Louisiana Real Estate Broker Exam — All Questions

To qualify for a Louisiana broker license, an applicant must generally have been actively licensed for at least:

• a.2 years licensed, plus a 30-hour broker responsibilities course
• b.1 year licensed, plus 90 hours of prelicense instruction
• c.4 years licensed, 2 immediately preceding, plus 150 hours✓
• d.6 months as an unlicensed assistant, plus 60 hours of instruction

R.S. 37:1437(C)(1)(a)(i) requires a broker applicant to have first been licensed for four years, with two of the four occurring immediately preceding submission of the application, and to have completed at least 150 hours of approved instruction; Subparagraph (b) requires at least 30 of those hours to emphasize broker responsibilities. LAC 46:LXVII §5331(B) delivers that as Real Estate 201 (90 hours), Real Estate 202 (30 hours), and the mandatory Real Estate 203 broker responsibilities course (30 hours). Two years understates the licensure period by half, and the 30-hour course it names is one component of the requirement rather than the whole of it. One year with 90 hours describes the salesperson standard in R.S. 37:1437(C)(4)(a), not the broker standard. And time worked as an unlicensed assistant cannot count at all: the statute measures years of active licensure, so an unlicensed period contributes nothing however many classroom hours accompany it.

An unlicensed person, for a fee, performs a single act of real estate activity for another. Under R.S. 37:1436:

• a.No violation occurs unless the person holds himself out to the public as a broker
• b.No violation occurs unless the person performs three or more such acts in a year
• c.The single act is itself a violation of the license law✓
• d.A violation occurs only if the transaction actually closes and a fee is paid

R.S. 37:1436(D) says it in terms: anyone who offers, attempts, agrees to perform, or performs any single act described in the Chapter for another with the expectation of valuable consideration is deemed a licensee within its meaning, and the commission of a single act by a person not licensed constitutes a violation. Holding oneself out as a broker is not the trigger; the statute reaches the conduct, so a person who never advertises at all is caught by the first act he performs. There is likewise no tolerance of a few transactions before the law applies — a numerical threshold would let an unlicensed person work part of every year with impunity. And closing is irrelevant, because Subsection B reaches activity undertaken in the expectation or upon the promise of receiving a fee, whether or not the deal is ever completed.

Which of these may lawfully be done in Louisiana without a real estate license?

• a.An owner selling or leasing property that she owns herself✓
• b.A neighbor paid a finder's fee for producing a buyer for a house
• c.An assistant negotiating lease terms on behalf of a brokerage's client
• d.A relocation company collecting a fee for referring a buyer to a broker

R.S. 37:1438(A)(1) and (A)(5) place the owner outside the licensing chapter entirely: an unlicensed person who is the owner or lessor of the property and performs acts of ownership regarding it, or any entity that sells, exchanges, leases, or manages its own property, needs no license. The exemption turns on acting for oneself, which is exactly what the other three do not do. A neighbor paid to produce a buyer is performing an act for another in the expectation of consideration, the conduct R.S. 37:1436(B) makes unlawful without a license. An assistant may perform the narrow clerical and showing tasks listed in R.S. 37:1438(A)(6), but negotiating lease terms is not among them. And a relocation company demanding a referral fee without reasonable cause is separately made unlawful by R.S. 37:1447(A), which also treats the demand as interference with a brokerage relationship.

Apart from education and examination, R.S. 37:1437(C) conditions an individual broker or salesperson license on the applicant being:

• a.At least twenty-one years old and a resident of Louisiana for one year
• b.A United States citizen who has completed two years of college
• c.At least twenty-five years old, with no residency requirement imposed
• d.Eighteen years old and a high school graduate or equivalency holder✓

R.S. 37:1437(C) opens with two flat bars: no individual broker or salesperson license issues to a person who has not attained the age of eighteen, and none issues to a person who is not a high school graduate or the holder of a certificate of high school equivalency. Twenty-one is not the age the statute names, and Louisiana imposes no waiting period for residency — Subsection E expressly lets a nonresident obtain a license and practice here on conditions the commission prescribes. College is not required either; the education the statute demands is the prelicense coursework counted in hours, which an applicant may complete without any degree. And twenty-five appears nowhere in the section; raising the age bar that high would exclude applicants the legislature deliberately admitted at eighteen.

