Arkansas Real Estate Broker Exam Study Guide (2026)

What Arkansas's exam actually is

Every other state edition in this series pairs a shared national manuscript with a state chapter that adds the state-specific layer on top. Arkansas does not work that way, and saying so plainly, before anything else, is the most useful sentence in this book.

The Arkansas Real Estate Commission (AREC) does not give a national exam and a state exam. It gives one exam. Pearson VUE administers it under Candidate Handbook #090400, and the handbook's own description is unambiguous: "The Arkansas Unified Real Estate Broker examination covers both general knowledge concepts, as well as Arkansas-specific content. The examination consists of 120 scored items and ten pretest (unscored) items. The pretest items are not identified and will not affect a candidate's score in any way." One paper, 120 scored questions, mixing agency law and financing math with AREC regulation numbers in whatever order the exam form puts them. There is no point at which the "national part" ends and the "Arkansas part" begins, because no such division exists on the form you will sit.

That matters for how you should use this book. If you also own PrepPass's national real estate broker manuscript, do not treat this chapter as a supplement to it — a thin add-on covering only what the national book left out. Arkansas licensees do not get that luxury, and neither should your studying. This chapter is written to stand on its own as the complete content map of the Arkansas exam: general real estate principles (contracts, agency, appraisal, financing, property characteristics) and the Arkansas statutes and AREC regulations that govern them, together, in the proportions Pearson VUE's own content outline assigns them. Skipping the general-knowledge sections here because "the national book already covered that" would leave you unprepared for roughly half of a paper that does not separate the two.

Vendor and dates. The content outline in force is titled "Arkansas Unified Real Estate Broker Examination Content Outline," effective December 1, 2025. The handbook you would download today carries a June 2026 revision line. Both documents describe the same 120-scored/10-pretest structure.

Time. The handbook does not publish a minutes figure for this exam, and this chapter will not invent one. What it says, in the general exam-day instructions that apply across all five Arkansas real estate and property management exams Pearson VUE administers under this handbook, is: "You should report to the test center at least 30 minutes before your exam begins to complete registration. You will have two to four hours to complete your exam." That two-to-four-hour window is shared across the Broker, Salesperson, Property Management Associate, and Property Management Broker exams collectively — it is not a per-exam allotment, and nothing in the handbook narrows it further for the broker paper specifically. Anyone who tells you Arkansas gives you "X minutes" for the broker exam is quoting a number the vendor does not publish.

Passing score — and the trap inside the word "70." The handbook sets a passing scaled score of 70 for the Real Estate Broker exam (also 70 for Salesperson, Property Management Associate, and Property Management Broker). Read the handbook's own caution carefully, because it exists specifically to head off a wrong assumption: "With equating, scores are reported on a scale common to all forms of the examination (scaled score)... The scaled score that is reported to candidates who passed the exam is neither the number of questions answered correctly nor the percentage of questions answered correctly." A 70 does not mean you got 70% of the 120 items right. It means a statistical equating procedure — built to correct for the fact that different exam forms carry questions of slightly different difficulty — placed your raw performance at or above the cut line on a converted scale. Do not walk in trying to count toward 84 correct answers (70% of 120) as your target; that number is not how Arkansas measures whether you passed.

The ten content areas. Pearson VUE publishes these as percentages of the exam — never as item counts. The item counts in the right-hand column below are not the vendor's; they are this book's own derivation, using the standard largest-remainder method to allocate 120 scored items across ten percentages that must sum to 120. Independent rounding of each area on its own gives 118, two short of 120; the two areas whose exact fractional shares were closest to rounding up (Area I, at 4.8, and Area V, at 21.6) each absorb one of the two leftover items. Treat the percentage column as the vendor's fact and the item column as this book's arithmetic on top of it.

Two things jump out of that table and shape how this chapter is built. First, Areas V and IX together are 33% of the exam — a third of everything you will be asked. Broker Operations alone, at 18%, is the single largest area on the paper; nothing else comes close. Second, Area IV puts federal law — RESPA, TILA, TRID, the Fair Housing Act, the ADA, lead-based paint disclosure — inside the state exam itself, at a full 10%. In a two-part state like Texas or a Broker-Lawyer-Committee state, federal law of this kind is usually assumed to live in the national portion and gets no separate space in the state chapter. Arkansas has no national portion to assume it into. If this chapter skipped federal law on the theory that "the national book covers that," it would leave out 12 of your 120 scored items. It does not skip it — Area IV below is a full, separately cited section, because on the Arkansas paper federal law is state-exam content.

