Texas Sales Agent Exam: National vs. State Portion (2026 Guide)

Two portions, two verdicts: why Texas candidates get tripped up

I've sat with more nervous soon-to-be agents in Houston coffee shops than I can count, and the same thing happens every time: they study the Texas exam like it's one big test. It isn't. My first buyer's agent hire passed the national side comfortably, walked out grinning, and then found out she'd missed the Texas State-law portion — two different results, same morning.

So let's do this as a straight comparison. Same candidate, same day, two separate exams with different item counts, different content outlines, and separate pass/fail decisions. Once you see them side by side, your study plan basically writes itself.

National vs. Texas State portion at a glance

The exam is computer-based and administered by Pearson VUE under contract with the Texas Real Estate Commission (TREC), delivered as two portions: the National/General portion and the Texas State-law portion. Here's how the item counts break down, per the Texas Real Estate Candidate Handbook.

	National / General portion	Texas State-law portion
Scored items	80	40
Unidentified pretest items	5	10
Total items presented	85	50
Content outline	National/General outline (#093901)	Texas State-specific outline (#094401)
Scored and passed	Separately	Separately

Add it up and you're looking at 135 items total across both portions, of which 120 are scored. The remaining 15 are pretest items that are not identified to you and do not affect your score. That last part matters more than people think: because you can't tell which ones they are, you answer every single item as if it counts. Never leave a blank.

Notice the ratio, too. The Texas portion is shorter, but a larger share of what you see there is pretest. On the state side you're answering 50 items to be judged on 40 of them. On the national side, 85 items to be judged on 80.

What each portion is actually asking you

The National/General portion

This is the portion that would look familiar to a licensee in any state: agency and fiduciary duties, property ownership and interests, contracts in general, financing concepts, valuation, fair housing, and the math. It follows the National/General real estate content outline (#093901). With 80 scored items, it carries the bulk of the scoring weight across the two portions.

The math on this side is where I see people bleed points. Prorations, commission splits, loan-to-value, area calculations. None of it is hard arithmetic — it's reading the question carefully enough to know which number goes where.

The Texas State-law portion

This one follows the Texas State-specific content outline (#094401), and it's where the word "Sales Agent" starts to mean something. Texas doesn't use "Salesperson" or "Sales Associate" — a Sales Agent is a person licensed to act on behalf of a sponsoring licensed broker. That relationship shows up all over the state material: what a sponsoring broker is responsible for, TREC rules and enforcement, promulgated forms, and the specifics of Texas agency disclosure.

Anecdotally, this is the portion candidates underestimate because it's shorter. Forty scored items doesn't leave much cushion. A handful of misses on TREC rules can be the difference between finishing your file and rescheduling.

Why "promulgated forms" is a Texas-flavored trap

In my Houston deals, the promulgated contract forms are muscle memory — but muscle memory isn't what the state portion tests. It tests who may fill in what, which addenda attach to which situation, and where a licensee's authority ends. Read the rules, not just the forms.

How scoring differs from what you're expecting

Here's the part that surprises almost everyone. The Texas Sales Agent exam is scaled-scored and the National and State portions must each be passed on their own; TREC and Pearson VUE do not publish a passing percentage or raw cut score. A scaled score is not a percentage, and candidates who pass receive no numeric score — so there is no official passing percentage to cite.

What scaled scoring means in practice: your raw score (the number of scored items you got right) is converted to a scaled score, so that the passing standard stays constant across exam forms that differ slightly in difficulty. If you happen to draw a marginally tougher form, the standard doesn't quietly get harder on you. That's the whole point of the conversion.

And because the two portions are scored and passed separately, there is no averaging. A strong result on the National side does not carry a weak result on the State side, or the other way around. Treat them as two independent hurdles, because that's exactly what they are.

If someone on a forum tells you the cut is a specific percentage, they're repeating folklore. There isn't a published one for either portion.

What happens if you fail one portion

Failing one portion doesn't erase the other — but there are limits, and there's a clock. TREC's rule: a candidate who fails either the state or national exam three times must complete additional qualifying or related education before being allowed to test again. That's per exam, and it's not a small detour.

There's a second wrinkle worth flagging. All license requirements must be met within one year of filing the application. TREC also addresses partial passes: if your application expires after you've passed one section, both sections may need to be retaken when you reapply. I've watched a candidate lose a perfectly good national pass to nothing more than drift — life got busy, the file went stale. Don't be that candidate. Book the second portion while the first is fresh.

Time limits, fees, and pass rates — the honest answer

People want tidy numbers here and I'd rather not make them up.

Time

The Sales Agent exam is a timed, computer-based test given in two portions; check the current Texas Real Estate Candidate Handbook for the exact time allowed per portion. The handbook is the authority and it's the version you should be reading, not a summary someone posted three years ago.

Cost

See TREC's current fee schedule for the license application fee and Pearson VUE for the current examination fee. Two separate payers, two separate schedules.

Pass rates

TREC publishes exam passage rates by education provider rather than a single statewide headline rate. That's actually more useful than a blanket number if you're still choosing a school — you can look at how a provider's graduates have performed rather than at an average that describes nobody.

Getting to the chair: education and scheduling

Before either portion matters, you need the front end done. You must be 18 years or older and a U.S. citizen or lawfully admitted alien (DACA recipients do not qualify as lawfully admitted). You'll need fingerprints on file with the Texas DPS so TREC can satisfy the honesty, trustworthiness and integrity requirement, and TREC reviews background and criminal history against its qualifications on honesty and integrity.

Education is 180 classroom hours of qualifying real estate courses. After TREC verifies the education requirement, you receive instructions and the Candidate Handbook for scheduling the National and State exams with Pearson VUE. And remember — a broker must sponsor you before you can perform real estate services, so line that up while you're studying, not after.

If you're mapping out the whole path from coursework to sponsorship, the rest of our Texas write-ups live on the Texas real estate blog.

How I'd split my study time between the two

Because the National portion carries 80 scored items and the State portion 40, a lot of candidates split their prep proportionally. I don't. I front-load the state material, because it's narrower, more memorizable, and it's the portion where a bad week of studying shows up fastest. The national concepts — agency, contracts, finance — build on each other and reward steady repetition over weeks.

Three habits that have worked for every agent I've coached:

• Answer everything. Pretest items are unmarked. A blank is a guaranteed zero on an item that might have counted.
• Practice under the clock. Do at least one full-length timed run per portion so pacing isn't a new sensation on exam day.
• Read the rationale on wrong answers you got right. Lucky guesses are the ones that come back to bite you.

Then treat exam day as two events. Reset between portions. Different outline, different scoring decision, different mindset.