I recently passed the Florida Real Estate State Exam but of course I have a hundred questions about day-to-day real estate activities that they don't teach you in the course. One thing that I am not clear on even after school is how referral fees work between agents. One section in the curiculum talked about not being able to take or give fees to non-agents for referrals. But how does it work between agents if you refer business to someone in another state, or in your own state in a different city? What is the law on that, does anyone know?

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Liane Jamason, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
Tampa FL Homes|Free List of Tampa Short Sales & Foreclosures

Liane Jamason is a Realtor in Tampa Bay servicing St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa, Carollwood, Westchase, Ybor City, South Tampa, Davis Island, Brandon, Riverview, Apollo Beach, Ruskin and beyond!

From what I understand, the referral fee is agreed upon before passing the client to the agent you are referring to out-of-state. The fees are not fixed, or regulated in any way; you simply decide before sending the client out.

I obviously want to help my fellow agent at another KW out of state, so I will refer within my company.

Since you are interviewing, this is a good question for your new prospective broker as different brokerages may have different policies on this subject.

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Steve Castaneda, Realtor

Specializing in Houston Real Estate. Feel free to browse Houston homes for sale or read about Real Estate Technology for agents.

While I am not in Florida, I believe we have many of the same rules. If you referred someone to me here in Atlanta, you and I woud sign a broker referral agreement.

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Ryan Ward - REALTOR®, CDPE
Premier Atlanta Real Estate - Keller Williams Realty Consultants.
Direct: (404) 630-3187

For up to date information about the Atlanta real estate market, please visit my Atlanta Real Estate blog. I am also a Certified Distressed Property Expert and an exeprienced Atlanta short sale agent.

You will find most people requesting or giving between a 25-30% referral fee for closed transactions, you can of course offer more if you don't mind dipping into your commissions - as a new hungry (Not as in starving but as in motivated) agent, you might want to see if you can entice some good referrals by offering a higher split.

Btw congrats on passing your exam, that is awesome for you! What area are you servicing?

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LEC 5 Launch Party Promo coming soon - stay tuned.

Since my practice is outside the realms of residential, when a friend or family member requires residential services I "refer" the business out. Recently, a family member passed over and I made a referral to someone I felt comfortable would provide superior service. If I were to walk into a residential brokerage, I would seek out the newest and hungriest looking broker in the office. The days I spent in that condition was when I worked my hardest and learned the most. It was part of the finest experiences in my professional career.

If I understand your question about referral fees correctly: Typically, non-licensees cannot be paid a referral fee from a licensee; except between property management and tenants, or former tenants, and provided they had been a resident during a six month period prior to the referral.

Congrats on your achievement! Now the work begins!!!

Best of luck.

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[B]J. Christin Gray
Land Use Planning and Real Estate Developments
JC Gray & Associates
Portland, OR

Riverview/Brandon (which is near Tampa) Florida is the area I am looking to find a broker in.

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Liane Jamason, Realtor
Keller Williams Realty
Tampa FL Homes|Free List of Tampa Short Sales & Foreclosures

Liane Jamason is a Realtor in Tampa Bay servicing St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Tampa, Carollwood, Westchase, Ybor City, South Tampa, Davis Island, Brandon, Riverview, Apollo Beach, Ruskin and beyond!

You could go to a broker's website, then search for your area. I know KW has this, as do most of the other big ones.

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If you're not remembered, you never existed.

Hi Liane,

First, congrats on passing the exam!

Once you sign on with a broker, you'll more than likely join the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, from there you'll get access to floridarealtors.org, which has a standard Referral Agreement. You're Broker should be able to walk you through the steps of completing the agreement. It's really simple and straight forward.

I hope this helps, good luck with your broker interviews.

Calum

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Calum MacKenzie
Tampa Real Estate | Wesley Chapel Real Estate | Sun Valley Real Estate

You will get some of that in the FL post-licensing courses, but I also recommend taking the GRI courses as soon as possible. I did that in my very first year, which happened to be in north FL. The GRI courses satisfied all of my FL post-licensing education requirements, as well as giving me a great foundation of practical RE marketing and general practice info. I also worked my first year at a large regional brokerage (Watson Realty) that provided a two week in-house "success school" that we all had to do. The 50/50 commission split sucked, but I got a great start to my career, with minimum outlay on my part, and worked with some great experienced agents in the process.