Tag: RECA Exam Preparation Tips

If you’re a prospective real estate agent, then one of the first steps to launching your career as an agent or broker is to pass the Alberta Real Estate Exam. Whether you’re a good at exams or not, there’s no skipping this step.

As a result, you may be wondering, “Just how hard is the Alberta real estate exam?” The answer depends on how well you do your exam prep.

Well, to be thorough, real estate exams in Alberta are designed to be difficult to pass, so they can weed out people who are not going to be skilled agents. Though the pass rate varies based on the state exam, they hover around 60% across the province. This means about half of the people who take a state licensing exam do not pass.

The Alberta real estate exam is a challenging test that takes the right preparation to do well on. Yet, to get your real estate license, you must pass the state exam for a real estate broker or agent. Right preparation is the key. Preparation includes doing the right things as well as NOT DOING THE WRONG THINGS.

Have a look at the video below –

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Today, we will discuss the 5 most common mistakes that Students make while preparing for the Alberta Real Estate Exam.

[1] Assuming that the Exam is Easy

Now many of us come into the real estate field or are willing to get the real estate license because we are interested in real estate. The industry seems so tempting, beneficial, and interesting from a bird’s eye view. So, we decide to make a career out of that short term interest. Now the problem is as we come into this field we may think that we have experience and we know what’s going on in the market or we know how to buy and sell properties.

Also, therefore we may have the impression that the exam is easy. But that is a mistake the reason the exam is not easy is because the courses are based on teaching us about the Real Estate Act. Although, when we talk about the real estate act there are a lot of technical things that we need to understand. It’s a law that needs to be studied efficiently. When you are attempting the exam, there are different types of question that require different efforts to pass through.

For Eg:

1. Definition Questions: They are based on the concepts that are specific to the Real Estate Industry. Terms like Broker, Real Estate Assurance Fund, Personal Property, etc. belong to this section. If you understand the meaning of the term, only then you will be able to answer the question.  
2. Technical Questions: These include topics with Math Calculations and detailed concepts that a common man may have never heard of before. Topics like How to Calculate IRR, Incentive Calculation, Mortgage Installment Calculation, etc. require through practice and understanding.
3. Scenario Questions: What are Scenario Questions? These are questions that give a specific scenario or a situation to deal with hypothetically and let’s you decide how you would handle such a situation as a Real Estate Professional. These questions may seem tricky. Thus, a thorough understanding of the course that you are taking is a must. These questions put you in a real-life situations and make you learn how to deal with each of the scenarios.

[2] Waiting till the Last Minute to Study for the Exam

We have seen students that come to us when there’s two months left to finish their course out of the 18 months. Last minute pressures and procrastination at the start can lead to anxiety. It basically means that the time allotted for preparation was not well-utilized. RECA Courses or any other Provincial Real Estate Exams need preparation with time and efforts to get good scores. It is not a study that can be completed within weeks if you are an amateur in the industry.

The Exam is designed to be difficult to pass so that students take efforts to study the minute details and information necessary for the real estate industry.

A course includes various types of topics that are extensive and take time, efforts, and consistency to complete. For Example, the first most basic Course – Fundamentals of Real Estate includes 10 Units with different number of Sessions covered in each of them. Have a look at the table below that shows all the Units with Number of Sessions for each of the Units included:

[3] Taking too long to go through the course

When we start the course, we study hard for the initial period. By the time we get to dig more, the excitement wears off. Although, the courses are big and time-consuming, showing consistency in studies can create a big difference.

One of the most common mistakes we see in our students (this is based on personal experience with real cases) is that they study without any help, which takes them too long to complete and then they delay the exam as they are too tired of completing the hefty course materials. Big study notes require management, planning, and consistency to follow up on the earlier topics along of proper understanding of each of the topics to not go in the wrong direction. If there is a huge time-lapse between your preparation and the exam, you need more time to again revise all the topics thoroughly to retain all the understanding once again, which we usually tend to avoid.

[4] Memorizing Questions and Answers

When it comes to studying, we start off well but then we tend to drag through the hefty course notes by RECA and the interest seems depreciating. This could be because we directly try to memorize the concepts without completely understanding them.

For Example, calculation problems need to be solved with understanding of the question as well as the calculation required to solve the question. Have a look at the video where our Tutors explain the compete Calculation of IRR using a Realtor’s Calculator. Until you don’t understand the theory behind the calculation and why does the steps make sense, you will not be able to do it. You cannot memorize stuff without understanding them.

We have seen students memorize Quiz and Practice Questions with solutions to prepare for the exam. Again, memorizing without understanding the concepts will not serve well. The exam is designed to test the understanding of our knowledge of the real estate concepts we have learned. Thus, the questions will be different from the quiz questions and tricky enough to give us a mind churn.

[5] Focusing on the Wrong Topics

The RECA Notes are big enough to confuse any student and makes it difficult to gauge what is important and what is not. This is where you might require some help and support. Based on our experience and expertise in the industry, Alberta Real Estate School gives weightage to important topics from each of the courses to help save time and energy from unimportant topics.

For eg, for Fundamentals of Real Estate Course, we have the following Exam Weightings for the RECA Exam –

Avoiding these common mistakes can help you pass the difficult RECA Exams in the first attempt.  These will help you to plan your studies as well as the exams with a better understanding of the topics involved. You can anticipate accurate results when you are aware of these small details while you are preparing for the Alberta Real Estate Exams.

Join Alberta Real Estate School for expert help with understanding the concepts of Real Estate and getting uncommon and detailed tutoring sessions summarized as per your needs. Get our personalized Notes designed to get you through the Real Estate Exams in the first attempt! Visit our list of Real Estate Tutoring Sessions for details.

If you have any doubts for Exam Preparation of any of the real estate courses or topics, reach out to us directly at 587.936.7779.

We Hope you found this information useful. Stick to us for more updates.

Happy Realtoring!!