Nebraska Broker Law

What the Nebraska portion actually is

The Nebraska broker examination is delivered by Pearson VUE. Every structural figure below is read out of the Nebraska Real Estate Candidate Handbook #092800, revision 4/2025, in which both Nebraska state content outlines carry an effective date of September 1, 2023.

On top of the scored items each portion carries pretest items. The handbook's own words about the state portion: "The state-specific portion of the real estate examination is comprised of fifty (50) scored items for broker candidates. The examination also contains five to ten (5–10) pretest items. The pretest items are not identified and will not affect a candidate's score in any way."

Read that carefully, because it changes your pacing. You will face somewhere between 55 and 60 Nebraska questions in 90 minutes and be scored on 50 of them, with no way to tell which. If you plan the state portion as fifty questions in ninety minutes you will give yourself 108 seconds each and run out of clock; the honest budget is closer to 90 seconds per question. Note also that the national portion carries a different pretest figure — the handbook says the national/general examination "contains five (5) pretest items" — so the two portions are not symmetrical.

The passing standard is a percentage, not a scaled score. The handbook states it twice: "The passing score required on each examination is 75%," and, on license issuance, "a passing score of 75% for salespersons and for brokers." Numeric scores are reported only to failing candidates; a pass comes back as the word "pass." Keep the score report for any portion you pass, because the Commission requires the original report for both portions when you apply for issuance.

The area weights, and the facing page that will cost you 30 percent

Nebraska publishes a separate broker state outline. It is not a shared document with an extra broker column bolted on; it is its own page, printed as Outlines 10 in handbook #092800, and the salesperson outline sits on the facing page as Outlines 09. The two carry the same five areas, in the same order, with the same lettered subtopics under each. Exactly one thing differs.

Areas III and IV swap counts between the two tiers. The broker is tested more heavily on the statutory requirements governing licensee activity — advertising, supervision, trust accounts, the 72-hour rule — and less heavily on agency. The salesperson is the reverse. Everything else on the two pages is identical, right down to the lettered subtopics, which is precisely why the wrong page is so easy to grab and so expensive to grab: it inverts 30 percent of your exam. Both tiers are 50 scored items plus 5 to 10 pretest items, so the totals match and give you no warning. Check the page you are holding: if the agency block reads 17–18, you are revising the salesperson exam.

Two of these five numbers are ours, not the vendor's

Look again at the column headed "as published." Two of the five per-area figures are printed as ranges, not counts — Area II as "7-8 ITEMS" and Area III as "17-18 ITEMS." A range is not a count, and you cannot build a revision plan on a range without choosing a number.

The single integers this book uses for those two areas — 8 for Area II and 17 for Area III — are range endpoints chosen because they are the pair that makes the five areas sum to the published total of 50. Five plus eight plus seventeen plus fifteen plus five is fifty. No other combination of the two ranges reaches the published total. They are not midpoints: 7–8 and 17–18 have midpoints of 7.5 and 17.5, which are not item counts at all. And they are not figures Pearson VUE printed. Wherever this chapter prints a derived integer, the verbatim published figure sits beside it, so the derivation can never be mistaken for a publication.

What this means for you in practice is small but real: Area II may be worth seven items and Area III eighteen. If it is, the balance tips slightly further toward Area III, which is already the largest block. Nothing in your revision plan should depend on the difference.

What the vendor does not publish at all

Handbook #092800 contains no statute reference list. Not a short one, not an unlinked one. No citation to Neb. Rev. Stat., to Title 299 of the Nebraska Administrative Code, or to any section number of any kind appears anywhere in its 23 pages. That is worth stating plainly rather than quietly filling in, because it has a consequence: there is no vendor list to check against the statute books, and no way to confirm from the handbook that a provision you were taught is still in force.

Every statutory and regulatory citation in this chapter is therefore ours. Each was read out of the current text of the Nebraska Revised Statutes on the Legislature's own site, or out of the Nebraska Real Estate Commission's consolidated Title 299 rules manual, and none of them should be attributed to Pearson VUE.

The structural fact to fix before you revise anything

Nebraska's real estate agency law is not in the licensing chapter.

The Nebraska Real Estate License Act is Neb. Rev. Stat. ch. 81, art. 8, §§ 81-885 to 81-885.56. That is where licensing, unfair trade practices, trust accounts, subdivision sales and the Commission itself live. It is what most people mean when they say "Nebraska real estate law."

The agency sections that supply Area IV — 15 of 50 items, 30 percent of your state exam — are §§ 76-2401 to 76-2430, in chapter 76. A different chapter of a different title of the statutes. Limited agency, the default relationship, the duties of a seller's agent and a buyer's agent, dual agency, subagency, compensation, and the written-agreement rules are all there and none of them are in the License Act. A candidate who reads the License Act cover to cover and stops has no source at all for the second-largest block on the exam.

Two housekeeping points about those ranges. Within the License Act, §§ 81-885.32 and 81-885.47 are repealed — 81-885.32 by Laws 1978, LB 361, and 81-885.47 by Laws 2009, LB 30 — and nothing in this chapter rests on either. Within the agency range, no section is repealed, and § 76-2422.01 (Laws 2011, LB25) is the only added section.

The regulator throughout is the Nebraska Real Estate Commission, whose office is in Lincoln. The statutes call it the State Real Estate Commission; the Commission calls itself the NREC, and the outline uses that abbreviation.