A Louisiana real estate license is effective for one year. Under R.S. 37:1442 it must be renewed:

• a.On or before September thirtieth, expiring that December thirty-first✓
• b.On or before the anniversary of the issue date
• c.On or before June thirtieth, in a two-year cycle
• d.Within thirty days after the licensee's birthday

R.S. 37:1442(A)(1) sets all three dates in one place: each license is effective for a period of one year, is renewed timely on or before September thirtieth annually, and expires on December thirty-first following the date it was issued. The renewal deadline and the expiration date are therefore different days, which is the point of the provision — the three-month gap is the window in which a late renewal can still be cured. Renewing on the issue-date anniversary would give every licensee a personal deadline, whereas Louisiana uses one common date for all. There is no biennial cycle here; Subparagraph (a) makes the term one year, not two. And nothing in the section keys renewal to the licensee's birthday, a device some other occupational statutes use but this one does not.

A broker terminates the sponsorship of one of his salespersons. Under R.S. 37:1441, the terminating party must submit the termination form to the commission within:

• a.Thirty calendar days
• b.Five calendar days✓
• c.Ten business days
• d.Seventy-two hours

R.S. 37:1441(A) requires the terminating party to submit a form attesting to the termination within five calendar days, and Paragraph (1) attaches the consequence that matters more than the deadline: once that form is submitted the salesperson's license is no longer in force and he may conduct no real estate activity until he obtains a new sponsoring broker. Thirty days would leave a month in which no one at the commission knows who, if anyone, is answerable for the licensee's work. Ten business days is a different measure as well as a longer one — the statute counts calendar days, so weekends and holidays are included. Seventy-two hours is the deadline in a neighboring provision, R.S. 37:1448(B), for returning licenses after a broker's license is suspended or revoked, which is a different event with a different trigger.

Each year an active Louisiana broker or salesperson must complete continuing education of:

• a.Eight hours, in subjects the licensee chooses
• b.Twenty hours, ten of them in agency law
• c.Sixteen hours, eight of them in fair housing
• d.Twelve hours, four in commission-specified subjects✓

R.S. 37:1437(C)(5)(a) fixes the annual obligation at twelve hours of continuing education pertaining to matters including licensing, appraisal, finance, taxes, zoning, and environmental quality, and requires a minimum of four of those hours to be in subjects the commission specifies. The same paragraph forbids the commission from letting a licensee complete fewer than twelve, so eight hours would fall short of the floor the statute sets, and leaving the whole of it to the licensee's choice would defeat the mandatory-topic requirement. Twenty hours and sixteen hours both overstate the total; the subjects they name are real enough as course content, but neither the agency figure nor the fair-housing figure appears in the statute. Post-license hours may be used to satisfy eight of the twelve, but the same paragraph says they never satisfy the mandatory topics.

Louisiana's 150-hour broker prelicense education requirement is delivered by certified real estate schools as:

• a.One continuous 150-hour broker course
• b.Real Estate 201 (90 hrs), 202 (30 hrs), and 203 (30 hrs)✓
• c.Real Estate 101 (90 hrs) plus 60 elective hours
• d.Three 50-hour modules chosen by each school

LAC 46:LXVII §5331(B) structures the broker requirement as three named courses: Real Estate 201, a 90-hour course on basic real estate fundamentals; Real Estate 202, a 30-hour course limited to license law, commission rules, the law of agency in Title 9, civil law as it pertains to real estate, and ethics; and Real Estate 203, the mandatory 30-hour course on broker responsibilities that R.S. 37:1437(C)(1)(b) requires. A single undivided course would not satisfy that 30-hour broker-responsibilities carve-out, which the rule states separately for a reason. Real Estate 101 is the 90-hour salesperson course in §5331(A) and is not part of the broker sequence. And the subject matter is not left to the schools; the rule prescribes what each course must contain.