How To Study For The Florida Real Estate Exam

I get countless calls and emails from people who have watched my YouTube videos, and they call to ask, “How should I study for the exam?”

In some cases, what they are really asking is, “how can I study with no effort?”  My answer to that is that you can’t.  Unfortunately, learning new material is difficult.  The only way to get good at anything is to suck at it for a long time.

In other cases, they are saying, “I got through high school with very little effort.  I really never learned how to study for a difficult test.  What do I do?”  This blog post is the answer to that question.

  1. Read every chapter in the book. Yes, word for word, the entire chapter.  But only read it once.  You will not benefit from reading the chapter five times.  You will not benefit from reading through your notes a thousand times.  Reading is passive, and is ineffective.  But you do have to read the chapter once.
  2. Take notes on what you read. The reason you have to read the chapter once is because you need to take notes.  Take notes by hand.  Do not highlight the material.  Do not type the notes in your computer.  There is ample scientific evidence that typing is not as effective as writing.
  3. Teach the material to someone. Explain the material in your own words to someone else.  If you don’t have anyone who will listen to you, explain it to you dog.  If your dog gets bored, explain it to your teddy bear.  I make my students do this.  We play a game every day in class about every two hours or so.  I’ll put a review question on the screen, everyone answers it.  If there are multiple answers in the class, I ask “Who wants to defend their answer?”  I don’t care if the person who speaks up has the right answer or not.  Someone else, will explain their answer.  All I do is facilitate the short discussion until the class usually comes to the right conclusion without my help.  This takes all of 60 seconds.  The first time we do it, I can tell the students think “This takes too long – just tell us the answer.”  But after we do it a few times, they see that it’s more effective.
  4. Test yourself repeatedly. This is the most important thing you can do.  Make flashcards to test yourself.  But use them to test yourself.  That means you look at one side of the card with a vocab word.  Then you say out loud the definition of that word.  Then, and only then, do you flip the card over to see the answer.  Do NOT read the vocab word on one side, then flip it over and read the definition.  That is completely ineffective.  Another way to test yourself is by doing practice questions in the book.  There are questions at the end of each chapter.  There are practice questions in the back of the book.  I have practice questions in some of my blog post.  Do as many practice questions as you can.
  5. Test yourself repeatedly. This is so important that is gets two spots on the list. We are very poor judges of when we are learning and when we are not.  Testing yourself makes it clear.  When you are testing yourself, you will get a lot of questions incorrect.  That’s OK.  You are still learning.  Most people ignore this advice and spend time re-reading.  Why?  Because re-reading is less awkward and frustrating than testing yourself.  It feels better.  When learning is harder, it’s stronger and last longer.

I wish I could offer a simpler solution.  I wish I could say, “Here are the five hacks that will make the exam easy.”  But the Florida real estate exam is difficult.  You probably know that the pass rate is around 42%.  I believe that the only reason people fail – the only reason – is that they didn’t study.  Either they didn’t study enough or they didn’t study the right material.

If you didn’t study enough, that’s your fault.  If you didn’t study the right material, that’s probably your teacher’s fault.  If studying the wrong material is your problem (as opposed to not studying enough), join me for a weekend review.

 

Please note that I, Karen Climer, have no affiliation with Climer School of Real Estate.  My father, Ron Climer, sold that school in 2014.  Since that time, I have had no affiliation with that school.  If you are looking for me, you will find me at Demetree School of Real Estate.

By |2021-08-24T15:05:05-04:00August 13th, 2019|

Florida State Exam Practice Question – What’s the Difference Between Joint Property and Separate Property?

This is a question that is something you might see on the Florida real estate state sales associate exam.  Not this exact question, of course – I made this one up.  But be sure you know this concept.  Here we go…

Ethel’s uncle dies and leaves all of his property to Ethel.  Ethel is married to Wilbur.  This property is considered:

  1. chattel
  2. joint property
  3. separate property
  4. homestead property

Read the question and pick an answer before you read my answer.

Chattel is personal property, so that is definitely not it.  There is also nothing that indicates it is homestead property.  For all we know, this is a $10 million shopping mall.  So, D is out.  That leaves B and C.

