Illinois Real Estate License Exam Review

Passing the Illinois real estate license exam just might be easier for you if you read and memorize the review we've written and posted to prudentcareers.com. Here's a excerpt:

General Concepts: Types of real property include residential, commercial, industrial, agricultural, special purpose. The most critical economic characteristic of land is area preference: location, location, location. Physical characteristics are immobility, indestructibility, and uniqueness. Real property includes air rights and mineral rights and the bundle of legal rights: possession, control, enjoyment, exclusion and right to sell.
What distinguishes personal property (or chattels) from fixtures is that personal property is moveable and by removing it the property would not be damaged. A fixture is personal property that has become part of the real estate by attachment, like a light fixture. Tests of a fixture include intent and method of attachment.When you own a home, mortgage interest and property taxes are deductible expenses; principal paid, insurance premiums and private mortgage insurance are not deductible items.

YourHouseAcademy.com

Your House Real Estate Academy is now offering online courses and has links on the site to the bookstore and Mr. Real Estate's Illinois Exam review, a series of CD's. They have also posted a series of informative articles designed to give a prospective real estate agent some additional information and advice. Here at Prudential Starck Realtors our Saturday morning course continues to crank out folks ready to sit for the Illinois exam: we had another 3 students pass the course final during the last session. If time is at a premium for you and you're not too far from Palatine give us a call about the workshop.

Prepare Differently for Broker License Exam

In February 2009 the multiple choice testing format for the broker license exam was changed to a scenario, information gathering, and decision making Simulation format. Whatever the reason, we now have an exam that is absolutely different from anything we've seen before and real estate educators are scrambling to figure out how to prepare broker students to pass this new test.

It's obvious that we cannot use the same teaching methods used in the past for the multiple choice test. The abysmal 35% passing rate for the first 3 months proves that. Our current textbooks are not designed for this type of testing. Many of the questions and situations in the new exam and not covered in the standard texts. That being said, the Simulation exam is not necessarily harder than the old multiple choice test: it's just different.

As before, the exam is given in 2 parts; the national portion and the state specific portion. There are still 40 state specific multiple choice questions. The national portion consists of 10 Simulation questions of which 8 are scored. The other 2 are questions that the testing service is evaluating. Each Simulation question consists of 5 to 8 different segments. After presenting the scenario, the information gathering segments will ask , "SELECT AS MANY AS YOU CONSIDER APPROPRIATE." The decision making segments will ask, "CHOOSE ONLY ONE ITEM IN THIS SECTION."

Real Estate agents are taught risk reduction techniques that require agents to ask numerous questions so that all bases are covered. The Simulation exam, however, awards points for proper responses and subtracts points for improper responses. Therefore it's important to know which are best. Fewer are selections are sometimes better than more. There are no math problems on the Simulation portion of the exam. Fifty percent of the Simulations concern residential real estate, 33% commercial simulations and 17% property management. Also, there's no going back. Answers cannot be changed.

The new test does not use branching. Branching is a testing model that brings the student to a different question based on the previous answer. There are 3 free sample Simulations at http://www.goamp.com/repSimTests.aspx. They're only designed, however, to give you an idea of what the exam looks like. They're not to be used as a learning tool. The questions are not Illinois specific and do not truly reflect the type of question you might see. The testing service does sell a sample exam on goamp.com that can be a good learning tool.

For more information contact Vince DePaul at http://www.blogger.com/Vince@YourHouseAcademy.com

New Broker Exam - Instruction Methods

Vince DePaul, the dean of our real estate school, YourHouseAcademy, has just returned from a seminar in Springfield where at least part of the focus was on methods to teach to the new broker exam. That's the simulation type exam and I've been ranting about its difficulty, at least from the examples I've taken at the AMP website. I'm hoping we can get Vince to post some of what he learned down there and am using this blog entry as a sort of prod. Stay tuned.

License Law Rewrite and Broker Exam

I am happy to see the state passed the rewrite, it's something we have needed for a long time. In the short term, it will certainly cause some confusion, but over the long haul I believe it will pay dividends for the industry. As for the exam, the pass rate for the first 45 days or so has been around 39%, rather abysmal to say the least. The biggest problem has been the lack of study material available to date. I spoke to the folks at ExamSmart and they tell me the new simulator should be up and running next week. I also have it on good authority that AMP is doing some "Tweeking" to the state exam based on feedback from several sources. All of these things together should begin to show better results in the near future. For those who will be transitioning to Broker or Broker Manager status, will be able to take a proficiency exam, if passed they will not have to take the regular exam. I do not believe the proficiency exam has been created yet, so I don't know at this point what that will entail. As soon as it becomes available, I will try to get a copy. Stay tuned

Illinois Prelicense Tutored Homestudy

We have had tremendous success doing prelicense instruction using a homestudy format with one-on-one tutoring. We're going to offer this option again at the Palatine office starting Saturday, April 25th. We begin at 8:30 are are usually out by 11:30 or so and can cover the material in approximately seven Saturdays. During that period one-on-one tutoring sessions can be arranged and a great deal of time is spent covering State exam questions. Our pass rate at the State level is excellent. For more information you can call Vince at yourhouseacademy at
800-375-7032 . We have several other courses scheduled and the complete schedule can be seen by clicking on schedule.

Illinois License Test Review Material

At the Prudential Starck Realtors' career web site, prudentcareers.com, I've posted some review material that might help those of you preparing to take the State of Illinois licensing exam. We're still working on the "word association" list and we'll post that soon. If anyone wants the partial list, just let us know and we'll email it.