Rhode Island Broker Law

What the Rhode Island portion actually is

The Rhode Island broker examination is delivered by Pearson VUE. The numbers below are read out of the Rhode Island state content outline, Pearson VUE document #094001, revision 2025-10, whose outline carries an effective date of 2025-08-21.

Each portion also carries unscored pretest items — 10 on the Rhode Island state part. Document #094001 states it in its own words: "The Rhode Island state examination consists of fifty (50) scored items for the salesperson examination and sixty (60) scored items for broker examination. Both examinations also contain 10 pretest items." You will therefore sit 70 Rhode Island questions in 90 minutes and be scored on 60, without being told which 60. Budget the clock against 70, not 60.

The passing standard is a scaled score of 70 on each portion, and the two portions are scored separately. A strong national result does not carry a failing state result.

Sixty, not fifty — and why the handbook says otherwise

This is the single most important structural fact about the Rhode Island broker exam, and getting it wrong costs you ten items of preparation.

Rhode Island's is the largest state portion in this program — 60 scored items. It is 60 for the broker where it is 50 for the salesperson, and the growth is not spread evenly.

Now the caveat, because a candidate who trusts the vendor's handbook table under-prepares by ten items.

Pearson VUE's candidate handbook #094000 prints a table headed "Available Exams." The row for "RI Broker — State Part" gives 50 exam questions. That row is a byte-for-byte copy of the salesperson row directly above it: identical $50 fee, identical 10 pretest questions, identical 1.5 hours, identical question count. It is a copy-paste, and the same handbook reprints the 60-item broker outline nine pages later, contradicting its own table.

The arithmetic settles it. Every printed percentage resolves against 60 and against no other number:

• 2/60 = 3%, 6/60 = 10%, 22/60 = 37%, 18/60 = 30%, 12/60 = 20%
• and 2 + 6 + 22 + 18 + 12 = 60

Against 50 they do not resolve at all: 2/50 is 4 percent, not 3, and 22/50 is 44 percent, not 37. The salesperson block independently checks out at 2 + 6 + 24 = 32 across the first three areas and 50 in total, with 4/12/48/36 percent. Document #094001 contains no "Available Exams" table and therefore does not contradict itself; the contradictory 50 lives only in the handbook. Build to 60.

Read the area table twice, because two things in it run against intuition.

First, Area III is the one area that shrinks for the broker — 22 items against the salesperson's 24 — and it still remains the largest single block on the paper at 37 percent, larger than Areas I, II and V combined. The extra items did not go to the conduct rules.

Second, Area V has no salesperson item count at all. It is broker-only, 12 items, a fifth of the paper. A candidate revising from a salesperson book is not weak on Area V; that candidate has never seen it. Areas II and IV are numerically identical for both licenses, which is why the broker's real edge over the salesperson candidate is Area V and nothing else.

This chapter is sized to that table. Each area section below occupies roughly its published share of the chapter body. If you spread your revision evenly across five areas you will have spent a fifth of it on an area worth 3 percent of the marks.

What the vendor does not publish, and you should know it does not

Pearson VUE publishes no consolidated statute reference list for Rhode Island. Document #094001 has no reference section at all. Its only citations are the inline ones printed inside Area IV, at subtopics A through K, and one at Area V.E. Those twelve citations are reproduced verbatim in this chapter, audited one by one, and three of them have problems — see "What changed recently."

Every other citation in this chapter is ours, read out of the current Rhode Island General Laws and the Rhode Island Code of Regulations, and it should not be mistaken for the vendor's. Where this chapter organizes an area internally beyond the vendor's own lettered subtopics, that organization follows the statutes themselves and is ours. We say so rather than dress derived structure up as published structure.

The regulator throughout is the Rhode Island Department of Business Regulation (DBR), acting through the Real Estate Section of its Division of Commercial Licensing. The rulebook is 230-RICR-30-20-2, "Real Estate Brokers and Salespersons." Section references written "§ 2.x" in this chapter are sections of that regulation; section references written "R.I. Gen. Laws § 5-20.5-x" or bare "§ 5-20.5-x" are statute.

Area I — Duties and Obligations Under Licensing Law (2 items, 3%)

Two items — 3 percent. The smallest area on the paper. Both lettered subtopics are printed, and each is worth about one item.

A. Powers and authority of the Department of Business Regulation

The operative rule. The director of the Department of Business Regulation issues broker and salesperson licenses under § 5-20.5-6(a) and may refuse, suspend or revoke one for cause under § 5-20.5-14. The same director issues the rules governing licensee conduct — with the consent of a majority of the Real Estate Commission — and under § 5-20.5-28 may order an unlicensed person to appear and show cause why a cease and desist order should not issue.

The trap. A brokerage's corporate registration with the Secretary of State is a filing, not a license; an assessor values property for taxation; an association's rules bind only those who join it. None of the three grants or takes away a license.

B. Rhode Island Real Estate Commission

The operative rule. § 5-20.5-12 creates the commission inside the Department: nine members appointed by the governor, at least one from each county, three of them brokers licensed at least five years, four of them members of the general public, plus the attorney general and the director as ex-officio voting members. Members serve five-year terms without compensation.

§ 5-20.5-12(e) is the examinable sentence. The commission "shall have a policy-making role in the preparation and composition of the examinations," and "subsequent to the administration of the examination, the commission shall review the examinations to evaluate their effectiveness." It supervises the real estate division in an advisory capacity, and its policy is subject to the director's approval.

Where this bites. Advisory means advisory. The commission does not write or score items — the Department contracts that to a testing service, and the examination fee under § 5-20.5-11(a)(2) is the fee that contract sets. Nor can the commission waive an examination: waiver is statutory, and § 5-20.5-4(d) grants a license without examination to one class of person only, an attorney admitted by the state supreme court.

