Friday, June 18, 2004 - TSLD Mortgage Exam Update; One Class is Not Enough

In a recent conversation with Sandy Weller, current Director of Licensing at the TSLD, concerning the new state exam, Sandy said “If the test taker has no experience in the mortgage industry, it might take more than one course to pass the Exam”.

Our unique and popular 15 hr compliance course Keeping Current with Texas Mortgage Compliance covers the Federal Statutes i.e. RESPA, ECOA and TILA which is 50% of the exam.  It also covers the State Rules and Regs and the MBLA which is 20% of the exam.  We also discuss Home Equity loans, the DTPA and some general knowledge which is the remaining 30% of the exam. 

You can see therefore that our compliance course covers more than 75% of the exam but the real problem is preparing for the “general knowledge” portion of the exam, which is a vast potential of possible questions.  Sandy’s point is that people with mortgage lending experience most likely have learned general knowledge on-the-job and coupled with our compliance course have a better chance to pass the exam.

But how do you accumulate “general knowledge” on-the-job without a mortgage license?  You don’t need a mortgage license to be a loan processor but to be a good loan processor you need considerable general knowledge.

Those of us who also have a real estate license know that TREC requires each applicant to take required 30 hr core courses each of which has a written exam.  The exam prep course to take the real estate exam is merely a review of what you already learned in those required core courses.  The TSLD so far has not required any pre license core courses as TREC does in order to take their exam.  So it is up to mortgage pre licensees with no practical mortgage experience to seek out courses and other sources of information, which will prepare them for the exam.

The solution?  In addition to our compliance course, take a second course such as one of our loan processing courses.  Our 15 hr processing courses are charged with a great deal of mortgage “general knowledge”.

As Sandy says, “it might take more than one course to pass the exam”.