Separate property is property that is acquired before the marriage or property that is acquired during the marriage through inheritance or gift.  So, if one of them owned this property before the marriage, it would be separate.  If they bought it during the marriage, it would be joint because it was acquired during the marriage.  Since they didn’t buy this property, Ethel inherited the property, it is separate even though they are married.  So the correct answer is C.

If you didn’t know the answer to this, you might want to take a weekend state exam review class at Demetree School of Real Estate.  If that’s you, check out the calendar and give me a call.

 

Please note that I, Karen Climer, have no affiliation with Climer School of Real Estate.  My father, Ron Climer, sold that school in 2014.  Since that time, I have had no affiliation with that school.  If you are looking for me, you will find me at Demetree School of Real Estate.

By |2021-08-24T15:12:16-04:00July 13th, 2019|

What Is An Option Contract?

There are 12 questions on the Florida real estate sales associate exam about contracts. Twelve questions! This is an important section! One of the things we need to know about contracts is what an option contract is. Today, not only do you get to learn what an option contract is, you get to learn a little bit of Orlando history from an Orlando native.

Back in the 1960s, there were three people who owned land in south Orange County.  Jack Demetree owned 12,000 acres.  Irlo Bronson owned 7,000 acres.  And the Goldstein family owned 1,800 acres.  A mysterious man came into town using a fake name.  He was an attorney who represented a developer called Reedy Creek Ranch.  You may have heard of the Reedy Creek Water District or Reedy Creek Fire Department.  It’s Disney World. 

Is this a map of south Orange County in the 50s and 60s? Or is this Karen’s drawing to teach option contracts?

So this attorney for Reedy Creek meets Demetree and says, “I want to buy your land.” 

Demetree says, “Great.  I want to sell this land.” 

They agree on a price on $125 an acre.  But Mr. Reedy Creek says, “Here’s the thing… if these other people won’t sell, I don’t want your property.  I have to get all three pieces in order for my project to work.  But, I don’t want to buy those two pieces and then have you raise the price on me.  So here’s what I’m going to do…I’m going to give you $25,000 for you to take your property off the market for six months.  You can’t sell it to anyone else.  I want to have the option to buy it.

“In other words, if I come back in the next six months, you have to sell it to me for $125 an acre, and the $25,000 counts toward the purchase price.  If I don’t come back in six months, you can keep the $25,000 as payment for your troubles. How does that sound?”

Well, we know how Demetree answered that question. We also know that Disney ultimately exercised their option.

That’s all there is to it. That’s what an option contract is. In my next post, I’ll write a few more details about an option contract that you need to know for the Florida real estate sales associate exam.

Please note that neither I, nor anyone in the Climer family, have any affiliation with Climer School of Real Estate.  My father, Ron Climer, sold Climer School of Real Estate in 2014.  You can find me at Demetree School of Real Estate.  If you are looking for me, want to take a real estate class with me, or want to learn more Orlando history, call me at 407-493-3974.

 

By |2021-08-25T14:19:36-04:00February 25th, 2019|

Possibly The Oldest Question On The Florida Real Estate State Exam

I just posted a video about a question that is referred to in the real estate school business as the “bin question” or the “four-story building” question.  I don’t know how long this question has been on the exam, but I figure it’s been forever.  It was on the exam when I took it in 2002.  I talk to students all the time who say, “I had the bin question.  I nailed that one.”

They nailed it because we went over it in class.  Like anything else in life, it’s easy once you know how to do it.  Please don’t show up to the Florida real estate state exam without knowing how to do it.  This question could be the difference between a score of 74 and  75.  In other words, this question could be the difference between leaving the test with a license or leaving without a license.  Take a minute to check out the video.

Please note that neither I, nor anyone in the Climer family, have any affiliation with Climer School of Real Estate.  My father, Ron Climer, sold Climer School of Real Estate in 2014.  You can find me at Demetree School of Real Estate

By |2021-08-25T14:31:16-04:00April 3rd, 2018|
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