DE-RE-B Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows

What the Pass Rate Data Actually Shows

Anyone searching for a single published pass-rate number for the Delaware Real Estate Broker Exam will come up empty. The Delaware Real Estate Commission, which operates under the Division of Professional Regulation, does not release a raw percentage the way some national testing programs do, and Pearson VUE - the vendor that delivers the closed-book, computer-based exam - reports results as pass/fail outcomes to candidates rather than publishing aggregate statistics for public consumption. That means the honest answer to "what's the pass rate" is: the meaningful data isn't the percentage itself, it's the structure of the exam that determines who passes and who doesn't.

That structure is knowable and specific. The exam is 145 total questions - 80 scored plus 5 unscored national/general items, and 50 scored plus 10 unscored Delaware-specific items - delivered in four hours at a Pearson VUE test center. Candidates must clear a scaled score of 70 on each portion independently. A strong national score cannot offset a weak state score, and vice versa. That dual-cut-score design is the real driver behind who passes on the first try and who doesn't, and it's covered in more depth in the DE-RE-B Passing Score 2026 guide.

How the Two-Score Scoring System Works

Most state broker exams blend all questions into one score. Delaware doesn't. The national/general section (80 scored items drawn from Domains 1-8) and the state section (50 scored items drawn from Domains 9-13) are scored and reported separately, each on the same 0-100 scaled system with 70 as the threshold. A candidate who scores 95 on the national portion but 68 on the state portion still fails the exam and must retake at least the state section.

This is a critical planning detail. Many out-of-state licensees transferring into Delaware assume their general real estate knowledge will carry them through, then get blindsided by the state-specific portion, which is weighted almost entirely toward Delaware statute, licensing law, and broker-only supervisory rules. For a full breakdown of every scored item category and how each is weighted, see the DE-RE-B Exam Domains 2026 guide.

Domain Weighting and Where Candidates Lose Points

Because Pearson VUE calculates domain percentages from actual item counts, the weighting tells you exactly how many of the 145 questions come from each content area - and therefore where your study hours produce the most return.

Together, Domains 11, 12, and 13 make up 86% of the 50 scored state items. If your state-portion prep time isn't allocated to reflect that concentration, you are statistically studying the wrong things regardless of how many hours you log. The full percentage table for all 13 domains, including the smaller national categories, is broken down in the domains guide.

The Three-Attempt Rule and What Happens After a Fail

Delaware caps candidates at three exam attempts before requiring them to repeat the approved 99-hour broker prelicensing course. This limit applies regardless of whether the failure was on the national portion, the state portion, or both. It's a meaningful constraint compared to states with unlimited retakes, and it changes how a candidate should approach exam day.

Because the national and state scores are reported separately, a candidate who fails only one portion typically only needs to retest that portion - but confirming the retest scope and any waiting period through the Division of Professional Regulation before rescheduling with Pearson VUE avoids wasted attempts. For a fuller look at how attempt limits interact with overall exam difficulty, see How Hard Is the DE-RE-B Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026.

Fee Mechanics That Affect Retake Decisions

Cost is part of the pass-rate conversation because retakes are not free. The Pearson VUE exam fee is $88 per sitting, on top of the $248 state application and the separate $25 Real Estate Guaranty Fund fee that's part of initial licensure. A candidate who fails and retakes multiple times is paying the $88 exam fee again each time, which is a strong practical argument for treating the first attempt as the priority attempt rather than a low-stakes trial run.

• Exam fee (per sitting): $88, paid to Pearson VUE
• State application fee: $248, paid once as part of the licensure process
• Real Estate Guaranty Fund fee: $25, part of the overall licensing cost

A complete breakdown of every fee a broker candidate encounters - including how these figures compare across the licensure timeline - is available in the DE-RE-B Certification Cost 2026 breakdown.

Who Is Actually Sitting for This Exam

Understanding the eligibility filter that precedes the exam helps explain why the candidate pool looks the way it does. Broker applicants must be at least 23 years old, must have completed the approved 99-hour Delaware broker prelicensing course, must have held an active license continuously for five years immediately before applying, and must document at least 30 eligible transactions in the preceding five years. A full broker license further requires three years of active practice along with compliance with office, supervision, and escrow requirements.

That eligibility bar means nearly everyone sitting for the DE-RE-B exam is already an experienced, currently-licensed real estate salesperson - not a first-time entrant to the industry. This matters for how you interpret difficulty: the exam assumes working familiarity with transactions, not textbook-only knowledge. The full eligibility checklist, including transaction documentation requirements, is laid out in DE-RE-B Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.

A Domain-Ordered Study Timeline

Generic study techniques - spaced repetition, timed review blocks, weekly milestones - only help if they're pointed at the right material. Given that Domains 11 and 12 alone make up 66% of the state portion, and Domain 4 is the heaviest national domain, a domain-ordered schedule outperforms a chapter-by-chapter one.

For a week-by-week plan with more granular task lists across all 13 domains, see the DE-RE-B Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt. Timed practice on ../ using full-length simulated sessions is one of the more direct ways to confirm you can sustain accuracy across all 145 questions in the four-hour window, rather than just knowing the material in isolation.

National Portion vs. State Portion: Different Failure Patterns

Because the two portions are scored separately, they also tend to produce different failure patterns. National-portion struggles usually trace back to Domain 4 (Contracts and Agency) or Domain 6 (Property Disclosures and Environmental Issues), where question wording is dense and scenario-based. State-portion struggles concentrate almost entirely in Domains 11 and 12, simply because they carry the most weight and the most Delaware-specific statutory detail.

A quick self-check: if your practice scores are strong on general real estate concepts but shaky the moment a question references Delaware Code specifically, that's a state-portion risk, not a general-knowledge gap - and it calls for more time with the state outline (effective June 1, 2020) rather than more general review. A condensed reference covering the highest-yield facts across both portions is available in the DE-RE-B Cheat Sheet 2026, useful for final-week review before test day.

Frequently Asked Questions