FULL REVIEW | Aceable Agent Online Real Estate Courses
4.7
PROS
All-in-One convenient package. Engaging course format. Money-back guarantee. Frequent promotions. Mobile app.
CONS
No extra options to add-on. Courses for post-license and CE not available for most states. No hardcopy books.
Aceable Agent, based in Austin, Texas, is one of the newest real estate schools in the industry, and they are not wasting any time making a name for themselves. Their goal is to disrupt online education by making the courses more engaging and leveraging technology to make learning a truly mobile experience.
We take a deep dive into their online real estate programs to see if Aceable Agent is the best choice to help you launch a new career as a real estate agent.
Pricing
Most real estate schools will offer two or three packages to choose from. Aceable Agent has taken a different approach and created an All-in-One package solution. They have taken out all of the guesswork and included everything you need to successfully get licensed.
If you are new to the real estate industry, this simplifies the process and makes it easy. However, if you are looking to build your own custom package, this may not work for you.
Every state has their own course and exam requirements. At the time of this review, Aceable Agent has real estate programs in eight states, and their packages are competitively priced in the middle of the price range relative to the rest of the industry.
You should be aware that after you get your real state license, the real estate commission for your state requires you to take additional courses to renew your license. The biggest thing missing with Aceable Agent is their limited course offering for continuing education and post-licensing. Currently, they only offer continuing education for Texas. However, they are rapidly rolling out their programs in other states, so by the time you need to renew your real estate license in a couple of years, they may have them ready for your state.
Money-Back Guarantee
After you complete the online real estate courses, your state requires you to take a real estate exam at a designated testing center. Aceable Agent guarantees that you will pass this exam, or they will give you 100% of your money back with their Ace the Exam Guarantee.
It is reassuring to see how confident they are with their courses, especially when other schools don’t have this guarantee. However, there is some fine print that you should be aware of.
To qualify for the Ace the Exam Guarantee, you need to:
- Purchase a pre-license course package through Aceable Agent
- Complete all of the included courses
- Complete the Ultimate Exam Prep course – it’s included as well
- Score 85% or higher on at least one practice test (take as many practice tests as you need to reach 85% or higher)
- Take the licensing exam within 90 days of completing the Ultimate Exam Prep course (attempt to pass at least 3 times)
- Email support@aceableagent.com and include a copy of your three score reports
Taking the Courses
When you log into your account for the first time, you are greeted by your virtual instructor that goes through a brief introduction. This personal touch made me feel welcomed and excited to get started.
Dashboard
The Dashboard is the main page where you can access all of your courses, study materials, and course certificates for when you finish your course. I found it to be easy to navigate and simple to use.
What is unique to Aceable Agent is how they organize their courses. Each course is broken up into levels, and each level is further broken down into chapters. You go through each chapter one at a time and need to complete all the chapters to reach the next level. The idea is that you are studying the material in small bites, as opposed to studying in large chunks. You get 6 months of unlimited online access to complete the courses, which is the industry standard that you will get from most real estate schools.
Course Layout
When you open up a real estate course, you see one page of course text at a time. It has a clean look and feels like you are reading a book. Just online. You can study at any time and take as many breaks as you need.
The courses were designed to help you retain as much information as possible, especially for people who haven’t attended school in a while. There are lots of pictures and diagrams scattered throughout the course. The material is easy to follow, and they try to ameliorate mundane topics by dropping in some cheesy humor periodically.
Note: If you are in California, the course is set up a little differently. You get access to the full course text in a PDF format. I actually prefer this way because you can read through the material much faster and requires fewer mouse clicks.
Mobile App
You would think that schools nowadays would all have a mobile app. However, you would be wrong.
The biggest feature that really sets Aceable Agent apart from other real estate schools is the fact that they actually have a mobile app that you can download on your phone from the Apple App Store or Google Play. The courses look very clean and easy to read. It is set up so that you go through it one screen at a time, so you don’t have to keep scrolling down the page.
This makes studying-on-the-go so much easier and convenient. You don’t have to lug a heavy laptop or thick textbook around. Whenever you find yourself waiting in line somewhere, you can quickly pull it out and study for a little bit. Personally, I found the mobile interface easier to navigate through because you can just swipe through the pages with your thumb.
Mastery Tools
As you go through the course, Aceable Agent helps you stay engaged by incorporating a variety of mastery tools. These are short “quizzes” to test your knowledge on the reading materials and have been developed to help you retain as much information as possible.
The Facts of a Feather is a combination of matching and multiple-choice.
There are question and answer sections, where you write your answers down in full sentences. Your response is evaluated by one of the real estate instructors.
And of course, there are the standard multiple-choice quizzes. These make up the vast majority of the tools to help you master the material.
One thing that I really liked about Aceable Agent was that if you answered a question incorrectly, they give you an explanation of the correct answer.
