General Principles of Agency on the Arizona Real Estate Salesperson (AZ-RES): What's Tested and How to Study It
In short
Agency is worth roughly 22 questions across the two AZ-RES papers — 10 on the General exam and 12 on the Arizona State exam. It covers who you legally represent, the six fiduciary duties you owe them, how the relationship starts and ends, and the disclosures Arizona adds on top.
What agency means, and who you owe what
Who you represent, and what that obliges you to do
Agency is a legal relationship where one person acts on another's behalf. The person being represented is the principal, or client; the person acting is the agent. In Arizona the licensed broker is the agent of the client, and salespeople work under that broker's license. Broker supervision and broker responsibility follow from that arrangement, and both appear as subtopics in the outline.
To your client you owe six fiduciary duties. Candidates remember them as OLD CAR.
| Duty | What it obliges you to do |
|---|---|
| Obedience | Follow the client's lawful instructions |
| Loyalty | Put the client's interests ahead of your own |
| Disclosure | Tell the client everything material you know |
| Confidentiality | Keep the client's private information private, including after closing |
| Accounting | Handle other people's money and documents correctly |
| Reasonable care | Bring competent skill to the job |
Two of these carry traps. Obedience covers lawful instructions only; a seller who tells you not to show the house to a particular ethnic group has given an instruction you must refuse. Confidentiality survives the end of the relationship, so a former client's bottom-line price stays sealed.
Agency also fixes the limit of what you owe the other side. A client gets all six duties. A customer is the party across the table, and they are owed honesty, fair dealing, and disclosure of known material facts about the property. You may not lie to a customer or hide a defect from them, and you also may not advocate for them. Fiduciary duties to clients and customers is a subtopic on both papers.
Types of agent
The exam sorts agents by how much authority they hold.
| Agent | Authority | Typical example |
|---|---|---|
| Special | One transaction, narrow scope | The listing agent selling one house |
| General | Ongoing, across a range of matters | A property manager |
| Universal | Broad power to act for the principal | Someone holding a power of attorney |
Dual agency is where one broker represents both buyer and seller in the same deal. Arizona permits it, but only with the informed written consent of both parties. The broker's duties then shrink to a limited form, because you cannot advocate fully for two people who want opposite things. Designated agency assigns different salespeople within the same brokerage to each side. A transaction broker facilitates a deal without representing either party and owes no fiduciary duties to either.
A power of attorney creates an agent called an attorney-in-fact. For it to convey real property it has to be in writing and recorded. It ends automatically on the principal's death; a durable power of attorney survives the principal becoming incapacitated, but death still terminates it.
How agency begins and how it ends
Agency is normally created by express written agreement — a listing agreement or a buyer-broker agreement. It can also arise by implication from how people behave, by ratification when a principal accepts an act performed on their behalf after the fact, or by estoppel when a principal lets a third party believe someone is their agent.
Termination has a longer list, and the exam tests it as recall:
- the purpose is fulfilled (the sale closes)
- the term expires
- both parties agree to end it
- the principal revokes it
- the agent renounces it
- either party dies or becomes incompetent
- the property is destroyed
- either party goes bankrupt
A principal can revoke at almost any time, but revoking is not the same as escaping liability: an early cancellation can still leave the principal owing damages or a commission.
Brokerage agreements
Listing agreements come in four shapes and the difference is always about who gets paid.
| Listing type | Who owes the broker a commission |
|---|---|
| Exclusive right-to-sell | The seller, whoever finds the buyer — including the seller |
| Exclusive agency | The seller, unless the seller finds the buyer themselves |
| Open | Only the broker who produces the buyer gets paid |
| Net | The seller names a walk-away figure; the broker keeps anything above it |
The net listing is the one to watch. Pearson's outline flags it as a conflict of interest, because the broker's pay rises the more the seller is talked down.
Buyer representation agreements mirror the same structure from the other side. Property management agreements are their own category, covering accounting for the owner's funds, maintaining the property, and leasing it.
What Arizona adds
The Arizona State paper devotes a whole area to agency, and it goes past the national material in three directions.
The first is disclosure. Arizona requires the agency relationship to be disclosed in writing, and requires a licensee to disclose it when they are personally a party to a transaction — buying or selling their own property while holding a license. Conflicts of interest and compensation disclosures are examined as their own subtopics.
The second is case law. The State outline lists Arizona agency case law on customers and clients as an explicit subtopic, so the state exam expects the Arizona court version of where the client-customer line falls.
The third is a state area called Reasonable Skill and Care, worth 6 questions on its own. It covers three separate things. The licensee's obligation to be competent comes first, then property taxes and special assessments, then Arizona utility and environmental regulation. Grouping them makes sense once you read competence as including what an agent ought to know about the property they are selling, which is what pulls taxes and utilities under the same heading. Arizona agency relationships and disclosure is the topic to study for this.
How it shows up on the exam
Only Ever's curriculum gives General Principles of Agency 16 study hours across 5 topics, out of 100 total prep hours for this exam. That figure is our own estimate of how long the material takes to learn properly. The exam board publishes question counts instead, and those are below.
Pearson VUE's published outlines spread agency across five separate areas:
| Where it's tested | Questions |
|---|---|
| General: Licensee obligations to parties of a transaction | 3 of 80 |
| General: Brokerage agreements between broker and principal | 3 of 80 |
| General: Types of agency and licensee–client relationships | 2 of 80 |
| General: Creation and termination of agency | 2 of 80 |
| State: Arizona Agency | 6 of 60 |
| State: Reasonable Skill and Care | 6 of 60 |
Agency is scattered across that table. On the General paper it is folded into the Real Estate Contracts and Agency area, while listing agreements sit somewhere else entirely, under Real Estate Practice. The Arizona State paper carries 12 agency questions against the General paper's 10.
That shapes how to prepare. Learn the six duties and the termination list cold, since they are recall and they are cheap points. Then spend the bulk of your time on scenarios. Pearson publishes a difficulty split for each General area, and the contracts-and-agency area runs 7 knowledge items against 6 application and 3 analysis — more than half its questions hand you a fact pattern. Finish with Arizona's own layer, which is where the larger share of the marks sits and where a national study guide will leave you unprepared.
Common questions
How much of the AZ-RES exam is agency? About 22 questions across both papers: 10 of the 80 scored items on the General exam, and 12 of the 60 on the Arizona State exam.
What are the six fiduciary duties? Obedience, loyalty, disclosure, confidentiality, accounting, and reasonable care. Obedience applies only to lawful instructions, and confidentiality continues after the relationship ends.
What's the difference between a client and a customer? A client is the person you represent and is owed all six fiduciary duties. A customer is the other party, owed honesty, fair dealing, and disclosure of known material facts about the property.
Is dual agency legal in Arizona? Yes, with the informed written consent of both buyer and seller. The broker's duties become limited, because full advocacy for both sides at once is impossible.
Who is the agent in Arizona, the salesperson or the broker? The broker. Salespersons act under the broker's license, which is why supervision and broker responsibility appear so often in the questions.
Does a power of attorney survive the principal's death? No. A durable power of attorney survives the principal becoming incapacitated, but any power of attorney ends when the principal dies.
Only Ever's guides and practice questions for this exam are free, including the AI-generated question sets other providers charge for. Try the free practice questions and start with the client-versus-customer scenarios, since those turn up on both papers.