Hawaii Real Estate Pass Rate 2026: 30.1% State Portion

The most recent official Hawaii real estate salesperson pass rate is 30.1% on the state portion and 36.5% on the national (uniform) portion. Both figures come from the Pass/Fail Rate report the Hawaii Real Estate Commission publishes through the DCCA Real Estate Branch, and both cover the twelve months from July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026. Each one counts portion sittings, not people: 2,289 state-portion sittings produced 690 passes, and 1,960 national-portion sittings produced 717 passes, with first attempts and retakes pooled together in both totals.

Those are among the lowest real estate pass rates any state publishes — and among the least comparable. Only about ten of the 48 state real estate commissions release pass rates at all, and almost none count the same way, so before you read anything into 30.1% you need to know what it is a percentage of.

Every official Hawaii real estate pass rate figure

The Commission posts two files each quarter: a three-month snapshot and a rolling twelve-month cumulative report, each broken out by exam, by portion, and by the school that trained the candidate. Below are the statewide totals from the two most recent files, retrieved on August 16, 2026.

Exam and portion	Attempt basis	Tested	Passed	Rate	Period
Salesperson — State	All sittings, incl. retakes	2,289	690	30.1%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
Salesperson — National (uniform)	All sittings, incl. retakes	1,960	717	36.5%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
Salesperson — State	All sittings, incl. retakes	594	176	29.6%	Apr 1 – Jun 30, 2026
Salesperson — National (uniform)	All sittings, incl. retakes	510	174	34.1%	Apr 1 – Jun 30, 2026
Broker — State	All sittings, incl. retakes	279	103	36.9%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
Broker — National (uniform)	All sittings, incl. retakes	216	92	42.5%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
Broker — State	All sittings, incl. retakes	58	22	37.9%	Apr 1 – Jun 30, 2026
Broker — National (uniform)	All sittings, incl. retakes	51	21	41.1%	Apr 1 – Jun 30, 2026

Two notes on that table. There is no official combined figure — the Commission never publishes a single number for "passed the Hawaii salesperson exam," only the two portions separately, so any page quoting one all-in Hawaii rate has built it themselves. And the Commission's index page labels the twelve-month file "June 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026," while the report's own header reads "From: 7/1/2025 To: 6/30/2026." The period printed inside the report is the one used above.

What this number does and does not count

The report is titled "School Summary Cumulative," with columns for Tested, Passed, Failed, and % Passed. Nowhere does it say whether a "tested" is a person or an exam sitting. The arithmetic answers that anyway.

Over the same twelve months the state portion recorded 2,289 tested and the national portion 1,960 — a gap of 329. Those portions belong to one exam, and a standard pre-license candidate registers for the combo form and sits both on the same day, so a count of unique first-time candidates would put the two totals within a few of each other. A gap that size can only mean that some people appear in the state-portion column more than once. These are sittings, first attempts and retakes pooled.

Hawaii's own rules explain why the extra sittings land on the state side. A candidate who passes one portion and fails the other retakes only the failed portion, within two years of the date of the passed one. The state portion is the harder of the two, so it accumulates the repeats — and every repeat is by definition from someone who has already failed once. That pushes the denominator up and the percentage down. Part of the distance between 30.1% and 36.5% is difficulty; part is that the harder portion gets counted more often.

Three consequences follow:

• 30.1% is not your probability of getting licensed. It is the share of state-portion attempts that passed. The share of individual candidates who eventually clear both portions is higher, and the Commission does not publish the candidate-level data needed to say how much higher — so no honest figure for it exists.
• Neither portion is "the" Hawaii pass rate. They differ by 6.4 points and they test different content. Quoting 36.5% alone flatters the exam; quoting 30.1% alone overstates how much of the difficulty is Hawaii-specific.
• These figures do not line up against other states. Several commissions publish first-attempt-only rates, which exclude repeat testers and run higher by construction; some report first-time and repeat separately; some pool everything as Hawaii does. Setting 30.1% beside another state's number without matching the attempt basis produces a comparison that means nothing. The one sound comparison here is Hawaii salesperson against Hawaii broker, which share a report, a period, and a basis — and on that basis brokers outperform salespeople on both portions.

The exam behind the number

The Commission contracts with PSI Services LLC to deliver the examination. What a Hawaii salesperson candidate faces:

• Format: 130 scored multiple-choice questions — 80 on the uniform (general) portion, 50 on the state portion.
• Time: 150 minutes for the uniform portion, 90 for the state portion, 240 for a combo appointment covering both.
• Unscored items: five to ten pretest questions may be added on top of the scored count. They do not affect your score and their time is not deducted.
• Passing score: 70% for salespersons, applied to each portion separately — 56 of 80 on the uniform portion, 35 of 50 on the state portion. Brokers need 75%.
• Fee: $61 per examination, whether you sit one portion or both, so a single-portion retake costs the same as the full combo.
• Carry-over: a passed portion stands for two years while you retake the failed one.

What the portion split says about passing and failing

A low state-portion rate paired with a high national-portion rate would tell a simple story: candidates know real estate but have not learned Hawaii law. That is not Hawaii's pattern. At 36.5%, the national portion — the same general content tested across the country — is also failing roughly two of every three sittings. What is happening here is not confined to Hawaii-specific material, and preparation aimed only at state law will not fix it.

The 6.4-point gap still matters, and the scoring structure amplifies it. Because 70% is applied to each portion on its own, the uniform portion allows 24 wrong answers out of 80 while the state portion allows only 15 out of 50. The state portion is the shorter test with the thinner tolerance, so a handful of unfamiliar items does proportionally more damage there.

The published content outlines show where that tolerance gets spent. On the 50-item state portion the largest block is Professional Practices and Conduct at 14 items — 28% of the portion, covering office management and supervision, licensing law, and conduct rules. Ascertaining and disclosing material facts is 8 items, types of ownership 6, contracts and addenda 6. Those four areas are 34 of the 50 questions between them. The heaviest state topic is regulatory, not geographic: licensing law and professional conduct decide the state portion, not Hawaii trivia.

The uniform portion spreads much wider — practice of real estate 12 items, laws of agency 10, contracts 10, valuation 8, then financing, mandated disclosures, and calculations at 7 each. No single topic dominates, so it cannot be passed by concentrating on one or two areas.

The retake rule points to the one piece of strategy the data genuinely supports. Because a passed portion banks for two years and only the failed one must be repeated, the practical aim at a combo appointment is to secure at least one portion cleanly rather than spread attention thin across 130 questions and come away with two marginal failures. The state portion carries both the thinner margin and the heavier load of regulatory detail, so that is where the final block of preparation earns most — without treating the uniform portion as already won, because at 36.5% it plainly is not.

The bottom line

Hawaii's published real estate salesperson pass rates are 30.1% on the state portion and 36.5% on the national portion for the twelve months ending June 30, 2026, with the most recent quarter slightly lower at 29.6% and 34.1%. Both count every sitting rather than every candidate, so repeat testers are folded in and the numbers understate any one person's eventual chance of licensing. They are real and they are low, but they are not a verdict on you — they describe a pool of attempts in which one struggling candidate can appear several times. Read them as evidence that both portions demand genuine preparation, that the state portion leaves the least room for error, and that no figure here supports a head-to-head comparison with a state that counts differently.

If you want to know where you stand against that 70% threshold before paying the $61, work through a full-length free Hawaii Real Estate Salesperson practice exam and check your margin on each portion separately.