LA Real Estate common mistakes
LA Real Estate · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
Answering license-law items with generic national rules - e.g., picking a multi-year license term, a generic CE hour count, or a generic disclosure timing - instead of the figure in the Louisiana license statute and LREC rules.
Most prep material is written to national or other-state outlines, and candidates memorize those numbers first; Louisiana's statute (R.S. 37:1431 et seq.) and Commission rules set their own terms, renewal cycles, CE requirements, and advertising/recordkeeping details that differ from what the candidate already 'knows.'
What to do instead
Build a single one-page 'Louisiana only' sheet listing license term and renewal deadline, CE hours and any mandatory course, trust-account and record-retention rules, advertising requirements, and reporting obligations; drill that sheet daily for the last two weeks and treat every number on it as a memorized fact.
Assuming the Commission can award money damages, order a licensee to pay a commission dispute, or impose jail time, when asked what remedy is available after a complaint.
Candidates blur the Commission's administrative authority with the courts' civil and criminal authority, because complaint scenarios in the license law chapter read like a lawsuit.
What to do instead
Make a two-column 'Commission can / Commission cannot' table (e.g., can suspend, revoke, fine, require education, condition licensure; cannot award damages or imprison) and check every disciplinary question against that table before choosing an answer.
Treating a buyer or tenant as automatically owed fiduciary duties just because the licensee is working with them, or stating that a customer is owed confidentiality and full loyalty.
In practice licensees often show property to unrepresented buyers in a friendly, service-oriented way, so candidates transfer the feel of the relationship onto the legal classification instead of checking whether an agency relationship was actually established.
What to do instead
Before answering, force the question into a three-line scratch diagram - who is the client, who is the customer, was consent given - then answer only from a client/customer duties table: loyalty, obedience, disclosure, confidentiality, accounting and reasonable care to the client; honesty, accuracy and fair dealing to the customer.
Answering dual-agency and designated-agency scenarios with 'the broker owes full loyalty to both sides' or 'dual agency is not permitted,' rather than identifying the required disclosures and consents and the limits on what the broker may do.
Candidates memorize the phrase 'fiduciary duty' without attaching it to a specific party, and they over-apply the general rule that a broker cannot favor one side over the other.
What to do instead
For any two-client scenario, write out four items in order - disclosure, informed written consent, impartial treatment, no disclosure of one side's confidential bargaining information - and select the option that matches that sequence rather than the option that sounds most protective of the consumer.
Applying common-law assumptions to Louisiana contract questions - treating an oral agreement as enforceable, relying on 'caveat emptor' language, or assuming an 'as-is' clause always defeats a buyer's claim about a hidden defect.
National prep content is built on common-law sales doctrine, while Louisiana purchase agreements are governed by the Civil Code, where the warranty against hidden defects (redhibition) and the limits on waiving it are the controlling concepts and where the agreement to buy or sell immovable property must be in writing.
What to do instead
Make a short Louisiana contract card: writing requirement, redhibition and what an as-is waiver can and cannot do (it does not protect a seller who knew of and failed to disclose a defect), bond for deed, and the remedy options available to a buyer; reread it every time a question mentions a defect, a verbal deal, or 'as-is.'
Reversing debits and credits on a settlement statement - charging the buyer for an item the seller customarily pays, or crediting the wrong party for prorated taxes, rent, or interest - and prorating with the wrong day count.
Candidates memorize a list of closing costs without a directional model, so under time pressure they guess which column an item falls in, and they mix monthly (30-day) prorations with actual-day prorations and round at the wrong step.
What to do instead
Use a fixed T-account with buyer-debit, buyer-credit, seller-debit, seller-credit columns and a written recipe for every proration (identify the annual or monthly amount, identify the period owned by each party, use the convention the question specifies, round only at the end); redo three proration problems from scratch each study session until the direction is automatic.
Confusing the note rate with the APR, points with origination fees, or the loan-estimate stage with the closing-disclosure stage when a financing item asks which figure applies or which disclosure is required and when.
These terms appear side by side in the financing chapter, and candidates learn definitions in isolation without tying each term to the document and the timeline in which it appears.
What to do instead
Draw a single timeline of a transaction and place each disclosure on it, then write one sentence for each financing term stating what it includes and what it excludes (APR includes certain finance charges; the note rate does not); answer financing questions only after locating the item on that timeline.
Miscomputing legal descriptions - mixing up township and range, forgetting that a section is one square mile, or calculating acreage without accounting for the order in which a description's fractions are applied.
The government survey system is spatial, but candidates study it as a vocabulary list, so the arithmetic in a metes-and-bounds or section-fraction question collapses under exam pressure.
What to do instead
Sketch every legal-description question: draw the township/range grid, mark the section, then halve or quarter the parcel step by step (640 acres per section, 640 divided by the denominators in order), and only then look at the answer choices.
Adjusting the wrong direction in the sales-comparison approach - adding value because the comparable is superior, or adjusting the subject instead of the comparable - and choosing the cost approach or income approach for a property type where it does not apply.
The arithmetic feels mechanical, so candidates apply adjustments from memory of a formula rather than from the principle that the comparable is always brought into line with the subject.
What to do instead
Repeat the rule out loud before each problem - 'adjust the comparable toward the subject: superior comp, subtract; inferior comp, add' - and match approach to property: sales comparison for typical residences, cost for special-purpose or new construction, income for rental and investment property.
Treating commission as a standard or customary rate, or describing a discussion of fees with a competing broker as normal professional courtesy, and giving advice on advertising or trust funds that ignores the requirement that licensees advertise under a registered name and keep client money separate from operating funds.
Candidates answer ethics items from workplace habit and local folklore rather than from the antitrust and trust-account rules, and the 'reasonable sounding' option is often the one that describes a fee discussion or a commingled account.
What to do instead
Memorize three hard prohibitions - no price fixing or fee discussion with competitors, no commingling of trust funds, no advertising that fails to identify the brokerage as required - and screen every ethics option against them, eliminating any choice that implies a customary rate, a shared fee conversation, or a single combined account.