The Louisiana Civil Law System
Area IV is worth 13–15 items — a quarter of the state exam — and it is the reason a common-law study guide is not merely mis-weighted for Louisiana but wrong. Louisiana's private law descends from the civil-law tradition, and the exam uses its vocabulary: immovables rather than real property, usufruct rather than life estate, servitudes rather than easements. Everything below cites the Civil Code article, because that is how Louisiana practitioners and the exam refer to it.
Classification of Things
Article 448 divides things into common, public and private; corporeals and incorporeals; and movables and immovables. Article 462 makes tracts of land, with their component parts, immovables, and Article 463 identifies those component parts: buildings, other constructions permanently attached to the ground, standing timber, and unharvested crops or ungathered fruits of trees — when they belong to the owner of the ground. When they belong to someone else, Article 464 makes buildings and standing timber separate immovables. Article 466 treats things attached to a building that serve to complete a building of its general type as component parts, listing doors, shutters, gutters, cabinetry and the plumbing, heating, cooling and electrical systems. Article 470 calls rights and actions applying to immovables — servitudes, mineral rights, petitory and possessory actions — incorporeal immovables, and Article 475 defines movables residually as everything the law does not consider immovable.
Rights in Immovables
Article 477 defines ownership as the right conferring direct, immediate and exclusive authority over a thing; Article 478 calls ownership burdened with a usufruct the naked ownership. A usufruct (Article 535) is a real right of limited duration on the property of another; over a nonconsumable such as a house the usufructuary may possess it and take its utility, profits and advantages under the obligation of preserving its substance and acting as a prudent administrator (Article 539). It expires at the death of the usufructuary (Article 607), and a usufruct in favor of a juridical person cannot exceed thirty years (Article 608). Habitation (Article 630) is the nontransferable real right of a natural person to dwell in the house of another; Article 637 makes it neither transferable nor heritable and Article 638 ends it at the holder's death. The right of use (Article 639) is the deliberate contrast: Article 641 allows it for a natural person or a legal entity, Article 643 makes it transferable and Article 644 makes it survive the holder's death. A predial servitude (Article 646) is a charge on a servient estate for the benefit of a dominant estate, and the two estates must belong to different owners; Article 654 divides them into natural, legal and voluntary; Article 650 makes the servitude pass with the dominant estate and continue to burden the servient estate when ownership changes; and Article 753 extinguishes it by nonuse for ten years. Building restrictions (Article 775) are charges imposed by the owner under a feasible general plan; Article 781 bars any action for injunction or damages after two years from the commencement of a noticeable violation, after which the immovable is freed of the restriction violated.
Co-ownership, Community Property, and Succession
Article 797 calls ownership of the same thing by two or more persons ownership in indivision and presumes their shares equal. Article 805 lets a co-owner freely lease, alienate or encumber his own undivided share but requires the consent of all for the entire thing, and Article 807 gives any co-owner the right to demand partition. On the marital side, Article 2327 makes the community of acquets and gains the legal regime; Article 2336 gives each spouse a present undivided one-half interest; Article 2338 defines community property and Article 2341 separate property; Article 2340 presumes things possessed during the regime to be community, rebuttably. Article 2346 lets each spouse act alone as to community property generally, but Article 2347 requires the concurrence of both spouses to alienate, encumber or lease community immovables, timber, furnishings in the family home, substantially all the assets of a community enterprise, and jointly registered movables. On death, Article 873 recognizes two kinds of succession, testate (Article 874) and intestate (Article 875); Article 880 devolves undisposed property on descendants, ascendants, collaterals and the spouse; and Article 890 gives the surviving spouse, where descendants survive, a usufruct over the decedent's share of the community that terminates on the survivor's death or remarriage, whichever comes first. Ownership may also be acquired by acquisitive prescription: ten years with good faith and just title (Articles 3473 and 3475), or thirty years without either (Article 3486).