Area II — Licensing Requirements (6 items, 10%)

Six items — and the same six the salesperson gets. The broker exam does not add weight here. It assumes you know how licensing works and spends its extra twelve items in Area V.

A. Activities requiring a license

§ 5-20.5-1(5) defines a broker as anyone who, for a fee or with the expectation of one, lists, sells, purchases, exchanges, rents, leases, prepares an opinion of value or auctions real estate — or who advertises as doing so. A salesperson does the same acts for a broker. Note that "advertises as doing so" is itself the licensed act; you do not need a completed transaction to need the license.

§ 2.5 requires a salesperson to be affiliated with a licensed principal broker in order to engage in any activity requiring licensure, and provides that a salesperson "shall not operate, supervise, or manage a real estate brokerage." § 2.12 requires a license for property management performed for another for compensation.

Where the line actually falls. The difference between the two licenses is independence and custody of other people's money, not the day-to-day work. Showing property and attending a closing are ordinary salesperson activity under supervision, and continuing education is a renewal condition for both alike, so neither marks any boundary. What a broker may do and a salesperson may not is run a brokerage and hold client deposits — § 2.18(B)(1) requires an affiliated licensee to turn deposit money over to the principal broker rather than hold it.

Exemptions — § 5-20.5-2. Bona fide owners and lessors and their regular employees; attorneys admitted by the state supreme court; holders of a power of attorney; fiduciaries acting under court order; mass appraisers; public officers. Read § 5-20.5-2(b)(1) closely: the attorney exemption and the power-of-attorney exemption are two separate exemptions in one sentence, so an attorney needs no power of attorney to rely on the first.

B. Status of a license: transfer, renewal, lapse

No license may run more than three years (§ 5-20.5-6(a)), and § 2.9 sets a two-year renewal cycle on the anniversary of issue for licenses issued after 1 January 2020.

The one-year cliff. A lapsed license can be reinstated with a $100 late fee (§ 5-20.5-11(a)(7)) — but only inside a one-year window. § 5-20.5-11(b) closes with the operative sentence: "At no time shall any license be renewed without examination if the license has expired beyond a period of one year." § 2.6(C) says the same from the other side: if a license has expired for more than one year, the former licensee must complete a new application and retake the examination.

The trap. Candidates reach for the late fee because it is real. Neither it nor "a Rhode Island license does not truly expire" survives fourteen months, and a principal broker's certification that the licensee kept working is worse than useless: practicing on a lapsed license is separately prohibited by § 2.15(A).

Transfers and moves. § 2.3 gives a licensee ten days to report a change of name, firm affiliation or address. On disaffiliation, § 2.10 requires the new brokerage's principal broker to sign and submit the transfer form.

B.2. Continuing education

Twenty-four clock hours per two-year renewal period, of which at least nine are core subjects and at least three of those nine are fair housing (§ 5-20.5-6(b); § 2.30). The statute asks for proof of "a minimum of twenty-four (24) classroom hours" in the preceding two-year period, of which "a minimum of three (3) classroom hours shall be comprised of instruction about federal, Rhode Island, or local laws pertaining to fair housing." § 2.30(B) supplies the middle layer, the nine core hours; § 2.30(B)(1)(c) lists Rhode Island landlord-tenant law among the core subjects.

The trap is the forty-five-hour figure, which is the pre-licensing requirement for a salesperson under § 5-20.5-4(b) and not a renewal requirement at all. Two exemptions exist and neither reduces the number for anyone else: § 2.30(D) exempts licensees first licensed before 12 December 1984, and attorneys licensed under § 5-20.5-4(d).

C. Eligibility for licensing

The broker's own bar — § 5-20.5-4(b). The applicant must prove two years engaged full time as a real estate salesperson immediately prior to the date of application and at least ninety hours of approved classroom study in a school defined by § 5-20.5-19. Forty-five hours is the salesperson figure in the same subsection, and § 2.7(C) forbids counting those forty-five toward the ninety and disregards classroom hours older than four years. § 5-20.5-3(c) adds three references: Rhode Island residents who have known the applicant three years, unrelated to the applicant, attesting to a good reputation for honesty and trustworthiness.

C.1. Real estate recovery account

§ 5-20.5-5(a)(1) pays an aggrieved person for fraud, misrepresentation or deceit up to $50,000, and § 5-20.5-5(h) caps the account's liability at $50,000 for any one licensee. Claimants must first exhaust other remedies against the licensee. A payment out is not forgiveness: § 5-20.5-5(c)(5) automatically revokes that licensee's license until the money is repaid with twelve percent annual interest.

The other figure in the same section is the one candidates confuse it with: under § 5-20.5-5(b), if the account balance falls below $200,000 on 31 December, every licensee pays an extra $25 at the next renewal. That is a replenishment assessment, not a payout ceiling.

C.2. Errors and omissions insurance

§ 5-20.5-25(a) requires every broker and salesperson, as a condition of retaining the license, to carry and maintain errors and omissions insurance "covering all business activities contemplated," and § 5-20.5-25(d) requires a certificate of coverage on file with the Department by each annual license renewal date. § 2.28(A)(1) sets the individual minimums at $50,000 per claim and $150,000 aggregate. § 2.28(B) and (C) are the parts brokers forget: if coverage lapses the licensee stops all licensed activity immediately and notifies the Department within five business days.

Note the section number. E&O is § 5-20.5-25. It is not § 5-20.5-27, which is "License required for ownership" — a different rule, correctly cited by the vendor at Area V.E for a different proposition. This chapter's earlier editions had the pairing wrong; see "What changed recently." No bond, flood policy or life policy is a condition of licensure.