The Commission is pleased to announce that the North Carolina Real Estate License Examination is changing, effective April 1, 2019.
To qualify for a North Carolina real estate license, an applicant must pass the License Examination. Since North Carolina is a “broker only” license state, there is only one license examination; it is an entry-level examination designed to determine minimal competency to practice real estate brokerage.
The examination consists of separate National and State sections. The National section is developed and provided by professional testing service PSI Services LLC (PSI). The State section is developed by the North Carolina Real Estate Commission. Both sections of the license examination are administered by PSI to only North Carolina license applicants.
In 2015, PSI embarked on a three-year evaluation of the National section content. The first phase of that project was to solicit feedback from practitioners. Salespersons and brokers from every state provided information as to their duties, tasks, and requisite knowledge. Subject matter experts then compared that feedback to the examination question bank, to determine where questions should be added, changed, or deleted. Once questions were modified or added, they were vetted for effectiveness.
In 2018, the North Carolina Real Estate Commission embarked on a similar evaluation process for the State section of the examination, beginning by creating an examination task force comprised of educators and practitioners from across the state.
Beginning April 1, 2019, the resulting revised examination will be administered to examination candidates. The National section will consist of 80 questions. To pass the National section, an individual must achieve a score of 71% or higher. The State section will consist of 40 questions; an individual must receive a score of 72.5% or higher to pass the section. The examination content outline is provided in the Commission’s Real Estate Licensing in North Carolina booklet.
Changes to examination content directly impact the 75-hour Broker Prelicensing Course. The Commission created a revised Prelicensing Course Syllabus to reflect changes in the examination content. Schools and instructors that offer the Prelicensing course were required to begin instructing courses based on the new syllabus no later than March 1, 2019.
Detailed information about the application and licensing process is provided in the Commission’s Real Estate Licensing in North Carolina booklet. If you have further questions, contact the Commission’s Education and Licensing Division at 919-875-3700.