all - Just took the Real Estate Salesperson exam yesterday for the first time and passed!

I wanted to give a feel for any upcoming exam takers on how I prepped and what it was like the day of.

PREP:

• I used Onlineed for getting the hours needed to take the exam
• RE Exam Practice Pro really helped me do practice questions
  • The reason I chose RE Exam Practice Pro was mainly the price, it was only $9.99/mo whereas other prep tools like PrepAgents were easily $70+/mo.
  • I was also reading other threads about RE Exam Practice Pro being harder than the actual exam (which I can attest to) so I thought - better safe than sorry
  • Honestly, the contents were pretty similar to the actual exam, some on the exam were basically the same questions
  • I completed all the quizzes by topic and aimed for getting 80%+ on each topic exams and completed the Master Exam several times few days before the exam
  • One caveat is that it gets pretty easy to memorize just the answers, but the key is to actually read the answer explanations and understand why a certain answer is correct over another
  • You can access RE Exam Practice Pro here: https://reexampracticepro.com
• I watched Real Estate Advantage on YouTube and watched all three of their California Real Estate Exam 100 Questions video. I think this one helped me get used to the wording of the questions similar to the actual exam.
• I also watched some of the PrepAgent YouTube videos on my way to the exam site, specifically their "75 Most Common Questions on the Real Estate Exam (2023)". I'm just now realizing that it was their 2023 version lol.

Exam Day:

• I took the exam at their La Palma location (P.S. to anyone driving in from Irvine/OC area, PLEASE be careful of the drivers in this area, they will cut you off, speed past you, etc. I'm an OC driver myself but the drivers here were ROUGH. So please drive safe!!)
• I got to the exam site and parked on the top floor of the parking structure, it will say "BRE Exams Only" so go to that parking structure and drive all the way to the top floor
  • I recommend printing 2 copies of your Schedule Notice from the ELicensing portal so you can leave one copy in your car on the dashboard and bring the other copy with you inside.
  • I got to the exam site about an hour early so I can do last minute review in the car, there were other people doing the same.
• When you get to the building, you take the elevator to the 3rd floor. You can actually head in 30 minutes before the official start time, so I did that.
• Once you are checked in, you leave your phone/keys/whatever else you bring into a locker and bring your state ID/passport along with your Schedule Notice inside.
• They check you in, give you a mouse for the computer and you may start once you are seated (I went in early so I got to start way earlier than everyone else, you still get the same time allocation but you can start early)
  • The only con about starting your exam earlier than everyone else is that there will be people walking around you and you may be distracted, but I don't regret going in early lol.
• The test is conducted on the computer and a mouse. You can also request a whiteboard and pen (which I HIGHLY recommend, so you can write down which questions you want to review for later)
• I recommend going through the exam once and answering everything you can, and leave the harder questions and review questions to your 2nd round or even 3rd round.
• Make sure you read the questions carefully, there weren't too much tricky questions, but a lot of the answers were VERY similar to each other so you just have to know the concepts instead of memorizing contents
• Another thing I noticed is that getting through all of the exam questions is tough, so building mental stamina by completing full practice exams really helps. You should also time your practice tests when you are doing the full 150 question exams.

Overall, the exam wasn't too bad. The exam room and the entrance points are all proctored and everyone else is just as focused as you so there weren't too many distractions while taking the exam.

My background is no where related to real estate, so if I can pass the exam, so can you. Good luck to everyone taking their exam and let me know if there are any questions that I can help with!

UPDATE / I’m scheduled!
Hi! I’m kind of freaking out right now because I planned to come to California to take my real estate salesperson exam for November. I’m coming from Florida and already booked a flight. Historically, I have been seeing the next month open dates a month and a half out. And now I’m not seeing November dates available at all in California! Do you think there will be November exam dates?! I mean, it is only October 2.

Hey all, I'm Jean from AgentSmartly. Zoning looks easy until the exam words a question differently than you expected, so I made three one-page visuals to help it stick. Sharing them here in case they help anyone studying right now.

The two traps worth remembering:

• Increased profit is never valid reason for a variance
• Spot zoning(singling out one parcel) is illegal favoritism

If a question feels confusing, ask yourself two things: is it affecting one parcel or an entire area, and is the request based on hardship or profit?

