New here.

Wondering is anyone else is sick and tired of 3rd party non-real estate companies charging for referrals.

Would it fly if there was a uniform guideline created for referrals.... meaning that in order for it to be a valid referral it has to have:

1.) a certain amount of info.
2.) the consumer KNOWS that they are being referred and agrees to it AND knows that the referring company will be compensated.
3.) referrals are only accepted from licensed companies that are actively engaged in brokerage (lets put the homegains out of business).

A lead is one thing... a referral is another.

It would be nice. I decline any referral where the agent hasn't qualified the buyer. I had an agent try to pass off some investors for 45% commission. He hadn't qualified them or really talked to them about their needs at all. I told him to go get a desparate agent to accept those terms because I'm not going to lose almost half of my fee on someone I don't know.

He lowered the referral fee to 25%, but I declined anyway. I didn't want to work with an agent who was trying to develop a win-lose deal from the start.