One more housekeeping note before the content: the handbook publishes no reference list at all for this outline. Every citation in this chapter — every Ark. Code Ann. section, every AREC Regulation number, every C.F.R. cite — was independently researched and verified against the current text of the Arkansas Real Estate License Law (Ark. Code Ann. tit. 17, ch. 42), the Arkansas Time-Share Law (tit. 18, ch. 14), the AREC Commission Regulations (04/2024 edition as revised April 9, 2025), and the relevant federal statutes and regulations current as of mid-2026. None of it is copied from a vendor bibliography, because none exists. Where a provision this chapter might otherwise have used had been repealed — Ark. Code Ann. § 17-42-410, and AREC Regulations 4.4, 5.3, 10.3, 10.17, 13.9, 13.14 and 13.15 among them — it was left out rather than cited as if still good law.

I. Duties and Authority of the Real Estate Commission — 5 of 120 items (4%)

The smallest area on the exam, and the one that establishes who is doing the regulating.

Composition. Ark. Code Ann. § 17-42-201 puts five members on the Commission, each appointed by the Governor to a three-year term: three who have been licensed brokers or salespersons for at least five years, and two who are not in the real estate business at all — one representing consumers generally, and one who must be sixty or older and represents the elderly specifically. That last seat is not decorative; it reflects a recurring concern in real estate regulation about elder financial exploitation, and it means two of the Commission's five votes belong to people the regulated industry does not select.

General powers and investigation. Section 17-42-203(a) lets the Commission "do all things necessary and convenient for carrying into effect the provisions of this chapter" and to promulgate rules, and § 17-42-205 gives it subpoena power for both investigations and hearings. Records access runs through Regulation 10.7(b)(3): a principal broker's three-year firm records are "open to inspection by and made available to the investigative staff of the Commission at the firm's office or other location designated by the Commission." Two details matter for the exam: the inspection right does not depend on a complaint having already been filed — § 17-42-312(a)(1) lets the Commission investigate on its own motion — and the inspection is not confined to the Commission's Little Rock office. Trap: a wrong answer will often try to condition Commission access on a court order or on the location being the Commission's own headquarters. Neither is correct.

The three-year clock. Section 17-42-314(b) is a limitations rule most candidates underweight: except where a license was obtained by false or fraudulent representation, AREC "may not investigate a licensee's conduct or hold a disciplinary hearing on it unless the complaint is filed or the investigation begins within three (3) years from the date of the actions complained of." Fraud in the original license application is the one stated exception, and it carries no time limit at all.

Disciplinary authority. Section 17-42-312(a)(4) gives the Commission a menu on finding a violation, not a single mandatory outcome: suspension, revocation, or denial of a license; a penalty of not more than $1,000 per violation; required education; required reexamination; conditions or restrictions on the license; or restitution and damages. A lighter track exists alongside it — § 17-42-312(d) lets the executive director issue citations without a full hearing: up to $100 for missed continuing or post-licensure education, up to $250 for practicing on an expired license or for an advertising violation, contestable within thirty days. A licensee whose license is revoked may reapply after two years under § 17-42-311(c).

The Recovery Fund. Section 17-42-406 sets Arkansas's mechanism apart from most states' — enough so that this chapter returns to it in the "what's unusual" section below with a direct comparison. In outline, the Commission in a disciplinary hearing first finds whether a violation occurred, then determines the aggrieved party's damages, then directs the licensee to pay; only if that amount stays unpaid thirty days after a final, unappealed order does the Commission pay from the fund, capped at $25,000 for any one violation or continuing series and $75,000 in total for the acts of any one licensee. Section 17-42-407 limits any award to actual, compensatory damages — no punitive damages, no interest to the claimant. And under § 17-42-409, once the fund pays, the licensee's license is "immediately suspended until he or she has completely reimbursed the commission for the payment, plus interest at a rate to be determined by the commission," a rate capped at 10% per annum. Practical bite: the fund's payment settles the injured consumer's claim, but it does not settle the licensee's debt — the license stays down until that debt is repaid, which is a materially different consequence than a fixed suspension period.

II. Arkansas Statutory Requirements Governing Licensure — 12 of 120 items (10%)

This area runs from "who needs a license at all" through the entire lifecycle of holding one: qualifying, activating and inactivating, transferring, renewing, and reporting changes.

Who needs a license, and the one-act rule. Section 17-42-103(10) and (12) define the acts that trigger the licensing requirement — selling, exchanging, leasing, collecting rent, auctioning, and simply advertising oneself as being in the real estate business. What trips up candidates is how little conduct it takes to cross the line: § 17-42-301(c) states flatly, "The commission of a single act by a person required to be licensed under this chapter and not so licensed shall constitute a violation of this chapter." Subsection (b) reaches anyone who even "offers, attempts, or agrees to perform" one of those acts, "whether as part of a transaction or as an entire transaction." Neither repetition nor a completed closing is required — one unlicensed act, once, is a violation on its own. The consequences are real: § 17-42-109(a) allows a civil penalty up to $5,000 plus disgorgement of any compensation received, and § 17-42-105(d) makes a violation of the chapter a Class D felony.

