Referral Agreement (Broker-to-Broker) — Utah 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 Utah Edition: Every template was redrafted around the Utah Real Estate Licensing and Practices Act (Utah Code Title 61, Chapter 2f) and the Division of Real Estate's agency rules in Utah Admin. Code R162-2f, including the affirmative duties owed by every licensee, Utah's limited-agency regime (the Utah term for dual agency, which requires prior written informed consent of both parties), the Utah statute of frauds and its written-commission-agreement rule (Utah Code § 25-5-4), the Utah Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (Utah Code Title 46, Chapter 4), and the fact that Utah has no statutory seller disclosure form and no broker lien statute — so the seller disclosure is drafted as a comprehensive voluntary disclosure with the Utah Code § 57-1-37 stigmatized-property note, water rights/shares, HOA and geologic-hazard items, and commission enforcement is handled contractually. All citations are limited to those statutes; everything else is phrased generally for review by Utah counsel.