What score passes the New York
real estate exam?

What the Department actually says

One sentence covers it, and it is worth reading twice: all exam results are reported as either passed or failed, and you will not receive a numerical score. That is the Department of State's own wording, and it applies to the salesperson and the broker exam alike.

So is there a passing score?

Obviously there is a line somewhere. A pass or a fail has to be decided by something. What the Department does not do is publish where that line sits, or tell you afterward how near it you came. Both of those are true at once, and a page that tells you there is no percentage at all is overstating it.

Where the 70% comes from

Every school teaches 70%. Every prep company prints it. Nearly everyone who has sat the exam will tell you the same. They are probably right, and it is a sensible number to aim past. It is not published by New York, so nobody quoting it to you can show you the source, and we are not going to print it as though it were official.

What follows from that, practically

Two things. First, a result gives you nothing to work with: fail and you will not know whether you missed by one question or thirty, which makes your own practice scores the only diagnostic you will ever have. Second, aiming at exactly 70% on practice is a poor target when the real figure is unpublished. Build a margin.

The other exam nobody mentions

New York requires a school-administered proctored examination in addition to the qualifying examination the Department gives. They are set by different people and sat in different places. The 70% that gets quoted is sometimes the school exam's mark rather than the state's, which is part of why the number travels so confidently.

What our reports do instead

A practice report here tells you what you scored and which subjects the marks came off, and it does not tell you whether New York would have passed you, because we cannot know that. Every wrong option carries the reason it is wrong, which is the part you can act on.

Our practice reports name the subjects your marks came off, which is the one diagnostic New York will never hand you. Ten questions are free on the samples page, and the full forms are on the real estate page.