Three Tips to Answering Multiple Choice Real Estate Math Questions

On the computer-based real estate licensing exam, you will be asked to answer multiple-choice real estate math questions. While practicing real estate math questions is an important part of preparing for the real estate licensing exam, you will also need to know strategies to answer multiple choice questions. This will help you answer questions faster and avoid mistakes on the exam. Here are three tips to answering multiple choice real estate math questions:

Tip 1. Read the entire question and all of the answers.

Make sure you read the entire question and know exactly what they are looking for. It helps to write down the units of the answer (e.g., a percentage, a dollar amount, number of days, etc…).

Tip 2. Eliminate answers you know are wrong.

When you read the answers, you might already see some answers you know are already wrong. On your scratch paper, write down the answer choices (e.g., A B C D) and then cross out the ones you know are wrong. This helps you to focus on where the correct answer is.

Tip 3. Work backwards.

If you are down to two choices, you can work backwards by plugging the answer choices into the real estate math question to see if they work.

Example:

John sells his house for $150,000 and gives his broker $9000 in commissions. What was his broker’s commission rate?

A. 3%

B. 6%

C. 10%

D. 50%

Answer:

First, we read the entire question and all of the answers. Then, we look to see which answers we can eliminate. Immediately, we see that 10% and 50% is too high of a commission rate, so we cross those out on our scratch paper. That leaves us with either A or B. In this case, we can work backwards. If John sells his house for $150,000 and gives his broker 3%, then his broker would receive $4500. Therefore, we can eliminate answer A. Thus, we are only left with answer B. If we plug this answer into the real estate math question, then we see that 6% of $150,000 is $9000.

 

For more real estate math practice problems, check out our free real estate math practice exam or our 125 Real Estate Math Problems Solved workbook, solutions manual, and video explanations.