Referral fees for estate agents: how to pass a lead and still get paid

Can an estate agent charge a referral fee for passing on a lead?

The lead you do not want is still worth something

Some leads are not yours to work. Wrong patch, wrong price bracket, a lettings enquiry when you only do sales, or a seller who is twelve months out. Most agents say a polite no and forget about it. That is a fee walking out of the door.

A referral is the simplest thing in this business. You know somebody who wants it. You hand it over. You take a cut of what they earn on it. Everyone is better off, including the client, who ends up with an agent who actually covers the thing they asked about.

What a clean referral looks like

• Write down what you are passing on and to whom, before the introduction happens.
• Agree the percentage on the receiving agent's fee, not on the sale price.
• Say when it is payable: normally on completion, when they get paid.
• Introduce properly, with a name, a number and the context.
• Keep a record you can both see, so nobody has to remember it in six months.

The bit that usually goes wrong

People pass leads on a phone call and never write anything down. Nine months later a deal completes, the referring agent hears about it from someone else, and there is an awkward conversation nobody wanted. It is almost never bad faith. It is just that nothing was recorded at the point it was easy to record.

How we handle it

You pass the lead in WhatsApp. We log who passed what, to whom, on what terms, and hold that record for both sides. When it completes, the split is not a memory test. It is written down where you both agreed it.

If you want the walkthrough with the actual messages, the referrals page shows the whole thing end to end.

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