Alaska Remote Property Disclosures Surprise Most Candidates

Fewer people sit for the Alaska real estate exam than most other states. That means fewer practice resources, fewer prep courses built specifically for this market, and a higher chance of walking in without knowing the state specific material.

The Alaska Real Estate Commission regulates licensing in the state. Pearson VUE administers the exam with 70 state specific questions and 80 national questions; you need 75% to pass. Three topics account for the majority of points lost on the state portion: remote property disclosures, tidelands ownership, and public offering statement requirements. National prep courses treat none of them with the depth the Alaska exam demands. When I taught pre-licensing courses, this was the topic that filled my office hours.

Remote Property Disclosures

Alaska's Transfer Disclosure Statement covers contingencies that no national prep course prepares you for: permafrost depth, timber value, water source, and soil stability all appear on the form and all appear on the exam.

Remote property disclosures are not unique to Alaska. The Washington exam tests Shoreline Management Act disclosures for waterfront parcels, and the Hawaii exam covers Transfer Disclosure requirements that vary by property type, but Alaska's rules for raw land are more extensive than either.

Alaska's vast wilderness means sellers must disclose everything from soil stability to freezing pipes and water access on the Transfer Disclosure Statement, students underestimate how many additional contingencies (permafrost depth, timber value, water source) apply to raw land that don't exist in other states.

The Pearson VUE exam will present scenarios involving raw land transfers and ask which disclosures are required. If you only know the standard residential checklist, you will miss every raw land question on the state portion.

Tidelands

Most candidates guess at the tidelands boundary and guess wrong. What did the Alaska agent say at closing? "This deal is really remote." (Sam, my 4-year-old, wouldn't laugh at that either.) But back to business: the mean high-tide line is the legal dividing point between private ownership and state-owned tidelands. The exam will test exactly that boundary, not the low-tide line candidates assume.

The state owns all tidelands below the mean high-tide line under the public trust doctrine, meaning waterfront property owners only hold title to the uplands, students get this wrong because they confuse high-tide and low-tide boundaries.

Know the mean high-tide line as the precise cutoff, understand that waterfront buyers do not acquire tidelands through the deed, and be prepared to answer questions about what the state retains regardless of what the purchase contract says. The AREC tests this rule because it governs a significant share of Alaska property transactions.

Public Offering Statements

Public offering statement requirements for Alaska subdivisions and condominiums are tested at the level of specific content and specific timelines, not as a general concept.

Alaska requires developers to provide detailed public offering statements before selling subdivision lots or condominiums, and students stumble on the specific content requirements and the buyer's statutory rescission period.

Memorize what the offering statement must contain, when it must be delivered, and how long the buyer has to rescind after receiving it. The Pearson VUE exam asks situational questions that require you to know whether the rescission period has expired in a given scenario. The general principle that "buyers have a right to cancel" isn't precise enough to pass. The exam doesn't reward overthinking, but it absolutely punishes underpreparing on Alaska's unique subdivision and condominium rules.