A network that goes quiet was never a network.

Why do referrals between property people dry up the moment the market slows? Because in a busy year passing on a client costs nothing. Agents, bond originators, conveyancers, home inspectors and rental managers swap names easily when everyone has more work than they can handle. When sales slow, each holds on to the few clients left, and the circle turns out to have been held together by volume.

What lasts is built on what each person does with a referral. A conveyancer who receives a clean file, with FICA documents complete and compliance certificates already ordered, remembers who sent it. A bond originator whose client was told the truth about affordability, and was approved because of it, remembers that too. Those people keep sending work in a slow market because the last referral made their own job easier.

So the real test of a network arrives in the lean months. Anyone can be generous with plenty. What matters is who still calls when there are only a few clients to share, and whose name comes up first when they do.