§ 01 What's tested
Texas runs the exam as two exams in one. The 80-item national portion mirrors the standard Pearson VUE national real estate outline used in roughly 30 other states; the 40-item state portion is Texas-specific. Each section is scored independently, and you must clear 70% on each to pass. A 100% on the national section paired with a 65% on the state section is a fail. Scored item counts (effective March 2025 national / January 2026 state) are below.
National portion (80 scored items)
The national portion mirrors the Pearson VUE outline used in roughly 30 other states, with published item counts (effective March 2025) below. The wrinkle Texas candidates run into: even on the national side, fact patterns frequently weave in Texas-specific agency or contract law (particularly intermediary practice), so a question that's structurally a "national" question can still require Texas knowledge to answer correctly.
- Real Property Characteristics, Legal Descriptions, and Property Use: 11 items
- Forms of Ownership, Transfer, and Recording of Title: 9 items
- Property Value and Appraisal: 11 items
- Real Estate Contracts and Agency: 16 items (the largest single area)
- Real Estate Practice: 10 items
- Property Disclosures and Environmental Issues: 9 items
- Financing and Settlement: 7 items
- Real Estate Math Calculations: 7 items
Real Estate Contracts and Agency carries the heaviest national weight (16 of 80 items), and in Texas the fact patterns often use the intermediary structure rather than the dual-agency model that's common elsewhere. Studying national agency content without knowing the Texas intermediary rules costs points on the national side, not just the state side. Most of the 16 items are application or analysis questions: read a fact pattern, decide what a licensee should do, not recite a definition.
State portion (40 scored items)
The state portion is where Texas-specific content sits. Topic areas (per the January 2026 TREC outline):
- Commission Duties & Powers: 3 items
- Licensing: 4 items
- Standards of Conduct: 9 items
- Agency & Brokerage (including Texas's intermediary-practice rules): 10 items
- Contracts (Promulgated Contracts and Addenda, Statute of Frauds, Seller Disclosure Requirements): 8 items
- Special Topics: 6 items
Special Topics is a catch-all that covers community property, Homestead Protections and Tax Exemptions, the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA), wills and estates, landlord-tenant, foreclosure and short sales, recording statutes, mechanic's and materialman's liens, the Veterans Land Board, HOAs, and equitable interest. The list is long for six items; the exam picks across it rather than testing every category every time.
Case studies
Texas's exam includes case studies, a feature most state real estate exams don't use. A case study presents either a narrative fact pattern or a TREC-promulgated contract form, then asks several linked questions about it (completion of the form, the legal effect of clauses, addenda usage, deadlines, procedural responses). Case studies require candidates to apply knowledge in connected sequences rather than answer isolated facts. They're the reason Texas candidates often report the exam as harder than the topic outline suggests.
Standout state-specific content
Three Texas content areas reliably confuse candidates who studied from generic national materials:
- Intermediary practice. Texas does not allow dual agency in the way most states do. A broker representing both buyer and seller operates as an "intermediary" under Texas Occupations Code 1101.559, with specific written-consent and minimum-services requirements. The rules are tested heavily on the Agency & Brokerage section.
- Texas homestead. Constitutional, with rules in Property Code Chapter 41. The protection is unlimited in dollar value but limited in acreage (10 acres urban, 200 acres rural for a family). The acreage limit, the urban-vs-rural test, and the limited circumstances under which homestead can be voluntarily encumbered (purchase money, taxes, owelty, refinance, home equity under specific constitutional rules) are all tested.
- Community property. Texas is one of nine community property states. Property acquired during marriage by either spouse is community property, with narrow exceptions (gifts, inheritance, property owned before marriage). The exam tests how community property interacts with deeds, conveyances, and homestead.
§ 03 How to study
The Texas exam rewards two specific study habits more than most state real estate exams: working through actual TREC-promulgated contract forms cover-to-cover, and drilling case-study sequences (multi-step questions tied to a single fact pattern or contract). Generic national practice questions don't simulate either of these well.
The 180-hour pre-license curriculum (six 30-hour courses) covers the content outline, but it teaches each topic in isolation. The exam tests integration. A Promulgated Contracts question on the state portion will hand you a fact pattern that pulls from agency, contracts, special topics, and DTPA in the same case study. Candidates who studied the courses one at a time without integrating tend to underperform on case studies.
