North Carolina Real Estate Pass Rate 2026: 74.07%

The official North Carolina real estate exam pass rate is 74.07%. It is published by the North Carolina Real Estate Commission in its Education Provider License Examination Performance Record Report, it covers the license year July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026, and it counts something far narrower than "people who passed": 2,085 of 2,815 candidates who took the full exam — National and State sections together — on their first attempt, within 30 days of completing a prelicensing course. North Carolina is one of only a handful of state real estate commissions that publish a pass rate at all, which makes the figure genuinely useful. It also makes it easy to misread, because it is not built the same way as the numbers other states publish, and it is not the only figure North Carolina itself publishes.

One piece of vocabulary first: North Carolina does not license "salespersons." Everyone entering the profession is licensed as a provisional broker, and the exam below is the broker license exam that every provisional broker sits.

Every official North Carolina figure, and what each one counts

These are all of the exam-performance numbers the Commission publishes. They do not measure the same thing, and the differences are larger than the gaps between them.

Official source	Portion	Attempt basis	Tested	Passed	Rate	Period
EP Performance Record — all providers	Full exam (National + State)	First attempt, within 30 days of a prelicensing course	2,815	2,085	74.07%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
EP Performance Record — private providers	Full exam	Same	2,669	1,977	74.07%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
EP Performance Record — public providers	Full exam	Same	146	108	73.97%	Jul 1, 2025 – Jun 30, 2026
EP Performance Record — latest quarter	Full exam	Same	651	482	74.04%	Apr 1 – Jun 30, 2026
Annual Report under NC Gen. Stat. § 93B-2	Full exam	All applicants examined during the year, any attempt	5,658 examined	1,386 failed	≈ 75.5% not failing	Jul 1, 2024 – Jun 30, 2025
Commission licensing booklet, out-of-state licensees	State section only	Average across attempts	Not published	Not published	"less than 50%"	Not stated

The last two rows are the ones nobody else quotes. The Annual Report is a statutory filing, not a pass-rate report: the Commission publishes counts, and the roughly 75.5% is arithmetic on its own figures (5,658 examined minus 1,386 failed), covering a different license year and counting every applicant examined rather than first attempts by recent course completers.

The final row is the important one. In Real Estate Licensing in North Carolina, the Commission warns that "applicants licensed in other jurisdictions who are only required to pass the State section of the examination have an average pass rate that is less than 50%." That is a state-portion figure for experienced, already-licensed real estate professionals — and it is roughly 25 points below the headline joint rate.

What this number does and does not count

It is first attempt only. Retakes are excluded entirely. Any state figure that includes retakes is measuring a different population, and retake cohorts almost always pass at lower rates.

It is restricted to candidates who tested within 30 days. The report's own wording is that it covers students who, "within 30 days of completing a Prelicensing course pursuant to 21 NCAC 58H .0207(a), take and pass the license examination … on their first attempt." This is a real selection effect and it runs one way. It measures people who finished 75 hours of instruction and went straight to the test center. Anyone who let six months pass, anyone licensed elsewhere sitting only the State section, and anyone who did not take a North Carolina prelicensing course is simply not counted.

It was built to grade schools, not candidates. The report exists so prospective students can compare education providers; the statewide totals are a by-product. That is also why it splits by delivery method and by public versus private provider rather than by exam section.

It is a joint rate, not a portion rate. This is the part that breaks cross-state comparison. The Commission confirms that the two sections "will be separately timed and scored and the applicant's examination results will be reported separately for the National and State sections." Despite that, the published pass rate counts only candidates who cleared both sections that day. So 74.07% is neither the national-portion rate nor the state-portion rate — it is the probability of passing both at once, which is necessarily lower than either portion alone. Set it beside a state that publishes national-portion-only or state-portion-only results and the comparison is meaningless.

The exam behind the number

Every figure here comes from the Commission's own licensing booklet, April 2026 edition. Pearson administers the exam.

Item	National section	State section
Scored questions	80	60
Pretest (unscored) questions	5	5
Time limit	2.5 hours	2.0 hours
Passing score	75, computed separately	75, computed separately

That is 140 scored questions in total, plus ten unscored pretest items you cannot identify. The comprehensive exam fee is $63, and a single-section retake is $53 — but a $105 application fee is charged to the Commission on top of the exam fee for every attempt. An unanswered item is scored as incorrect, so there is no reason to leave anything blank.

The trap sits in the eligibility window. Both sections must be passed inside the same 180-day examination eligibility period. Pass one section, miss the other, and let the clock run out, and the passed section is forfeited — you reapply and sit both again.

What the portion split says about what to study

A low state-portion rate next to a healthy joint rate points in a specific direction, and North Carolina's numbers point hard at the State section. The Commission's own warning that out-of-state licensees pass the State section at under 50% is the strongest signal available: those are people who already know real estate practice, already passed a licensing exam somewhere, and still fail North Carolina's 60-question state material more often than not. Real estate experience does not carry across; North Carolina statute, rules, and agency practice do not.

The State section blueprint says the same thing. Agency is 16 of the 60 scored state items and "Other NC Laws" is another 11 — 27 questions, nearly half the section, on North Carolina-specific legal ground. On the National side, the two heaviest categories are Contracts & Agency at 16 and Real Estate Practice at 14 of 80.

The delivery-method breakdown is the other thing the report gives you, for the same 2025–26 license year and the same first-attempt basis:

• Blended — 87 of 104 passed, 83.65%
• Synchronous — 790 of 988 passed, 79.96%
• In-person — 421 of 537 passed, 78.40%
• Distance — 787 of 1,186 passed, 66.36%

Read that as a signal, not a verdict. Candidates choose their own format and providers differ in quality, so the gap reflects who enrolls where as much as how anyone teaches. But distance learning is the single largest delivery method by volume and the only one below the state average, and the same ordering held in the April–June 2026 quarter.

The bottom line

74.07% of North Carolina candidates passed both exam sections on their first attempt within 30 days of finishing a prelicensing course, across the 2025–26 license year, and the most recent quarter came in at 74.04% — a strikingly stable number. But it describes the best-prepared slice of the candidate pool, and it hides the portion split entirely. The figure that should shape your study plan is the one the Commission buries in its licensing booklet: the State section alone runs under 50% for candidates already licensed in another state. Budget your preparation toward North Carolina agency law and the "Other NC Laws" material, protect your 180-day eligibility window, and treat the first attempt as the one that counts, because it is the only one the published statistic measures.

The useful next step is to find out which section is actually your weak one before $63 and $105 in fees find out for you. Work through a free North Carolina Real Estate Broker practice exam and see whether the national material or the state material is costing you the marks.

Official numbers that matter more than an estimated pass rate

The figures below come from the official source documents linked in the table. They are included so you can make study and registration decisions from published requirements rather than an unsupported estimate.

Published detail	Value	Official source
score of 75 is required on each section	75	North Carolina Real Estate Commission / Pearson VUE