Referral Agreement (Broker-to-Broker) — Kansas Edition Template

Referral fees are a core revenue stream in real estate — but they are legal only when paid between licensed brokers. Every state's license law prohibits paying referral fees to unlicensed persons, and in transactions involving a federally related mortgage loan, RESPA Section 8 (12 U.S.C. § 2607) prohibits kickbacks and unearned fee-splitting for settlement-service referrals — with an exemption at 12 U.S.C. § 2607(c) that permits cooperative brokerage and referral arrangements between licensed real estate agents and brokers. The practical rule: broker-to-broker referral fees are fine; anything else needs scrutiny. And because a referral fee is a commission-sharing promise, the statute of frauds in most states means an unwritten referral deal is an unenforceable handshake.

This 4-page Referral Agreement locks the arrangement down in writing: identification of referring broker and receiving broker (with license numbers and states), the referred client's identity and the scope of the referral (buy-side, sell-side, or both; geographic area; property types), the referral fee as a percentage of the receiving side's gross commission (or a flat amount), when the fee is earned and payable (at closing, out of escrowed commission), treatment of multiple transactions by the same referred client during a defined capture period, a no-brokerage-services acknowledgment by the referring broker in the destination transaction, status updates, and governing law.

The included notes cover interstate referrals (fee must generally be paid broker-to-broker through the licensee's own broker), states with specific referral disclosure requirements to clients, and the RESPA boundaries for anything touching settlement services beyond brokerage. Template for drafting purposes — not legal advice.

About this Kansas Edition: Every template was redrafted around the Kansas Brokerage Relationships in Real Estate Transactions Act (BRRETA, K.S.A. 58-30,101 et seq.), which presumes a licensee is a transaction broker unless a written agreement creates agency and flatly prohibits dual agency — so the dual-agency form became a Transaction Broker Addendum and Designated Agency Consent, and every listing and buyer agreement carries a transaction-broker / designated-agency election instead of a dual-agency consent. The forms also build in the Kansas Real Estate Brokers' and Salespersons' License Act (K.S.A. 58-3034 et seq.) and Commission regulations (K.A.R. Agency 86) on supervising-broker payment and trust accounts, the statute of frauds (K.S.A. 33-106), the Kansas UETA (K.S.A. 16-1601 et seq.), the five-year written-contract limitations period (K.S.A. 60-511), the Kansas Consumer Protection Act, the homestead joint-consent rule, the statutory residential radon notice, and the commercial-only Kansas Commercial Real Estate Broker Lien Act. Because Kansas has no statutory seller-disclosure form, the property condition disclosure is drafted to the common-law known-material-defect duty and BRRETA's adverse-material-fact duty.