What works is volume on TREC-aligned practice questions, with extra reps on the case-study format and the Promulgated Contracts content. Most who pass have worked through somewhere in the low thousands of Texas-specific questions, weighted toward Real Estate Contracts and Agency on the national side and Promulgated Contracts and Agency & Brokerage on the state side.
Passd's Texas question bank is organized by both the national and state TREC outlines, with per-area accuracy tracked so you know whether your weak spot is intermediary practice, contract forms, community property, or DTPA before booking the exam. Your Passd Score updates as you answer and gives a single read on whether the test is in reach yet. Tier details are on the pricing page.
A few specific things that help in Texas:
- Read the actual TREC promulgated forms. TREC publishes them at trec.texas.gov, including the One to Four Family Residential Contract (Resale), the addenda, and the seller's disclosure notice. Reading them once with attention to the deadlines, contingencies, and option fee mechanics beats reading three different study guides that summarize them.
- Drill case studies, not just isolated questions. Case studies test integrated knowledge. A practice set that gives you 50 standalone questions doesn't simulate the case study format. Two or three case-study packets before the exam expose pacing and integration weaknesses.
- Memorize the math constants Pearson VUE doesn't print on screen. The Texas national outline confirms that 43,560 square feet per acre and 5,280 feet per mile are NOT supplied at the test center. Texas math questions assume them, and acreage conversions show up frequently in the Farm and Ranch fact patterns the state portion is fond of.
- Take a full-length timed mock at least twice. Four hours is a long sit. The pacing is more demanding than CA or FL because the case studies eat time you don't get back.
§ 04 What to expect on exam day
The Texas Sales Agent exam is administered at Pearson VUE testing centers across the state. You schedule directly through Pearson VUE after TREC has reviewed your application and issued an authorization to test. Walk-ins are not accepted; you reserve a seat in advance.
On exam day:
- Arrive at least 30 minutes before your scheduled appointment. Late arrivals can be turned away.
- Bring two forms of valid signature identification, one of them government-issued with photo (driver's license, state ID, passport, or military ID). The name on your IDs must match what TREC has on file from your application.
- Bring evidence of your TREC-approved pre-license course completion if requested at check-in. Most candidates already have TREC's authorization-to-test on file by the day of the exam, but the certificate is the backup record if anything is missing.
- Calculators are permitted, with restrictions: silent, hand-held, battery-operated, non-printing, and without an alphabetic keypad. Standard four-function calculators and basic financial calculators are allowed.
- Personal items go in a locker. Phones, smart watches, study materials, food, and bound notes stay outside the room.
- The center photographs each candidate at check-in. The photo prints on the score report.
Results print at the testing center immediately after the exam. The report shows pass or fail per section and your numeric score on each. Failing one section while passing the other still counts as a fail, but on the retake you only repeat the failed section.
§ 05 Common mistakes
Texas candidates who fail the exam tend to fail in a handful of specific ways:
- Treating the state portion as a sidebar to the national portion. The state portion is 40 of the 120 scored items (one third), but it carries 50% of the pass weight because of the dual-section rule. Candidates who score 90% national and 65% state fail the exam. The state portion needs proportional study time, not leftover study time.
- Underestimating case studies. Most candidates have never sat for a real estate exam that uses connected fact patterns. The first case study on the real exam is the worst place to discover this. Practice case-study packets in advance, not after.
- Confusing intermediary practice with dual agency. Texas does not allow dual agency in the way several other states do. The intermediary role under Texas Occupations Code 1101.559 has specific written-consent and minimum-services rules that are tested in scenario form. Candidates who imported "dual agency" mental models from generic national content miss these consistently.
- Skimming Special Topics. Six items across eleven sub-topics looks small until you realize the exam can pick from any of them. Community property, the DTPA, mechanic's liens, and the Veterans Land Board are all fair game and all reward candidates who have at least seen the basics.
- Memorizing the TREC contract forms instead of understanding them. The case studies test what happens when a buyer and a seller execute a specific addendum on a specific date with a specific cure period. Candidates who memorized the form's section numbers but never traced a closing timeline through the addenda tend to guess.
- Confusing the option fee with earnest money. Texas's One to Four Family Residential Contract uses a separate Termination Option: a non-refundable option fee buys a specified period during which the buyer can terminate for any reason. Earnest money is a different deposit with different release rules. Candidates who learned earnest-money mechanics from generic national materials miss questions that turn on the distinction.