Four Tips for More Accurate Real Estate Agent Reviews

Real estate agent reviews can be incredibly helpful. Not only do they give the details you’re not going to find in an agent’s own marketing material, they give concrete information that you can use to compare and contrast agents.

While it’s easy to find volumes of reviews for established agents, it’s not always easy to find helpful ones. A little online-review psychology: Most people are inclined to write them only if they’ve had a strongly positive or strongly negative experience, which widely skews the available information. Also, reviewers tend to be generic. It’s good to hear the glowing adjectives, but to learn what a client’s experience was actually like, you sometimes have to sift through pages and pages of reviews. Can we change this?

Choose the right venue. Real estate agent reviews on major sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com are verified. That means reviews can’t be faked because they must be linked to an actual home sale or purchase in which the person being reviewed acted as the primary real estate agent, representing the buyer, the seller, or both. Zillow and Trulia, which have the most easily searchable website, while Realtor.com has a clunkier interface (currently under development) but has the advantage of being backed by the National Association of Realtors. Avoid Yelp, which does not verify reviews, because they cannot verify sales. You will get a lot of “friends and family” reviews on Yelp and not client reviews.

Be thorough. Put yourself in the your own shoes, pre-real-estate-transaction. What did you want to know about the Portland real estate agent in question? Don’t be afraid to get personal – were they easy to talk to? Did they make you feel confident about the transaction?
Give examples to back up your statements. If your real estate agent was slow to follow up on offers, how slow? If you looked at homes together, what was the experience like? The more details, the more helpful your review. Also, avoid superlatives. Sure, they were great, awesome and amazing. But specifics are always better – he was knowledgeable about the local market, she’s a pro negotiator, etc.

Don’t be a troll. If you had a not-so-great experience with your agent, it’s fine to say so in an online review, but if you’re going through a verified site, keep in mind that those words will have your name on them! A better strategy is to work out any outstanding issues with your agent before heading to the internet to tell the tale. When you do review, give an accurate description of what happened, being as objective as possible.

Remember, your real estate agent review will not only help future home buyers and sellers, it will also give your agent valuable feedback that will help him or her improve their services. Don’t wait too long after you’ve made your real estate transaction – fire up your keyboard while your memory is fresh!