Passing Requirements
In order to get credit for passing the course, you will have to complete all of the mastery tools. There will be a cumulative multiple-choice final exam at the end of each course.
How many questions and how long the final exams are will be dictated by the state you are in. Every state has their own regulations on final exam requirements. Some states require proctors to be present during the final exam. These are people who will be physically (or virtually) watching you while you take the exam. This is to prevent any cheating.
Aceable Agent has partnered with an online proctoring service called Examity. You will be able to take your final exams from the comfort of your own home at a time that is convenient for you. The Examity proctors will typically monitor you during the exam through a webcam.
State Exam Prep
After you complete the pre-licensing courses, your state requires you to pass a real estate exam, which is typically done at a testing center. Aceable Agent has multiple-choice practice tests to help you prepare by simulating the actual exam. They were developed by a staff of Harvard-educated instructors using proven methodology. You get unlimited access to these practice tests and can take them as many times as you need in order to hone in your test-taking skills.
Mobile App
You can access the practice tests through their mobile app. One question is displayed on the screen at a time. After you finish going through all of the questions, it will give you your final score. You have the option to go back and review the questions that you missed if you want.
Exam Pass Rates
Does their test prep actually work and help people successfully pass the exam? As the saying goes, the proof is in the pudding.
To get an idea of how well their practice tests worked in the real world, I checked out the pass rates published by the Texas Real Estate Commission. This is pulled directly from the state agency, so this data is the real deal.
This is how Aceable Agent stacks up against the other large online real estate schools in Texas.
| School Name | Pass Rate | Exams Passed | Exam Count |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aceable Agent | 79.62% | 1,699 | 2,134 |
| The CE Shop | 79.37% | 554 | 698 |
| American School of Real Estate Express | 66.36% | 1,018 | 1,534 |
| Champions School of Real Estate | 60.99% | 12,192 | 19,989 |
| 360training.com | 50.00% | 641 | 1,282 |
| Overall Average | 61.01% | 19.546 | 32,039 |
Support
If you have any questions on the course or need technical assistance, Aceable Agent provides comprehensive support options through phone, chat, and email. They are available an impressive 7 days a week with the following office hours:
Sunday through Thursday: 8 am to 9 pm CST
Friday: 8 am to 7 pm CST
Saturday: 10 am to 7 pm CST
If you need help outside of these hours or want to quickly get the answer yourself, they have a self-help resource called the Help Center. This is an ever-growing database that gets updated dynamically as new questions come up. I found this to be a great resource that answered almost all of my questions.
Reviews
Nowadays, there are review sites galore. But which ones can you trust? I went through all of the major review sites to see what they thought of Aceable Agent .
Self Reviews
Aceable Agent surveys its own students and reports that it has received a score of 4.7 out of 5 possible points based on over a thousand reviews. Personally, I don’t put much weight on these self-reported reviews because schools will obviously try to make themselves look good.
On Facebook, they received a favorable score of 4.6 out of 5 points. However, this is taken from a very small sample size of only 40 people, so this isn’t statistically meaningful.
Trustpilot
Aceable Agent received a rating of Excellent on Trustpilot. This is based on 1,324 reviews, which sounds really good. However, I would take any review from Trustpilot with a grain of salt. They are notorious for providing unreliable figures that skew in favor of the company that is being reviewed.
I’ve found the reviews on Google to be fairly reliable, so it was concerning to see Aceable with a mediocre score of only 3.8 out of 5 stars. However, this was based on feedback from only 26 people, so like Facebook, this really isn’t meaningful for a rapidly-growing school with thousands of students.
Apple
In my experience, the reviews that you find in the Apple App Store are the best and most reliable reviews. You don’t have to worry about companies trying to manipulate the data by paying people to offer biased opinions because Apple makes sure each review comes from a unique user. There is no way to cheat the system.
Aceable Agent has a nearly perfect score of 4.9 out of a 5-star rating based on 2,348 reviews. Nobody gave them a low 1-star or 2-star rating. This is great to see because it shows a clear consensus that pretty much everybody feels that Aceable Agent has an excellent program.
Bottom Line
Aceable Agent has a solid program and is quietly disrupting the online education industry. They are still a relatively young school, so you can only use them to obtain a real estate license. They have few, if any, courses to renew an existing license. I would expect that to be changing in the near future.
Their real estate program brings a lot of swag to online learning. They incorporate videos and interactive quizzes to keep you engaged. What really sets them apart is their mobile app. I haven’t seen another real estate school that has done a better job of seamlessly integrating technology to make studying easier and more convenient.
However, you don’t get a lot of options to choose from with their courses. It’s an “our way or the highway” approach. Fortunately, they seem to have figured out the right formula as evidenced by having the best exam pass rates in the industry, which are further backed by their Ace the Exam Guarantee. I would definitely feel confident in recommending Aceable Agent to my friends and family members.