Let's say I have a referral to give to you. The Smiths want to buy in your city and I want a 25% referral fee. At your brokerage can you sign the referral agreement that says I'll get 25% of the gross commission, or does your broker need to sign it?

In california, the broker or office manager must sign the referral agreement. I would imagine that is a pretty common practice since this agreement is not really between agents, but between brokers.

R

Same in Colorado.

Sure, yet an agent is allowed to take a listing and make a blanket offer of compensation to cooperating brokers and that does not require the broker's signature.

Any listing I've ever taken has always had to be signed off by my broker. He lets me run the show, but it's not a valid listing without his signature on it. Same goes for referrals - I can't give a referral to another agent, because I don't receive the commission from a sale, my broker does. I can set up the agreement to give a referral - but without broker signatures from both parties, it's just an unsigned contract.

Same here.

All referrals are paid to the broker. He / She then distributes any commissions paid, less their percentage.

Also, word to the wise. Get everything in writing. Even between agents in your own office. Then have your broker sign off on the deal. That is the best way to protect yourself.

I sign my own referral agreements; my broker has never seen most of them.

At closing I supply our bookkeeping department the name of the referral brokerage, their federal tax ID number, and whether or not they're incorporated and they then cut them a check and give it back to me to mail to them.

We can also sign off on listing agreements for the firm, my broker never sees most of them either.

So, if you were going behind your brokers back and not disclose the referral fee, would that be against company policy or be illegal?

In AZ all business is transacted in the name of the broker. That includes referrals. If you want a definitive answer contact the Department of Real Estate. Or an audit will determine the correct answer.

That's a moot point since any referral agreement Jim would sign would be an agreement for his broker to pay or receive a referral commission.

We all know only brokers can receive or pay a commission. I was just wondering how many brokerages require their agents inbound or outgoing referral agreements to be signed by the broker.

If AZ is like many other states, then the DORE (or whatever the state authority happens to be called for that state) doesn't care if the brokers require the agent to get the broker's signature. This is because the agent is an agent of the broker and is authorized to act on the broker's behalf for various real estate activities including entering into contracts.

The Dept of Real Estate doesn't care because this is simply a policy issue on the broker's side, at least in many states and probably yours.

Apparently he doesn't really let you or his other agents run the show, because what you describe is simply his policy and not the law in Florida. Many other agents are authorized to enter their broker into various contracts. That's why they're called "agents" by the way ... because they're agents of the broker.

It would be both; however I didn't say I was going behind his back or trying to conceal anything or even that he was unaware of them.

Maybe you missed reading this part: "At closing I supply our bookkeeping department the name of the referral brokerage, their federal tax ID number, and whether or not they're incorporated and they then cut them a check and give it back to me to mail to them."

My firm is a not only a 100% commission firm we also pretty much run our own business within company policies.

Also a broker can certainly delegate or authorize others to sign documents as well as conduct company business. My broker doesn't sign my commission checks either; the bookkeeping department does.

Is that illegal?? I sure hope not because they've signed a bunch of checks for me this year.

In Tennessee all business is transacted in the name of the broker too; in fact the broker is the agent, all the rest are real estate licensees and designess of the broker.

That does not however mean that all business can only be conducted by the broker.

We have a fairly large firm with 8 offices and around 400 licensees; our broker and his other managing brokers would be sitting at their desks all day long doing nothing but signing stuff if they were the only ones that could.

Even our secretarial staff are enpowered to sign documents and my assistant signs my name to letters daily (not only with my blessing, it's part of her job).