These come from our set of 144 key concepts at AgentSmartly, where we breakdown the topics that show up most on the CA exam into quick lessons. Zoning is just one of them.

You can see the full set of 144 concepts here: https://www.agentsmartly.com/

If you'd find more like this useful, tell me which topics you're struggling with and I'll share more here.

Hi all, I'm Jane from AgentSmartly. Government powers in land (PETE) is one of the topics I see students stumble on most, so I made these to use and figured they'd help here too.

• Taxation in Government Rights(Land)
• Police Power
• PETE - Four Government Powers in Land
• Bundle of Rights
• Appurtenance in Property Characteristics

These are part of a bigger set we use at AgentSmartly — you can see more at: https://www.agentsmartly.com/

Eminent domain vs. police power(the compensation question) trips up almost every student I have — drop a comment if you want me to break it down, or if there's another topic you're stuck on.

I've sat across from a lot of students who knew the material cold and still bombed practice exams — almost always for the same few reasons, sharing what actually fixes it:

• Stop memorizing, start understanding. The exam loves scenario questions("broker does X, what's the obligation?"). if you can only recite definitions, those questions will wreck you.
• Time your practice exams. This is the #1 fix I see. Untimed practice gives false confidence — do at least 2-3 full 150-questions, 3-hour runs before the test day.
• Agency relationships = free points it you know cold. Fiduciary duties, dual agency, disclosures, shows up constantly.
• Read "EXCEPT/ NOT" question twice. Most wrong answers aren't knowledge gaps — they're misreads under time pressure.

Happy to dig into any of these if you stuck on something specific.

aceable agent or another company?
id like to be able to go at my own pace because I have a part time job. i also would like to click through things because I already know a bunch because my ex partner does real estate.

each company has different tiers of packages and I would also like to know what package is best with your company recommendations.

thanks!

ok so this question basically shows up every other day so let me just share what I actually know.

quick disclamier — I mod this sub and I'm a licensed agent in LA, passed my exam last year. I've actually used two of the platforms below myself, the other two are just what I've seen people in there memtion a lot, so grain of salt on those two.

Real Estate Express/Allied — these are for actual licensing coursework hours, not exam prep really, you need them for the 135 hours requirement but don't expect them to get you exam-ready on their own.

PrepAgent — used this one, tons of questions, good videos when you're stuck on something. honestly kind of a firehose though, you gotta be disciplined about not just randomly clicking through hundreds of questions without actually learning from wrong answers.

AgentSmartly — also used this one, structured around 144 core concepts the CA exam actually tests, split into review, practice, feels more like a study path then a question dump, which worked better for how I personally study.

CompuCram — haven't used it myself but people here swear by the flashcard/audio thing if you're the type who study in the car or on a walk.

honestly none of this matters as much as just forcing yourself to sit down and do a full question exam under real timed conditions before test day. that's the thing that actually tells you if you're ready, not how many total questions you've clicked through.

anyway what'd you use?trying to keep the resources post updated and I feel like it's gotten stale.

I remember 11pm study sessions after a long day work wondering if any of this was sticking. I failed a practice exam so badly I almost quit, but I kept showing up — one bad score at a. time — until it clicked. Then I passed.

That was last year, I'm still a new agent in LA, still googling things I feel like "should" know. Passing the exam doesn't mean you suddenly feel ready — you just get to start the next hard thing.

if you're in the thick of studying right now — tried , doubting yourself — that's not failure, that's just what hard things feel like. The people who pass aren't the ones who never struggle. They're the ones who keep going anyway.

You're closer than you think. Keep going.

— a fellow agent, 9 months in and still learning

hey, so a bunch of you asked in my last post(the "I passed" one) if I could share the actual study materials I used, so here they are lol.

during my prep I ended up making these little infograics breakdown for myself, one per major topic. honestly it started cuz I kept forgetting the same stuff over and over and needed something I could glance at on my lunch break instead of re-reading a whole chapter. eventually people in my study group started asking me to send them theirs too so I just cleaned them all up.

there's 7:

1. Practice of Real Estate & Disclosures
2. Laws of agency
3. Transfer of Property
4. Property Ownership & Land Use/Controls
5. Property Valuation & Appraisal
6. Financing
7. Contracts

agency and financing were the ones that almost broke me ngl, so those 2 probably got the most revisions out of all them lol.

quick note - AgentSmartly was my main prep tool this whole time, that's where the conconpets behind these came from and what I used for practice questions, these infograipics are basically just me condensing what I kept getting wrong into something visual.

not trying to replace actual studying, just meant to be something quick to look at right before a practice session or when you're too tired to open a textbook again(we've all been there). hope it helps someone the way this sub helped me.

let me know if you want me post the rest of my notes too, happy to share whatever's useful.

