Virginia Real Estate Pass Rate 2026: 43% State Portion

The official Virginia real estate salesperson pass rate is 43.0% on the state portion and 36.3% on the national portion. Both come from the Virginia Department of Professional and Occupational Regulation (DPOR), in the Real Estate Board's Board Approved School Pass Rates report covering January 1 through December 31, 2024: 9,347 state-portion exams with 4,020 passes, and 8,691 national-portion exams with 3,158 passes. Those are two numbers for two halves of one exam, tallied per portion across a calendar year rather than per person; Virginia publishes no combined figure for the share of candidates who clear both. We re-checked the source file on August 16, 2026; the 2024 report, generated in April 2026, is still the most recent DPOR has posted.

Every official Virginia real estate pass rate figure

DPOR reports each exam portion separately, and in 2024 it reported the national salesperson portion across two exam forms. Every published row is below, plus the broker figures from the same report.

Portion	Attempt basis	Tested	Passed	Pass rate	Period
Salesperson — State	Not stated by DPOR; cumulative over the year	9,347	4,020	43.0%	Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024
Salesperson — National (current form)	Not stated by DPOR; cumulative over the year	7,178	2,617	36.4%	Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024
Salesperson — National (form labeled "PRE 10/01/2025")	Not stated by DPOR; cumulative over the year	1,513	541	35.7%	Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024
Salesperson — National, both forms combined (our calculation)	Not stated by DPOR; cumulative over the year	8,691	3,158	36.3%	Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024
Broker — State	Not stated by DPOR; cumulative over the year	640	465	72.6%	Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024
Broker — National	Not stated by DPOR; cumulative over the year	562	302	53.7%	Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024

Source: Virginia Real Estate Board, Education & Exams, "Pass rates by exam type for Board-approved schools: 2024." Percentages are as DPOR prints them; the combined national row is arithmetic on DPOR's own two rows.

What this number does and does not count

This is where most pages quoting a Virginia pass rate go wrong.

It counts exams, not people. The report tallies each portion separately. A candidate who sits the national portion in March and the state portion in April appears in two different tables. Nobody is counted once as a "pass" or "fail" for the license.

DPOR states no attempt basis at all. The words "first attempt," "first-time," and "retake" appear nowhere in the report. That silence is the most important thing about this figure. The tables are cumulative counts of exams administered inside a calendar year, so a candidate who failed in March and passed in July is most likely counted twice. That means 43.0% is best read as a per-sitting rate, not a first-time candidate rate. Because repeat testers pass at lower rates than first-timers on most licensing exams, a true first-attempt-only figure would probably sit somewhat above 43.0%. DPOR does not publish one, so that remains an inference, not a number you can cite.

The two portions are not the same group of people. The state portion logged 9,347 exams against 8,691 national ones. The gap is almost entirely reciprocity candidates — already licensed in another state, and required to sit only Virginia's state portion. DPOR's "Reciprocal License" category logged 1,129 state-portion exams but only 8 national ones. Averaging the two portions into one "Virginia pass rate" therefore blends two different populations, which is why we have not done it.

Reciprocity candidates lift the state figure. Those 1,129 reciprocal state-portion exams passed at 60.3%, far above the 43.0% overall. Strip them out and the state portion for everyone else — candidates coming through Virginia's standard pre-license route — works out to 40.6% (3,339 passes from 8,218 exams). The national portion barely moves, since almost no reciprocity candidates sit it. If you are a first-time Virginia candidate with no out-of-state license, 40.6% and 36.3% describe your cohort better than the headline 43.0%.

The two national rows are a form changeover, not two candidate groups. DPOR splits the 2024 national results across a current form and one labeled "PRE 10/01/2025." The report does not explain the split, and the label refers to a date after the reporting period, so it reflects how records were classified when the file was regenerated in 2026 rather than two distinct exams sat in 2024. The rates are 36.4% and 35.7% — 0.7 points apart. Because they are that close, combining them lands at 36.3% no matter how you weight it. A page that quotes only the 36.4% row is dropping 1,513 exams for no reason.

These figures are not comparable to other states' published rates. Some commissions publish first-attempt-only rates, some all attempts, some separate first-time from repeat testers. Virginia labels none of that. Any page ranking Virginia against another state without matching both the attempt basis and the portion is comparing quantities that do not mean the same thing.

The exam behind the number

Virginia's salesperson licensing exam is 120 multiple-choice questions delivered in two scored portions, with an exam fee of $60:

• National portion: 80 questions, and you must answer 56 correct to pass — a 70% bar.
• State portion: 40 questions, and you must answer 30 correct to pass — a 75% bar.
• You must pass both. They are scored independently, so a strong national score cannot rescue a failing state score.

In miss terms, the national portion allows 24 wrong answers out of 80; the state portion allows only 10 out of 40. Each state question is worth 2.5% of that portion, so a handful of misses on Virginia license law ends the attempt regardless of how the other 80 questions went.

What the portion split suggests separates passing from failing candidates

The most useful thing in DPOR's data is the direction of the gap. In Virginia the national portion is the harder filter: 36.3% versus 43.0%. That runs against the assumption many candidates bring to the exam: that the state-specific material is the obstacle.

Consider what that implies. The state portion demands a higher percentage correct (75% against 70%) and still passes a larger share of the people who sit it. Content that is finite behaves that way. Virginia license law and Real Estate Board regulation is an enumerable body of material — escrow handling, agency disclosure, advertising rules, license maintenance. It can be worked through to completion, which is why a stiffer percentage bar still produces the better result.

The national portion resists that treatment. Its 36.3% covers general principles, agency, contracts, finance, valuation, fair housing, and real estate math — a wider body that cannot be finished the way a rulebook can. Only 36 of every 100 national sittings clear it, and it is the portion where reciprocity candidates — the group with field experience — are essentially absent.

Two practical readings follow. First, because you must clear both portions and each is scored on its own, your weaker portion determines the outcome — a candidate who knows Virginia law thoroughly and general principles loosely fails the whole exam. Second, since the national portion is both the lower-scoring one and the larger one at 80 questions, effort spent only on Virginia-specific material is aimed at the portion that is already passing at the higher rate. The data does not tell you how long to study. It does tell you which half of the exam is failing more people.

The bottom line

Virginia is one of only about ten state real estate commissions that publish pass rates at all, so you do not have to rely on a school's marketing claim. You do have to read it precisely. For calendar year 2024, DPOR recorded a 43.0% pass rate on the salesperson state portion and 36.3% across the national portion, counted per exam rather than per candidate, with no attempt basis stated and reciprocity candidates inflating the state number by roughly two and a half points. Netting those out, a typical first-time Virginia candidate is looking at about 40.6% on the state portion and 36.3% on the national one, and has to clear both. Neither number is a prediction about you. Both tell you the national portion is where Virginia candidates are losing the exam.

The most reliable way to find your weak portion is to sit questions under exam conditions and score the two halves separately, exactly as Virginia does. You can start with our free Virginia Real Estate Salesperson practice exam.

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
30-hour post-license education	30 hours	Virginia DPOR Real Estate Board
60 class/clock hours	60 hours	Virginia DPOR Real Estate Board
valid for one year	1 year	Virginia DPOR Real Estate Board