Remember when there was no MLS? Neither do I, but legends of those real estate dark ages paint a grim picture. Brokerages each held their listings closely, and consumers had to go meet with each of them individually at their offices to try to cobble together a mental picture of the total market.<\/p>\n
It was disjointed, full of misinformation, and detrimental to not only the consumers\u2019 needs but also the efficiency of the market.<\/p>\n
There are no standards, no structured cooperation, and little overlap or sharing. Plenty of companies are building their own review platforms, but they\u2019re almost all proprietary boutiques. The platform builder wants the consumer to use its review tools, but doesn\u2019t want its competitors to have access to those reviews.<\/p>\n
Home buyers and sellers are asked by their agents to write reviews for them\u2014on Yelp, Realtor.com, Zillow, (formerly) Trulia, and any agent matching service where the agent would like to appear relevant. Our clients don\u2019t want to jump through these hoops, and they shouldn\u2019t have to. It\u2019s inefficient.<\/p>\n
Zillow is flexing its muscle in the review space because it currently has the best single-location, quick, verified review platform. When it merged Trulia\u2019s reviews into its own platform, it decided that a large portion of Trulia\u2019s reviews had not been verified, and likely could have been gamed by the agents. They were tossed out without notice to the agents.<\/p>\n
The act was clumsy, and the backlash from agents who\u2019d lost their reviews was swift. The mea culpa came almost as quickly as Zillow offered to retrieve the purged reviews for any agent who requested them directly. They would not, however, be appearing on the newly merged Zillow\/Trulia review platform.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All sites should verify legitimacy of reviews<\/h2>\n
While the company tripped over its industry relations in the conversion, the strategy of the purge is still a step in the right direction for real estate agent review standards going forward.<\/p>\n
Every review platform should be following guidelines that, at a minimum, verify that the client and agent actually worked together. A company that intends to inform the public on the quality of real estate agents\u2019 services should be intently focused on making sure those reviews are real, via mutual admission, property identification, and other means.<\/p>\n
Zillow should be praised<\/h2>\n
Zillow should be commended for pursuing that verification. While real estate listings are gaining nationwide structural standards with RETS, reviews are just beginning the process of setting standards. Just as big of an issue, though, is that portal reviews are just that\u2014single location reviews. Realtor.com reviews can\u2019t be exported or integrated into Zillow\u2019s review platform. Reviews on Homes.com can\u2019t be integrated into the Yelp profile. It\u2019s the same situation on almost every other portal or agent rating website. They don\u2019t speak to each other.<\/p>\n
Ironically, the technology companies who built portals to egalitarianize the consumer listing space are now building walled gardens of reviews to bring back the disjoint of the pre-MLS era.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Each proprietary system hopes to force more consumers into its own custom sandbox. They\u2019re funneling buyers and sellers back into the \u201cmeet me at my office to see our exclusive listings\u201d mode.<\/p>\n
Good for competition, bad for the consumer<\/h2>\n
While that may be a good business decision in terms of competition, it blunts the progress toward true consumer visibility of broad agent reviews. Buyers and sellers see a small, skewed version of an agent\u2019s reviews on portal websites, with each one portraying a different picture than the last.<\/p>\n
Consumers won\u2019t review us on all of the sites necessary, so we get a sprinkling of reviews here, and a dash of reviews there.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
All hope is not lost<\/h2>\n
There is hope, though. As portals up the bar in terms of review verification, companies like RealSatisfied<\/a> and Quality Service Certification<\/a> continue to deepen our view of the kinds of quality standards that are possible on a brand-agnostic level. If standardized requirements for legitimate reviews become common practice, we may be able to cross-reference reviews on different platforms.<\/p>\n
Each website could combine reviews as a whole, or at least reference the agent\u2019s reviews from multiple platforms, side-by-side. The ability for a consumer to see our reviews on Yelp, Realtor.com, Zillow, RealSatisifed, etc, in one place, would be a huge boon to consumers\u2019 ability to see who\u2019s really keeping their clients happy.<\/p>\n
I hope NAR will lead the charge<\/h2>\n
I\u2019ve written before than NAR should be the driving force to make this allegiance happen. Even if it doesn\u2019t take shape that way, tech companies in the review space should continue to develop products with these standards in mind for the good of consumers as a whole.<\/p>\n
Agents may have experienced some hassle with the Trulia review losses, but that\u2019s nothing compared to many more years of asking clients to do us a favor in a disjointed, time-intensive manner.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
If we can improve the verification requirements for reviews, and agree to communicate cross-platform with those who adhere to those standards, we\u2019ll be doing a great favor for ourselves and our clients.<\/p>\n
#AgentReviews<\/span><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When Zillow and Trulia merged agent reviews, it got messy and showed a vulnerability and discord in the industry. But if you look at it objectively, this is a moment of opportunity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337393,"featured_media":5114,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[101,124],"tags":[371,627,102],"class_list":["post-5109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate","category-zillow-corporate","tag-realtor-ratings","tag-trulia","tag-zillow"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2015\/08\/zillow-trulia-home-house.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337393"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5115,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5109\/revisions\/5115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5114"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}