Exemptions. Section 17-42-104 lists who is carved out: owners acting for themselves; an attorney-in-fact under a recorded power of attorney who takes no fee; attorneys at law; receivers and executors acting under a will, trust, or court order; a resident manager who lives on the premises and leases units in connection with that employment; and — narrowly — salaried or hourly clerical leasing staff. That last exemption, § 17-42-104(a)(6), is worth reading carefully because the exam tests exactly where it ends: it covers a person paid only a salary or hourly wage who delivers lease applications, receives security deposits or rent made payable to the broker or owner, shows a unit under direct written instructions with terms the broker already set, and conveys information the broker prepared. The moment that person negotiates rent or lease terms, is paid a commission per lease, or exercises discretion over a deposit amount, the exemption is gone and a license is required. Trap: a leasing agent paid a commission per signed lease is doing licensed work regardless of the job title on the business card.

Broker eligibility. Regulation 4.1(a) sets the floor: the age of majority; not less than 60 classroom hours completed within the 36 months preceding application, at least 45 of them in a Commission-developed course; an affidavit of no unprofessional conduct; and disclosure of other licenses held and any disciplinary or fraud litigation. The experience requirement sits in Ark. Code Ann. § 17-42-303(b)(1): an active, bona fide apprenticeship under a valid salesperson license, or a salesperson or broker license held in another state, for not less than 24 months within the previous 48. A waiver exists under § 17-42-303(b)(2) for an applicant who has already held an active broker license for 18 months, or who has 24 months of acceptable real-estate-related experience. Regulation 4.1(c)(4) adds a separate deadline that has nothing to do with education: the state and federal criminal background check "shall be completed within six months immediately preceding the date the Application for Real Estate License Examination is received in the Commission's office," and an application arriving outside that window is returned. Practical bite: an applicant can request the background check and sit for the exam once the request has gone to the Identification Bureau of the Arkansas State Police (Regulation 4.1(h)), but Ark. Code Ann. § 17-42-306(a)(4)(B) bars actually issuing the license until the Commission receives and approves the results.

The 90-day payment clock. After passing the exam, Ark. Code Ann. § 17-42-306(b)(1)(A) requires the applicant to pay the license fee and the Real Estate Recovery Fund fee "within ninety (90) days from the date of the licensing examination." Miss that window and § 17-42-306(b)(2) invalidates the exam results outright — "the applicant shall be required to make new application and retake the licensing examination as an original applicant." Regulation 4.3(c) repeats the ninety days. The one built-in extension applies to an applicant still waiting on a federal criminal background check.

Active status, inactive status, and transfers. Section 17-42-308(a)(2) is categorical: the holder of an inactive license "shall not practice as a real estate broker, salesperson, property management associate, or property management broker in this state without first activating the license." There is no supervision workaround and no grace period. Regulation 6.2(d) prices reactivation at seven approved classroom hours for each year the license sat inactive, capped at thirty hours. On termination of an association with a firm, Regulation 7.5(a) gives the principal broker seven days to notify the Commission and return the departing licensee's license and pocket card — and "such notification shall automatically inactivate the license." Moving to a new firm requires the new principal broker's signature on the transfer application plus the transfer fee and, under Regulation 7.5(b), "a statement that the licensee is not taking any listings, management contracts, appraisals, lease agreements, or copies of any such documents, or any other pertinent information belonging to the former principal broker or firm." The old broker's consent is not part of it.

Renewal and continuing education. Every broker and salesperson license expires on December 31 under Regulation 6.1(a). Renewal applications with the fee are due, by Regulation 6.1(b), "no later than September 30" — filed late, the application is treated as one to renew an already-expired license, which carries a higher fee. Active status requires seven approved classroom hours of continuing education annually (Regulation 6.1(c); the statutory band in Ark. Code Ann. § 17-42-307(b)(1)(A) runs six to seven hours), and one of those hours must specifically address "how real estate professionals can limit risk to preserve personal safety for agents and consumers."

Required notifications. Regulation 7.6(a) requires prompt notice to the Commission — on a Commission-prescribed form, with the reissuance fee — of any change of name, address, or place of business; "at the next renewal" is not prompt enough. Regulation 10.16(a) requires a written report within thirty days of any conviction or plea of guilty or nolo contendere to a crime other than a traffic violation, running from the conviction or plea date, not from completion of a sentence.