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

Start with the memory anchors the exam leans on: the OLD CAR fiduciary duties (Obedience, Loyalty, Disclosure, Confidentiality, Accounting, Reasonable care), the seven federal fair housing protected classes (race, color, religion, national origin, sex, familial status, and disability), and the three deed types ranked by protection, from general warranty down to quitclaim. Add the core math formulas: commission equals sale price times rate, LTV equals loan amount over the lesser of price or appraised value, and value equals net operating income divided by the cap rate. These items show up in some form on nearly every state exam.

Lock in the handful of constants the math section reuses: one discount point equals one percent of the loan amount, PMI generally kicks in on conventional loans when the down payment is under 20 percent, and many exams prorate using a 360-day banker's year with 30-day months. Worked benchmarks help too, like a $300,000 sale at six percent producing an $18,000 commission, and a $240,000 loan on a $300,000 property being 80 percent LTV. If you can reproduce those two examples cold, you can handle most variations.

The exam loves distinctions that sound alike. Watch for client versus customer: customers are owed only honesty, fair dealing, and disclosure of known material defects, never fiduciary duties. Know that the Mrs. Murphy exemption never applies to race and disappears the moment discriminatory advertising or a licensee is involved, since the Civil Rights Act of 1866 bans all racial discrimination with no exemptions. Also keep the listing types straight: under exclusive right to sell the broker is paid no matter who finds the buyer, while under exclusive agency the seller who finds their own buyer owes nothing.

Three practices are tested constantly and are easy to confuse: blockbusting is inducing owners to sell by suggesting people of a protected class are moving in, steering is channeling buyers toward or away from neighborhoods based on a protected class, and redlining is denying loans or insurance in certain areas based on protected characteristics. Tie each to who is being manipulated: sellers for blockbusting, buyers for steering, and borrowers for redlining. Remember too that discriminatory advertising is illegal even when the underlying transaction would qualify for an exemption.

Use it as a final confirmation pass, not a cram session. Read each item and try to recall the rule before looking, flag anything shaky, and re-derive the math benchmarks once by hand, like why any change to an offer is a counteroffer or why earnest money sits in the broker's trust account. Then stop; a rested brain retrieves memorized lists like OLD CAR far better than a tired one.

A cheat sheet condenses what you have already learned; it cannot replace your required prelicensing coursework or full practice. State exams test application, like whether a deed was delivered and accepted, or whether dual agency had informed written consent from both parties, and those scenario questions require deeper study. Treat the sheet as the final ten percent that keeps the essentials fresh on exam day.