Yesterday, someone called and said, “I’ve been getting 80’s and 90’s on my practice exams. Am I ready to take the Florida broker state exam yet?”
I said, “I don’t know. What practice exams are they?”
She said, “I don’t know. I found them on the internet.”
“Well, if you tell me where you got them or who wrote them I can give you an answer.”
“I don’t know. It’s just something from the internet.”
She seemed uncomfortable telling me exactly which practice exams she was using, so I didn’t push it.
The reason it matters is that, like anything else, there is good study material, and bad study material. If you are getting 90% scores on material that is too easy, you are going to fail. If you are getting 70% scores on material that is difficult, you will probably pass.
So how do you know if the material is the best material for the Florida real estate exam:
Does the person who wrote the material have a Florida real estate broker license or Florida instructor license? If they won’t tell you who the author is, and they say it’s written by “subject matter experts”, I’d skip it. All of the good material (and I have reviewed most of it) has the author’s name on it.
Does the author have a Florida real estate broker or instructor license? I’ve seen material online where the person presenting it is basically an actor who memorized a script. They don’t even have a Florida license. Usually they have a license in one state, but have made 50 videos – one for each state – saying the material is on that state’s exam. Don’t trust that. Also, I have yet to hear a good accurate video that uses an AI voice. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there. But if they are, I have seen them.
Do the people who recommend the school have a Florida real estate license? I see things online where someone says, “I went to Big Online School.” Well, Big Online School doesn’t even offer Florida classes. The person who made the recommendation is in Nebraska. Or maybe Big Online School offers Florida classes, but they are terrible. The Nebraska classes are great, but the Florida ones aren’t.
How can that be? Consider this…. I got my degree at the University of Alabama where I studied music. I went there because they had a great music school. I’m sure there were other schools at the University that were good and some that could use improvement. If someone asked me, “where should I go to school to study dentistry,” I would not recommend my alma mater. They might have a good dentistry school, they might not. I wouldn’t know. But I know that my experience at the School of Music has no bearing on whether or not they have a good dentistry program.
This is how it is between states. Each state has different requirements, different curricula, different state exams. ABC School might have excellent material for Texas, but terrible material for Florida. Therefore, if the person who is recommending the real estate school has a California license, I’d ignore that recommendation. Get a referral from some people in Florida.
For the Florida real estate sales associate exam, I don’t think you will find much better material than the Demetree School of Real Estate app. It has 600+ practice questions that are very similar to what you might see on the Florida real estate state exam.
If you want to know whether specific material is good, feel free to call and ask. If I am familiar with it, I will give you my honest opinion.
Please note that Karen Climer has no affiliation with Climer School of Real Estate. Her father, Ron Climer, sold Climer School of Real Estate in 2014. It has since been involved in several mergers and acquisitions and is owned by a large investment company. Karen owns Demetree School of Real Estate in Orlando, Florida.
