Real Estate Agent Reviews: Decoding the Good, the Bad, and the Confusing
Ratings and reviews inform our everyday decisions from where to eat to what appliances to buy. About half of Americans say they trust online ratings and reviews on third-party websites, and 93% of users say online reviews affect their buying decisions.
When choosing a real estate agent, reviews are a solid starting place to gauge an agent’s experience, expertise, and client satisfaction.
We’ve rounded up the best real estate agent review sources to help you uncover the most detailed records of your agent candidates as possible. We’ll also break down how to read reviews critically so you don’t fall prey to fake reviews or curated lists of praise.
Where to find real estate agent reviews
You’ll want to study online real estate agent reviews, but even then, you need to critically assess the value of the review site and evaluate the merits of the reviews. We tracked down the most popular review sites: Here’s what you need to know.
Google Business Profile reviews claim the lion’s share of viewers. More than 81% of consumers say they check Google reviews first, and Google is checked more than any other website. About 74% of businesses have at least one Google review, real estate brokerages included. You can scroll through reviews to spot client comments on the brokerage’s real estate agents for information.
The downside to Google reviews? Google often fails to spot fake reviews and rarely concedes to remove reported fraudulent reviews. Anyone with an active Google account can post a review, leading to the potential for misleading data.
HomeLight
HomeLight agent profiles include client reviews and ratings. When you use HomeLight’s Agent Finder, we won’t match you with agents based solely on reviews, though. Our system crunches transaction data to match you with agents with the strongest sales history, based on factors like their average list-to-sale ratio, days on market, and total transaction volume.
Yelp
Yelp is an established review site for everything, averaging more than 178 million unique visitors each month, second in traffic only to Google. According to an online reviews survey, 45% of consumers check Yelp reviews before patronizing a business. Yelp allows people to customize search terms, so you can find just what you’re looking for. Search for an agent by zip code, neighborhood, or price range. Making the reviews on the site even more valuable, Yelp investigates and removes fraudulent reviews.
More than half of the 8.1 billion people in the world use social media. That amounts to 4.26 billion users. Facebook, the world’s largest social media platform, boasts 3 billion active users each month. Because of its high membership, Facebook is now #3 in review popularity, with 49% of US internet users visiting the site to check business reviews. Even Google pulls from Facebook reviews.
92% of real estate agents use Facebook to promote their business, so you’re sure to find real estate agent reviews on their pages. One benefit of Facebook reviews is transparency; everyone can see who posted a review, thus lending more credibility and accountability than websites that allow anonymous reviews. Search for a brokerage or an agent by name.