Area I — Duties and Powers of the Real Estate Commission (5 items, 10%)

Five items, and the outline prints three lettered subtopics for them: general powers, investigations and complaints and hearings, and disciplinary action broken into suspension/revocation/probation and fines/sanctions. Five items across three subtopics means the disciplinary half carries more than its share, and in practice the two figures that show up most often are the twenty days and the fine cap.

A. General powers of the Commission

The operative rule on composition. Neb. Rev. Stat. § 81-885.07(1)(a) creates the State Real Estate Commission as the Secretary of State, who serves as chairperson, plus six members appointed by the Governor. The six divide as follows: three are active licensed brokers of at least five years' standing, one from each congressional district; the other three are appointed at large — one representing the public, one a salesperson of at least three years, and one a broker of at least five.

What it means in practice. Nebraska builds its regulator out of a constitutional officer and six appointees, and the industry majority is deliberately diluted by a public member. Licensees elect nobody. The Attorney General holds no seat on the Commission; under § 81-885.09 that office supplies the Commission with legal opinions instead, which is a service relationship and not a seat.

Terms. § 81-885.07(2) directs the Governor to appoint a successor for a term of six years, and limits an appointed member to one six-year term, in addition to any partial term served filling a vacancy. At least four members must be present at any official meeting, and the action of a majority of members is the action of the Commission. A member may not hold any other elective or appointive state or federal office while serving. The office is maintained in Lincoln, and the Commission employs a director who keeps its records.

The trap. Distractors offer a board elected by licensees, a board appointed by the Legislature from an industry association's list, or a board chaired by the Attorney General. Each is a governance model in use somewhere. None is Nebraska's, and the tell in every one of them is that the Secretary of State has disappeared from the chair.

How broadly the general powers run, and how they are exercised. The outline's first subtopic is worded as broadly as the statute is, and it helps to see the three modes the Commission actually uses, because the exam keeps them apart. There are rules, promulgated as Title 299 of the Nebraska Administrative Code. There is adjudication, in the complaint-and-hearing process of §§ 81-885.24 and 81-885.25. And there are orders, including the cease and desist orders that reach unlicensed persons under § 81-885.03.

Notice how the first of those connects to the second, because it explains nearly every citation later in this chapter. Almost no Title 299 rule carries a penalty of its own. A rule reaches a licensee because breaching it is "demonstrating negligence, incompetency, or unworthiness" under § 81-885.24(29), which is an unfair trade practice and therefore a ground for discipline. That is the mechanism to hold: the rules describe the conduct; § 81-885.24 supplies the consequence. When you meet a citation of the form "299 NAC 5-003.xx" in Area III or Area IV, it is arriving through subdivision (29).

B. Investigations, complaints, and hearings

The operative rule. § 81-885.24 opens with the trigger: the Commission may act upon its own motion, and shall act upon the sworn complaint in writing of any person.

Two things follow from that sentence, and both are examinable. First, the duty to investigate is owed to any person — the complainant need not be a client of the licensee, need not have been party to the transaction, and need not be the licensee's own designated broker. Second, the Commission's track is independent of the courts: no civil judgment, no criminal conviction and no pending lawsuit is a precondition. The Nebraska Supreme Court made the point from the other direction in Clark v. Tyrrell, holding that double jeopardy has no application to discipline under this section.

The procedure that carries the item. Before the Commission censures, fines, suspends or revokes, § 81-885.25(1) requires it to send the licensee a copy of the complaint containing the charges and to give a hearing, unless the licensee waives the hearing and executes a consent order. § 81-885.25(2) then requires written notice of the date and place of the hearing at least twenty days before that date. Where the licensee is an associate broker or a salesperson, the Commission also mails a copy of the notice to the employing broker's last known business address — so the broker learns of it as a matter of statute, not as a courtesy. § 81-885.30 provides for appeal.

The trap. Ten, thirty and sixty days are all plausible-looking administrative notice periods and all wrong here. Twenty is the number, and it is a minimum before the hearing date, not a deadline for the licensee to respond.

C. Disciplinary action, fines and sanctions

The operative rule. § 81-885.10 gives the Commission full power over licenses and licensee activity. It may censure, suspend or revoke, enter consent orders, and issue cease and desist orders, and it may impose a civil fine either alone or in combination with any of those.

The cap is the item, and it is not the flat number candidates expect. § 81-885.10(1) lets the Commission fine a licensee for each violation alleged in a complaint on which it finds guilt, and caps the total for each complaint at the greater of five thousand dollars or the total commission the licensee earned in each transaction the complaint covers.

Where this bites, and why the design matters. A flat per-violation ceiling lets a licensee treat the fine as a cost of doing business whenever the commission at stake is larger than the ceiling. Nebraska's formula removes that arithmetic: on a small transaction the five-thousand-dollar floor governs, and on a large one the commission earned governs. It is a floor plus a disgorgement, not a fixed penalty. The Commission also keeps these powers over a licensee's past acts whether or not the person remains licensed, so surrendering or letting a license lapse does not end the exposure.

A different ceiling governs unlicensed activity. Under § 81-885.03, an unlicensed person who violates a cease and desist order is exposed to the greater of one thousand dollars per day or all money earned as commission. Two tracks, two formulas, two different numbers — and the exam will offer you one track's number as a distractor on the other track's question.