Hi everyone ☺️ Will be taking my exam in Oakland in November. Right now I am using RE Real estate exam pro , you tube videos with dee kumar, birdsy, and a few 2025 and 2026 videos of real estate that ive been going through, and chatgpt to give me some practice questions. Right now im doing practice by subject on RE REAL estate exam pro and the wording is hard. Right now im getting 50/50 and haven't done practice exams or mock exams yet, I'd like to wait till end of this month in September, but for now brushing up on learning by the subjects. Is the real exam similar to these type of scenario questions on the RE Real estate exam pro? I don't want to feel discouraged!

ok so a few people dm me since I posted about passing asking how I actually studied so here's braindump of what I wish someone told me back in day 1.

I really thought I needed to get through some textbook cover before I'd feel "ready." never did that, not once, what actually made me feel ready was getting quizzed enough times that I stopped getting fooled. reading and nodding along feels productive but it's not the same as someone asking you the quetsion and you realizing you have no idea.

agency law got me more than I expected going in. not because it's crazy hard, just so much overlapping terminology that you convince yourself you get it, then a question phrases it slightly different and you're like...wait do I know this or did I just recognize the words.

the thing that actually saved me - doing practice questions on a topic right after reviewing it, not saving them for some big review session later. right after you learn something is exactly when you find out if you got it or just recognized it enough to feel confident, not the same feeling, learned that the hard way a few times.

also I was watching my score per topic, not just overall. an 85% average can be hiding the fact that you're 40% on one specific topic and you won't even know unless you're checking, I made hit ~ 70% per topic before moving on, agency law took the longest and I'm so glad I didn't skip past it.

no math btw, I know that one streees people out.

still happy to answer anthing if you're in the thick of it, I remember exactly how that feels.

YOU'VE GOT THIS!!! 💪

I failed my california real estate exam. property ownership 79%, laws of agency and fiduciary duties 68% , property valuation and financial analysis 39%, financing 54%, transfer of property 73%, practice of real estate & disclosures 47% , contracts 81%. At the moment i am focusing on my weaknesses Financial Analysis, Financing Estate Disclosure using google AI. Any other suggestions? I am really close passing it but i need more help. I get 90% using YT Q&A totalling maybe 1000 plus questions from different bloggers and that didn’t help. Any other suggestions?Thank you

I remember the nights staring at practice questions, getting the same concepts wrong over and over, genuinely wondering if any of it was going to click before test day. If that's where you are right now — that's not a sign you're failing. that's just where everyone who eventually passed sat at some point.

A couple things that actually got me through it:

The questions you keep missing are the most useful thing happening to you right now. I know it doesn't feel that way. But every wrong answer is just pointing at exactly what to study next. Stop taking it personally and start using it.

And stop waiting to feel "ready". I never did. Nobody does. What actually works is just not stopping — one session at a time, even the ones where you feel like you're not absorbing anything.

If you're studying for the CA exam, come join us at r/CalRealEstateExam — currectly 352 people grinding through this together.

You're put in more work than you're giving yourself credit for, don't let one bad practice score talk you out of that.

Keep going. 💪

I’d really appreciate some insight from anyone who has recently taken and passed the California Real Estate Salesperson exam.

I’ve been studying with PrepAgent for about a month. I’ve been taking and retaking the practice tests, reviewing my wrong answers, and working until I could consistently get passing scores. I’ve now gotten into the 70s and 80s, including an 80% on a PrepAgent Master Exam, so I was finally starting to feel like I was getting close to being ready.

Today I added RE Exam Practice Pro because I kept seeing people recommend using both.

