Connecticut Real Estate Broker Exam — All Questions

Which body is created within the Department of Consumer Protection and authorizes the department to issue Connecticut real estate licenses?

• a.The Connecticut Association of Realtors
• b.The Connecticut Real Estate Commission✓
• c.The Office of the Secretary of the State
• d.The Connecticut Department of Banking

C.G.S. Section 20-311a(a) says "There is created in the Department of Consumer Protection the Connecticut Real Estate Commission," and Section 20-311b(b) says the commission "shall authorize the department to issue licenses to real estate licensees." The commission also administers licensure, renewal, suspension and revocation under Section 20-311b(c). A trade association is a private membership body: it can hold its own members to a code of ethics, but it has no power to grant or take away a state license. The Secretary of the State receives the formation and registration filings of business entities, which is a corporate filing function rather than an occupational licensing one. The Department of Banking supervises lenders and mortgage brokers, so a lending complaint may belong there, but a brokerage licensing matter does not.

Under the exceptions in C.G.S. Section 20-329, which person may perform the acts of a real estate broker in Connecticut without holding a license?

• a.A friend who negotiates a purchase for a share of the savings
• b.An owner who sells or leases real property that the owner owns✓
• c.A salesperson whose license lapsed while renewal is pending
• d.An assistant who shows listings for an hourly wage

Section 20-329(1) excepts "any person who as owner or lessor performs any of the acts enumerated in section 20-311, with reference to property owned, leased or sought to be acquired or leased by the person." Owners acting for themselves are not acting "for another," which is the element Section 20-311(15) makes central to engaging in the real estate business. Negotiating another person's purchase for a share of the savings is acting for another for valuable consideration, so it needs a license no matter how the payment is described. A lapsed license is not a license: Section 20-314(f) sets out reinstatement, and until reinstatement the former licensee may not practice. And an assistant who shows listings is negotiating and soliciting rather than doing clerical work, so the narrow clerical exception in Section 20-329(11) does not reach that conduct.

Before being admitted to the Connecticut broker examination, an applicant must show active engagement as a licensed salesperson under a supervising licensee for a minimum period of:

• a.One year, with at least 2,500 hours of work in the real estate business
• b.Three years, with at least 1,500 hours in the real estate business✓
• c.Two years, with at least 1,000 hours of work in the real estate business
• d.Five years, with at least 3,000 hours of work in the real estate business

C.G.S. Section 20-314(d)(1)(A)(i) requires the applicant to have "been actively engaged as a licensed real estate salesperson under the supervision of a supervising licensee, who is licensed in this state, for a minimum period of three years immediately preceding the date the applicant filed such applicant's application, during which period such salesperson engaged in the real estate business for at least one thousand five hundred hours," certified by the supervising licensee. Two years is the figure many neighboring states use and many study guides repeat, but Connecticut's statute says three. The one-year and five-year figures likewise appear nowhere in Section 20-314, and no hour total other than 1,500 is stated. Subparagraph (A)(vi) adds a separate requirement of at least four closed transactions in those same three years, and subdivision (2) waives the two elective courses only for an applicant with at least twenty transactions in the preceding five years.

To renew a Connecticut real estate license, a licensee may satisfy the continuing education requirement by completing approved courses consisting of not less than:

• a.Twenty hours of classroom study in each two-year renewal period
• b.Eight hours of classroom study in each two-year renewal period
• c.Twelve hours of classroom study in each two-year period✓
• d.Six hours of classroom study in each calendar year of the term

C.G.S. Section 20-319(b) establishes two-year renewal licenses and allows the continuing education requirement to be met by "a course or courses, approved by the commission or department, of continuing education in current real estate practices and licensing laws, including, but not limited to, practices and laws concerning common interest communities, consisting of not less than twelve hours of classroom study." Eight hours and twenty hours are not the Connecticut figure, and the statute states a single two-year total rather than an annual quota, so an answer framed as six hours per calendar year misstates both the number and the cycle. The same subsection allows the requirement to be met instead by passing a written examination on current practice and law, and it charges a biennial eight-dollar continuing education processing fee.

Recovery from the Connecticut Real Estate Guaranty Fund is capped, in the aggregate, at what amount in connection with any one real estate transaction or claim?

• a.Twenty-five thousand dollars✓
• b.One hundred thousand dollars
• c.Fifty thousand dollars
• d.Ten thousand dollars

C.G.S. Section 20-324a lets a person aggrieved by a licensee's embezzlement, false pretenses, forgery, fraud, misrepresentation or deceit "recover, upon approval by the commission of an application brought pursuant to the provisions of section 20-324e compensation in an amount not exceeding in the aggregate the sum of twenty-five thousand dollars in connection with any one real estate transaction or claim, regardless of the number of persons aggrieved or parcels of real estate involved." The aggregate wording is what makes the other figures wrong in both directions: the cap is not raised by adding claimants, so ten thousand understates and fifty and one hundred thousand overstate the single statutory ceiling. Section 20-324e(b) requires a valid Superior Court judgment first, and Section 20-324e(f) bars the licensee from a new license until the fund is repaid with interest.

When the commission disciplines a Connecticut licensee under C.G.S. Section 20-320, any fine it collects is:

• a.Retained by the commission as operating revenue
• b.Deposited in the Real Estate Guaranty Fund✓
• c.Paid to the complaining consumer as restitution
• d.Remitted to the town where the violation occurred

Section 20-320(a) lets the commission or department suspend or revoke a license and, in addition to or in lieu of that, "impose a fine of not more than five thousand dollars per violation," and it closes with the direction that "any fine collected pursuant to this section shall be deposited in the Real Estate Guaranty Fund established pursuant to section 20-324a." A fine is therefore not restitution: a consumer recovers through the Section 20-324e application process after obtaining a judgment, not out of the fine itself. Nor does the money become commission revenue, since the statute names the fund as its destination. And nothing in the chapter directs any part of a fine to a municipality; towns collect the conveyance tax share under Section 12-494, not licensing fines.

Under C.G.S. Section 20-312(e), a Connecticut real estate team's initial registration with the department is valid for:

• a.One year, for an initial registration fee of $565✓
• b.Three years, for an initial registration fee of $565
• c.One year, for an initial registration fee of $25
• d.Two years, for an initial registration fee of $375

Section 20-312(e) provides that "each initial registration shall be valid for a period of one year and be subject to renewal for additional one-year periods," and that the team pays "an initial registration fee of five hundred sixty-five dollars when the team files its initial registration, and a registration renewal fee of three hundred seventy-five dollars." The $375 figure is therefore the renewal, not the initial fee, and no registration under this subsection runs two or three years; licenses renew biennially under Section 20-319(a), but team registrations do not. The $25 fee belongs to Section 20-319a, which charges that amount for a change to or transfer of a team's registration and for a salesperson's or associate broker's transfer of affiliation. Team registration was added by Public Act 21-167, effective January 1, 2022.