Idaho Real Estate Broker Exam — All Questions

Which body licenses Idaho real estate brokers and adopts the rules governing their practice?

• a.The recorder of the county where the property lies
• b.The Idaho Association of Realtors
• c.The Idaho Department of Insurance
• d.The Idaho Real Estate Commission✓

Idaho Code 54-2005 creates the Idaho Real Estate Commission "for the purpose of administering this chapter," and 54-2007 charges it with "administering and enforcing all provisions of this chapter" and expressly vests it with authority to make and enforce the rules it deems necessary. Licensing and rulemaking are therefore state functions carried out by the Commission, which now sits within the Division of Occupational and Professional Licenses. The state Realtors group is a private trade association: membership is voluntary and its code binds only members, so it can neither grant nor revoke a license. The Department of Insurance regulates a different industry entirely. The county recorder maintains the public record of instruments affecting title under Title 55, chapter 8 — a record of what happened to land, not of who is qualified to broker it.

The largest civil penalty the Idaho Real Estate Commission may impose on a licensee who violates the license law is:

• a.One thousand dollars
• b.Two thousand five hundred dollars
• c.Five thousand dollars✓
• d.Twenty-five thousand dollars

Idaho Code 54-2059(1) lets the Commission "temporarily suspend or permanently revoke licenses," issue a formal reprimand, and "impose a civil penalty in an amount not to exceed five thousand dollars ($5,000)" against a licensee found to have violated the Idaho Code, the Commission's rules, or any Commission order. One thousand and two thousand five hundred dollars are both under the statutory ceiling and would understate the Commission's reach. Twenty-five thousand overstates it: the only ten-thousand-dollar figure in the chapter is in 54-2059(2) and 54-2065, which reach a limited liability company or corporation that acted without any license at all, and nothing in the chapter reaches twenty-five thousand. Civil penalties collected are credited to the occupational licenses fund and spent on Idaho real estate education.