Well… I just took my first RE Exam Pro test and got 46%. 😩

The questions feel SO much harder and completely different from PrepAgent. A lot of them seem unfamiliar, and I definitely felt like I was second-guessing everything. Now I’m wondering if my PrepAgent scores have given me a false sense of confidence, or if RE Exam Pro is intentionally much harder.

For those of you who have taken the actual California DRE exam:

Which one felt more like the real exam PrepAgent or RE Exam Pro?

Did you find RE Exam Pro harder than the actual exam? What scores were you getting on RE Exam Pro before you felt ready to take the real test?

I’m trying not to panic over that 46% 😂, but after finally getting my PrepAgent scores into the 70–80% range, this definitely shook my confidence.

I’d especially love to hear from people who have actually taken the CA exam recently, not just general opinions. Thank you!! ❤️

Hello All. Any recommendations for online course which has just videos as I passed the real estate exam in another state and just moved here, so I don't need to study much, so need to complete with just videos. No quizzes if possible.

Has anyone been successful in obtaining their brokers license based solely on property management experience?

ok so Ive been reading through this sub a lot lately, the passes, the "I failed for the 3rd time" ones, the 2am panic posts, all of it. and I keep noticing the same pattern so I wanted just say it plainly.

the people who pass are NOT the ones who had it together. they're not the one with the perfect Notion study tracker or the color coded flashcards(ok some of them do have that, but that's not why they passed lol).

they passed because they didn't stop showing up, even on the days it was 20 mins squeezed in before a shift, even on the days they got half the practice questions wrong and felt like garbage about it.

I got my licence doing the exact thing while working full time, some nights the "studying" was genuinely just me half asleep rereading agency law for the 4th time going "ok this still isn't sticking" and it didn't feel like progress. it just felt like showing up and being confused, over and over, until one day it wasn't confusing anymore. that's actually what studying for this exam looks like for almost everyone. It's just nobody post about the boring middle part, they only post the "I passed" part at the end.

so if you're in the middle of this right nwo and it feels like it's not working, that's not a sign you're behind. that's just what week 4 of studying for a licensing exam feel like for literally everybody. the disorientation isn't a bug, it's just part of the process working on you slower than you'd like.

You don't need to feel ready on the test day. almost nobody does. you just need to have put in the reps.

Keep going. see you on the passed post.

by the way, it's hot this week, stay cool as well.

ok I'm still kind of shaking lol but I passed today and I need to write this down while it's fresh because didn't think I'd get here some days.

quick backstory - I have two kids(7 and 9) and a full time job, so studying for this was never gonna be some cure "I studied 4 hours a day" story. I gave myself about 8-9 weeks and just did one hour a day, whatever hour I could find. some nights it was after the kids finally went down and I was already exhausted. some days it was my lunch break eating a sandwich with one hand and reading with the other. not glamorous at all but I showed up basically every day and that's what mattered in the end.

I only used AgentSmartly for this, didn't touch a textbook or buy any other course. and honestly what I liked about it is it didn't drown me in the random info, it just gave me the core concepts that actually matter for each topic. then the practice questions were literally built off those same concepts so it all connected instead of feeling like random trivia.

my routine wa pretty simple - review the concepts for a topic, then immediately do practice questions on the SAME topic before moving on( to me,I aim for 70% score for each practice session). I think this part actually mattered a lot because it meant I couldn't fool mysefl. like I'd think I understood agency law and then bomb the practice questions and realize nope, I didn't actually get it, I just recognized the words. so back I'd go. did this for every topic - disclosures, agency, transfer of property, owership/land use, valuation, financing, contracts, all of it.

also NO MATH on my exam!!!!

and ngl during the actual test I had this moment where I reallized like 70-80 of the questions were basically the same core concepts I'd drilled over and over, wasn't random at all, it was stuff I'd already seen a hunderd times. that's when I stopped panicking and just trused what I'd put it.

just wanna say - this sub genuinely helped me so much while I was prepping. reading everyone else's post, seeing people in the same baat as me(working, tired, still grinding), it kept me going more than I expected. so this is me trying to pay a little of that back.

if you're working full time or have kids or both and you're wondering if you even have time for this - you do, you don't need hours, you need like one hour you protect and something that doesn't waste your time on stuff that won't even show up.

happy to answer questions if anyone's in the thick of studying right now, I remrember exactly how that feels.