I review a lot of Florida real estate exam curricula.  Companies like Dearborn, Kaplan, Aceable Agent, CE Shop, CompuCram, and so many others are frequently contacting me asking me if I would like to use their curricula?  Do I want to provide their material exclusively?  Do I want to be an affiliate provider?

No matter who contacts me, my response is always the same.  I always tell them that I am more interested in the quality of the material than the cost.  If they want to send me their material, I will look at it.

I was looking at a national brand’s material last week.  They had a vocab list of 60 vocabulary questions.  Of those 60 questions, 11 of them are not on the Florida syllabus.  That means they are not on the Florida real estate exam.  More than 20% of the vocabulary words they had in their Florida material are not on the Florida real estate exam!  Recently, I had a student who in my weekend review class who used their curriculum for her prelicensing class.  She had taken the state exam twice.  She said, “Nothing we learned in the online class was on the state exam.”

I get so frustrated when I hear that.  These schools are cheating people out of their time and money.  It’s not fair to you – the customer.  Multiple times during the review class, this student said, “I wish I had known about you before I used [other school].”

Here are a few things that some schools teach that you will not be asked about on the Florida real estate state exam: reconveyance, sales leaseback, fructus naturales, deed trust, sandwich lease, tenant improvement allowance, quiet title action, life estate pur autrie vie, dominant tenement, servient tenement, periodic tenancy, illusory contract, and many others.

One school even had practice questions about which states Florida has a mutual recognition agreement with!  That won’t be on the exam because it is based on contracts between the states.  We might have an agreement with one state today and the contract expires tomorrow.  You do need to understand what mutual recognition is.  You don’t need to know the specific states.

Some of these vocabulary words are things we do not have in Florida, like a deed of trust.  That literally does not exist in Florida.  Other items exist in Florida, but are not on the state exam.  For example, we have quiet title action or tenant improvement allowance, but they are not on the state exam.  Those are things you will learn about in real life when you need to know them.  I’m sure there are some 10-year veterans who don’t know what a quiet title action is because it’s just never come up in their transactions.

So how do you determine if the course is good material for Florida? 

It’s not easy, but there are a few things you can look for.

First, does the school have a physical building in Florida?  If their one and only location is in Colorado or Texas or New York, that’s not a great sign.  However, if they have a physical building in Florida, they probably know what’s going on in Florida.

Second, call the school and ask them who wrote the material.  If they say, “It was written by subject matter experts,” that means they took national material and try to retrofit it for Florida.  There will be a lot of extra material in there.  Ideally, they will tell you a person’s name.  In the academic world, authors take great pride in the textbook they write.  Publishers take great pride in publishing books with prestigious authors.  If they don’t tell you who wrote the book, I’d question it.  I know this from experience.

Years ago, I received an email that was sent to all Florida members of the Real Estate Educators Association.  They needed someone to update their material.  They told me the material was good, they just needed someone to update it with the current laws.  The money was not great, but it wasn’t terrible.  I thought it would be a good experience.  It was definitely eye-opening.

Some of the material was old.  Maybe it said something was $500, but the law had recently changed to $5,000.  That was a simple change.  That was the type of thing I thought they were hiring me for.  But there were other errors that didn’t really have an explanation.  They said something was 60 days, but it should have been 10 days.  Where did the 60 days come from?  It was from another state.  Presumably, this company hired someone every year to update the material, so why had no one every caught it?  Why were they selling this material in Florida that was so incorrect?  If I told you the name of the company, you’d likely recognize it.

However, if the material has an author’s name attached to it, it is far more likely to be correct.  Most people take pride in their work.  They don’t want their name attached to something that is inaccurate.

Third, does that school only offer Florida, or do they offer material in every state?  If they only offer it in Florida, there is a good chance they know what is going on in Florida.  If they offer it in all 50 states.  It is very easy to get the material mixed up.  Florida is very different from other states in the way we do this.  If you have to write 50 different curricula, that is a lot of material so you can’t blame someone for wanting to use bits from one state in another state’s class.  But when people start doing that, it is very easy to get sloppy.  That’s why you have material in Florida that says you need to know what a deed trust is, or fructus naturales, or illusory contract (you don’t need to know any of those).

If you are looking for good material, you will find it at Demetree School of Real Estate.  For our practice exam app – Real Estate Exam Prep Florida – I personally wrote all of the practice questions.  The prelicensing material was originally written by George Gaines and David Coleman.  Now, it is updated every year by Denise Johnson.  If you want to know about the other material, call me and I’ll tell you the names.

Finally, is it being recommended by Floridians?  If you go online and ask people where they went to school?  If someone in Nevada said they used a certain school, that might be a great Nevada school.  If another person in Vermont says they used a different national school, consider that when you plan to get your Vermont license.  But for Florida, just focus on what Floridians say.  It is difficult to describe how different our system is than other states.  If you’ve lived in Florida for any amount of time, you know that Florida is different in a lot of ways.  You can add to that list the way we test for the Florida real estate license.

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.