California Real Estate Salesperson Cheat Sheet.
The night-before summary, built like the exam.

Memorize the fiduciary duties acronym OLD CAR: Obedience, Loyalty, Disclosure, Confidentiality, Accounting, and Reasonable care. Know the four essential contract elements: mutual assent, consideration, competent parties, and a lawful object, plus the seven federal fair housing protected classes: race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability. Add the three approaches to value, sales comparison, cost, and income, and you have the exam's most-tested frameworks covered.

Key numbers include that one discount point equals one percent of the loan amount, and private mortgage insurance is typically required on conventional loans with less than a twenty percent down payment. Also remember that TILA's Regulation Z grants a three-day right of rescission on certain refinances of a principal residence, and the Statute of Frauds requires leases longer than one year to be in writing. These small numeric details are favorite question material.

Watch for questions that blur the line between fiduciary duties owed to clients and the honesty owed to customers; agents must disclose known material latent defects to customers but owe them no fiduciary duties. Contract questions love the counteroffer trap: any material change to the terms rejects and extinguishes the original offer, and an offer can be revoked any time before acceptance is communicated. Fair housing questions often test that race discrimination under the Civil Rights Act of 1866 has no exemptions, and deed questions contrast general warranty deeds with quitclaim deeds, which carry no warranties at all.

Use it as a final memory check, not as your first exposure to the material. Skim each section and quiz yourself out loud, pausing on anything you cannot recite from memory, like the OLD CAR duties or the difference between blockbusting, steering, and redlining. Then put it down and get a full night's sleep; last-minute cramming of new material tends to hurt more than it helps.

A cheat sheet alone is not enough; it condenses the rules but cannot teach you to apply them to scenario-style questions. Use it alongside practice questions so you learn how the exam actually tests concepts like dual agency, which requires the informed written consent of both parties, or trust fund handling, which forbids commingling client money with the broker's own funds. The sheet keeps facts fresh while practice builds the judgment the exam rewards.