Reference

Real Estate Exam Mnemonics Worth Learning

6 memory aids, including the Georgia-only ones. Each says what it encodes and why it earns its place, because a mnemonic that is harder to recall than the list itself is just extra work.

What mnemonics can and cannot do here

They help with fixed lists, such as the duties owed to a client or the components of a monthly payment. They do not help with scenario questions, which are most of the Georgia exam, because recalling a list is not the same as deciding which list applies.

OLD CARGeorgia

The duties owed to a client.

Obedience to lawful instructions
Loyalty to the client's interests
Disclosure of material facts
Confidentiality, which survives the engagement
Accounting for money and documents
Reasonable care and diligence

Georgia questions turn on who is owed these. Under BRRETA a customer gets honesty and material-fact disclosure only, so pairing OLD CAR with the client-versus-customer test covers most agency questions.

PITI

The four components of a typical monthly mortgage payment.

Principal
Interest
Taxes
Insurance

Questions ask for a full monthly payment when you have only calculated principal and interest. PITI reminds you what is still missing.

The four Georgia F'sGeorgia

The Georgia-only facts that carry the most exam weight.

Fee: $1 per $1,000 transfer tax on the price
Financing: intangible recording tax on the loan
Forty percent assessment ratio before millage
Foreclosure: non-judicial, no statutory redemption

These four cover a disproportionate share of the Georgia finance and closing questions, and each has a national counterpart that would be the wrong answer here.

FRIENDS and the protected classes

A prompt for the federal protected classes.

Familial status
Race
Religion
Income source is NOT federally protected
El(national origin)
Nationality, meaning national origin
Disability
Sex
Colour

Use it as a checklist rather than a spelling. The point the exam tests is that creditworthiness and income source are not federal protected classes, so a lawful refusal on payment history is not discrimination.

Void, Voidable, Valid

Contract status in one line each.

Void: never a contract, such as one with an adjudicated incompetent
Voidable: valid until someone with the right cancels it, such as a minor
Valid: enforceable by both sides

The exam offers all three in the same set of options. The distinction between void and voidable is the one candidates get wrong.

Adjust the comp, never the subject

The direction of appraisal adjustments.

Comparable is better: subtract
Comparable is worse: add

Half of appraisal adjustment errors are a sign flip. Fixing the direction in one phrase removes the whole category.

Practise the underlying material at practice by topic, and see the terms behind these in the glossary.

About mnemonics

Facts checked against the current PSI Candidate Information Bulletin and GREC sources. Last reviewed August 2026. Editorial standards.

Are mnemonics actually useful for this exam?

For fixed lists, yes. For scenario questions, no. A device that helps you recall six duties does nothing to help you decide which duties are owed to the person in the question, and that decision is what the exam is really testing.

Why are there only a handful here?

Because most published real estate mnemonics are harder to remember than the list they encode. We only include the ones that carry real weight.