What the CAMT Exam Actually Tests: 100 Questions, a 68% Pass Mark, and Only 27 on Hands-On Repairs

Written & reviewed by {name} · Last reviewed 2026-10-05 · Editorial standards

The CAMT exam is 100 multiple-choice questions in two hours and thirty minutes, and you need to score above the passing point, which NAAEI's February 2026 candidate handbook (Rev. 17) puts at 68%. What most candidates do not expect is how little of it is repair work: on NAAEI's published content outline, only 27 of the 100 questions are about fixing things with tools, and the single largest task on the whole exam is running the pool and common areas.

Every figure below comes from NAAEI's own documents, dated where they can change. If you are reading this long after October 2026, check the handbook revision on the Candidate Resources page first; the passing point in particular is described as subject to change after regular exam reviews.

The numbers, as of the February 2026 handbook

100 multiple-choice questions, 2 hours 30 minutes.
Passing point: above 68%. Older affiliate and college pages still quote 66%; the current handbook is the one that counts.
Results appear on screen the moment you finish; the pass or fail status reaches your PACE account 24 hours later and is shared with your training provider at the same time.
Retakes cost $55 each and are unlimited, but only inside your candidacy period.
The full CAMT is a lifetime credential with no renewal fee and no continuing-education hours. The AIME membership that older pages tie to CAMT stopped taking renewals on January 31, 2026 and retires on December 31, 2026.

Where the 100 questions come from

NAAEI's content outline assigns a fixed number of questions to every task. The Essential Trade Skills domain carries 35, but 8 of those are work orders and customer service, which leaves the crafts like this: electrical 5, plumbing 4, appliances 4, locks and keys 4, HVAC 3, construction 3, mechanical 3, painting 1. Heating and air conditioning each get a full course module, yet together they are worth three questions.

The other 65 questions sit in three non-trade domains. Compliance has 20, four each on safety and OSHA practice, fair housing and the ADA, codes and permits, environmental responsibility, and documentation. Facilities Operations has 25: daily property inspections 6, recreational facilities and common areas 7, preventive maintenance 6, and repair-or-replace decisions 6. Professional Development and Collaboration has 20.

That 7-question common-area task outweighs electrical. Its outline lists pool and spa chemical balance, performing chemical tests, the mechanical parts of aquatic areas, opening and closing procedures, and converting units such as ounces to gallons and ounces to pounds. A technician who has never worked a property with a pool should spend real study time here.

How NAAEI wants the questions read

The handbook states that questions are not meant to trick you, and tells you to work out whether a question asks for the BEST or the ONLY answer, then picture the real-life situation. On this exam that usually means choosing the answer that follows company procedure and documents what you did, over the answer that fixes the problem fastest.

The outline makes the pattern concrete. The repair-or-replace task tests cost of parts, labor, scheduling, product age and life expectancy, and the resident's immediate needs, and the 2026 skill standards add that troubleshooting must be done and recorded before an appliance is condemned. The codes task includes knowing licensure requirements for trade work, so recognising that a job needs a licensed contractor is itself a scored skill. Compliance includes reporting vendors who are not OSHA compliant and entering unoccupied units correctly. Expect more scenarios built on these than on code tables.

What has to be finished before you can book it

You cannot schedule the exam until every requirement in PACE, NAAEI's credential portal, shows Complete. That includes the classroom technical courses and a separate online Soft Skills course on Visto, available in English or Spanish at no extra charge once you are enrolled. Its completion can take up to 24 business hours to register, so finish it before your class ends rather than on the night before you want to test.

Your PACE name must match your government ID exactly, or you will be turned away and logged as a no-show. If you have less than 12 months of on-site apartment or rental housing maintenance experience, you can still take the course and exam and earn the Provisional CAMT. You then have two years to log the experience and upgrade in PACE; miss that window and the provisional credential expires, and you repeat both the course and the exam.

The clock is six months, not twelve

Several affiliate and college pages, including Wake Tech's course listing and the Triangle Apartment Association's 2025 program page, still say you have 12 months from declaring candidacy. NAAEI's current handbook and Candidate Resources page say six months, starting on the first day of class for classroom students. Extensions cost $75 for another six months each, with a maximum of four, and 30 months from the start date is the outer limit before you must buy and repeat the whole program. Students in instructor-led courses lasting four months or longer, typically community college programs, get an initial nine-month term instead.

The program fee is set by each provider, not by NAAEI. For one data point, Triangle Apartment Association listed its 2025-26 cohort at $975 for members and $1,175 for non-members, across eight class dates.

Test day, and the rescheduling rule that costs $55

You can test online with a live remote proctor, at a Meazure Learning testing center, or at your training provider's site if it hosts one. Remote testing runs in Meazure's Guardian browser and needs a webcam and microphone. Scratch paper is not allowed remotely; you get an on-screen notepad and calculator instead, which matters for the pool-chemistry and unit-conversion questions. In person you may get scratch paper and may bring a basic calculator.

For a remote exam, rescheduling is free up to 24 hours before the appointment. Inside 24 hours you cannot change it, and missing it counts as a no-show that costs the $55 retake fee. At a testing center the cutoff is 48 hours, and even an early reschedule costs $50. If you fail, you can request a retake in PACE from the day after your attempt. If a technical failure caused the fail, Meazure may review it and waive the retake fee, so report it rather than simply rebooking.

How to spend your practice time

Weight your study to match the outline, not the course schedule. The free Quibank CAMT bank has seven domain pools; the trade pools are useful for confirming you can still explain a GFCI trip or a running toilet, but the Compliance, Safety and Fair Housing pool and the Facilities Operations and Professionalism pool together cover the material behind roughly two-thirds of the scored questions.

Try the free CAMT apartment maintenance practice test →