Obligations, Sales, and Leases
Article 1833 defines the authentic act — a writing executed before a notary in the presence of two witnesses and signed by each party, each witness and the notary — and Article 1835 makes it full proof of the agreement against the parties and their heirs; Article 1834 saves a defective one as an act under private signature. Article 2440 requires a sale or promise of sale of an immovable to be made by authentic act or by act under private signature, and Article 2456 transfers ownership between the parties as soon as they agree on the thing and the price is fixed, even before delivery or payment; Article 2442 makes the act effective against third persons only once filed for registry. Article 2624 treats a sum given in connection with a contract to sell as a deposit on account of the price unless the parties expressly stipulate earnest money, in which case either party may recede — the buyer by forfeiting it, the seller by returning it plus an equal amount. Article 2589 allows the seller of a corporeal immovable to rescind for lesion beyond moiety when the price is less than one half of fair market value; Article 2591 lets the buyer keep the property by paying the difference, and Article 2595 gives a peremptive period of one year from the sale. Article 2520 states the warranty against redhibitory defects, with rescission where the defect makes the thing useless or so inconvenient that the buyer would not have bought it, and a reduction of the price for a lesser defect; Article 2521 withholds the warranty for defects known or reasonably discoverable, and Article 2534 sets the prescriptive periods. R.S. 9:2941 defines the bond for deed as a contract to sell in which the price is paid in installments and title is delivered after a stipulated sum is paid. On leases, Article 2681 allows an oral or written lease; Article 2721 reconducts a fixed-term lease when the lessee stays on without opposition (one week for a term longer than a week, thirty days for an agricultural lease) and Article 2723 makes the reconducted term month to month for a nonagricultural lease of a month or longer; R.S. 9:3251 requires a residential lessor to return the deposit, or an itemized statement of what is retained, within one month after the lease terminates.
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State-specific details
State exam facts
- State regulator
- Louisiana Real Estate Commission (LREC)
- Exam vendor
- Pearson VUE
- Prelicensing education
- 150 hours (Real Estate 201 – 90h, Real Estate 202 – 30h, Real Estate 203 Broker Responsibilities – 30h)
- Passing score
- 75 scaled (of 100) on each portion
- Scored questions
- 135
- Time limit
- 240 minutes
Who regulates real estate brokers in Louisiana?
The Louisiana Real Estate Commission (LREC) licenses brokers and salespersons under the Louisiana Real Estate License Law, La. R.S. 37:1430 et seq. LREC's exams are delivered by Pearson VUE, which replaced PSI.
What experience do I need before the Louisiana broker exam?
La. R.S. 37:1437(C)(1) requires a broker applicant to have first been licensed for four years, with two of those four years occurring immediately preceding submission of the broker license application, plus 150 hours of approved broker education — at least 30 hours of it on broker responsibilities (the Real Estate 203 course).
How is the Louisiana broker exam structured?
135 scored questions in 240 minutes: an 80-question national portion in 150 minutes and a 55-question Louisiana state portion in 90 minutes, plus 5–10 unscored pretest items. Brokers must reach a scaled score of 75 out of 100 on each portion (salespersons need 70). That scaled score is not a percentage of questions answered correctly.
What does the Louisiana state portion actually test?
Pearson VUE content outline #091901 splits the 55 items five ways: the Commission's duties and powers (4–6), licensing requirements (7–9), statutes governing licensee activities (13–15), the Louisiana civil law system (13–15) and the Louisiana law of agency (13–15). Because Louisiana is a civil-law state, half the exam is civil-law and agency material — immovables, usufruct, servitudes, lesion beyond moiety, redhibition, bond for deed, reconduction, the authentic act and La. R.S. 9:3891–3899.
Sources: https://lrec.gov, https://www.pearsonvue.com/content/dam/VUE/vue/en/documents/publications/091900.pdf, https://www.pearsonvue.com/content/dam/VUE/vue/en/documents/publications/091901.pdf, https://legis.la.gov/legis/Law.aspx?d=93259
In the Louisiana Real Estate Broker guide: A 60-question national practice exam, with a key that explains all four options and not just the right one. Practice here stays free.