The Salespersons Qualifying Examination (SQE) is the licensing exam for anyone who wants to work as a salesperson under a licensed estate agent in Hong Kong. It has 50 questions across two separately graded parts, and like its sister exam for full agents, it does not use a single pass percentage.
How many questions are on the SQE?
The SQE has 50 multiple-choice questions in total, split into two parts that share one paper and one clock but are marked independently. Part I is 40 stand-alone questions worth 80 marks. Part II is 10 case-analysis questions worth 20 marks, built on one or two shared case studies rather than asked as isolated facts. Candidates get 2 hours 30 minutes to complete both parts.
What is the pass mark for the SQE?
There isn’t a single number. Instead, each part carries its own 60% threshold: Part I requires at least 48 of its 80 marks, and Part II requires at least 12 of its 20 marks. A candidate must clear both thresholds in the same sitting; there is no blended score across the two parts. The Estate Agents Authority reviews the 60% pass mark from time to time and announces any change on its website, so it is worth checking eaa.org.hk before your sitting.
Can Part I make up for a weak Part II, or vice versa?
No. Because the two parts are graded against separate thresholds, passing one does not offset failing the other. A candidate who scores 70 of 80 in Part I but only 8 of 20 in Part II would reach 78 of the 100 marks combined, well past 60% overall, yet still fail the exam because Part II never reached its own 12-mark line. The same holds in reverse: a strong Part II cannot rescue a Part I score below 48. Anyone preparing for the SQE needs to treat the two parts as two separate exams that happen to share a paper, not as one pool of marks to average out.
What is Part II actually testing?
Part II’s 10 questions are case-analysis items built around one or two shared scenarios rather than a plain question-and-answer format, so several questions in a row hang off the same set of facts. The judgement required draws on the same six-part syllabus as Part I, things like when a salesperson must have a signed estate agency agreement in place, what a licensee’s statutory duties are, or what a client’s instruction does and does not excuse, but applied to a concrete situation instead of recalled as a definition.
What topics does the SQE cover?
The SQE syllabus is published as Appendix 2 of the EAA’s Handbook for Candidates (2024 edition) and spans six parts, with 229 numbered entries of which 178 are leaf-level knowledge points:
- Part 1: Introduction to the real estate agency industry in Hong Kong
- Part 2: The Estate Agents Ordinance and estate agency practice, including licensing, a salesperson’s statutory duties, estate agency agreements and the prescribed forms, and the Code of Ethics. This is the heaviest part of the paper.
- Part 3: Laws governing estate agency practice and conveyancing procedures
- Part 4: Land registration, land search, and property information systems
- Part 5: Building-related knowledge, property classification, and property management
- Part 6: Leasing and tenancy matters
Part II of the paper draws on all six of these parts through its case studies; it is not a seventh syllabus part in its own right. The SQE syllabus is narrower than the EAQE’s: it does not include the property valuation part or the estate agency business management part that the full agent’s exam covers.
How is the SQE different from the EAQE?
The two exams map to different roles. The Estate Agents Ordinance defines a “salesperson” as someone employed by, or otherwise engaged under, a licensed estate agent, which is what the SQE licenses. Anyone who wants to run an agency business under their own estate agent’s licence instead needs the Estate Agents Qualifying Examination (EAQE), a longer exam covering an additional two syllabus parts. See our EAQE exam guide if that is the licence you need.
How can I prepare for the two-part pass structure?
Since neither part can rescue the other, the most reliable preparation drills Part I’s stand-alone questions and Part II’s case-analysis format separately, rather than treating the whole bank as one mix. The RiverMap Learning SQE app organises practice by all six syllabus parts plus a dedicated case-analysis bank for Part II, alongside a timed mock that scores the two parts separately, matching how the real exam is graded. Every one of its 351 questions is written from scratch against the publicly published SQE syllabus, and each names the ordinance or syllabus point it rests on so a candidate can check the source directly. The app is available in English, Traditional Chinese and Simplified Chinese. The full syllabus is published by the Estate Agents Authority at eaa.org.hk. This app is an independent revision aid and is not endorsed by, sponsored by, or affiliated with the Estate Agents Authority, PEAK, or the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.