New Hampshire Real Estate Salesperson Exam Study Guide

The New Hampshire salesperson exam is a two-part test administered on the same day: a National portion and a State portion. You must pass both to earn a passing result overall — there is no single blended score that lets a strong showing on one portion cover for a weak showing on the other.

• National portion: 80 items worth 80 points, in 150 minutes, with a passing score of 56 points.
• State portion: 40 items worth 40 points, in 90 minutes, with a passing score of 28 points.
• Combined sitting: 120 items in 240 minutes, with a combined passing score of 84 points.
• A small number of unscored, experimental questions may be mixed in — typically 5 to 10 across the exam — so don't panic if a question feels unusually obscure or oddly worded.

The exam is delivered under contract with PSI Services LLC on behalf of the New Hampshire Real Estate Commission. Treat the National and State passing thresholds as two separate hurdles you must each clear on their own, not one blended score you can average your way past.

The National portion tests broadly applicable real estate principles that appear on licensing exams across most states. New Hampshire's candidate handbook breaks the National content into weighted domains for the salesperson exam:

• Contracts — 19% of the National portion, the single heaviest topic.
• Agency — 13%, covering fiduciary duties and representation relationships.
• Practice of Real Estate — 12%, covering day-to-day transaction practice.
• Financing — 10%, covering mortgage and lending concepts.
• Property Ownership — 10%, covering estates, interests, and forms of ownership.

Because Contracts and Agency together make up roughly a third of the National portion's weighting, prioritize mastering offer-and-acceptance mechanics, contract remedies, and the duties owed under different agency relationships before moving to lower-weighted domains. Build your review schedule around these published weights rather than spreading time evenly across every topic you've heard of.

The State portion is New Hampshire-specific and is scored separately from the National portion. Rather than published percentage weights, the candidate handbook lists this portion's outline by item counts within each area:

• Regulation of Agency Conduct — 11 items.
• Regulation of Licensee Conduct — 11 items.
• New Hampshire Principles and Practice — 10 items.

Together these three areas make up most of the State portion's 40 total items, so they should anchor your state-law review — with only a handful of items spread across whatever remaining state-specific topics the handbook lists. Because this portion is state-specific, generic national prep materials will not cover it — you need New Hampshire statute and rule-based study materials, not just a national real estate textbook. Remember that this portion is graded on its own 28-point threshold, independent of how well you do on the National portion, so a strong National score cannot compensate for a weak State score. Budget your final review week accordingly.

Before you can sit for the exam, New Hampshire requires you to meet a few gating requirements:

• Be at least 18 years old.
• Complete 40 hours of approved pre-licensing education, finished before your exam date.
• Within that coursework, complete a minimum of 32 classroom hours, with no more than 8 hours delivered via distance education.
• Sit for the exam within 6 months of starting your pre-licensing course.
• Submit signed affidavits from 3 character references as part of your application.

Once you register, you must take the exam within 3 months of receiving your registration. If you pass one portion but not the other, you generally have a 6-month window from your original exam date to pass the remaining portion before you'd need to start over. Candidates who accumulate 8 exam attempts without passing are required to complete an accredited pre-licensing course again before continuing to test.

New Hampshire does not use a single blended score for the salesperson exam. Instead, each portion has its own point total and its own passing threshold, and both must clear independently:

• National: score at least 56 of 80 points to pass that portion.
• State: score at least 28 of 40 points to pass that portion.
• If both are passed in the same sitting, your combined result is 84 of 120 points.

This matters for how you study: a candidate who is very strong on national contract and agency law but weak on New Hampshire-specific licensee-conduct rules can still fail overall, even with a high combined-looking score, because the State portion is graded on its own separate cut. Don't let a comfortable National review lull you into skipping dedicated New Hampshire statute and rule review — treat the two portions as two separate exams you happen to take back to back on the same day, each with its own pass/fail outcome that stands on its own regardless of how the other portion goes. Plan your final week of review so both subjects get dedicated time, not just the one that feels more familiar.

The most effective way to prepare for a timed, two-part licensing exam is to rehearse under conditions that match the real test. Full-length practice tests let you experience the pacing of 150 minutes for 80 National items and 90 minutes for 40 State items, so you learn your natural pace per item well before exam day instead of discovering it under pressure.

• Work practice sets by domain first (Contracts, Agency, Financing, and the New Hampshire-specific conduct rules) to find your weak spots.
• Then run full timed simulations of each portion separately, since they're scored separately.
• Review every missed question immediately, focusing on why the correct answer is correct — not just memorizing the right letter.
• In your final review pass, weight your remaining time toward the highest-weighted domains rather than your favorite topics.

This staged approach — diagnose by domain, then simulate under time pressure, then review deeply — is a proven pattern for any timed multiple-choice licensing exam, and it applies just as well here as it does in other professional testing contexts.