January 24, 2011 (Jeff Alan)
Zillow.com has announced a tool for home buyers and sellers to search for and find local real estate agent based on ratings and reviews from former clients, so if you really think that last real estate agent didn’t “pull out all the stops” to get your home sold…now you can stand up and be heard!
The service was launched back in December and already thousands of consumers have rated and reviewed agents. Zillow.com has made these ratings public enabling consumers to search for local agents in the Zillow Directory and compare rating and reviews between agents.
Zillow receives more than 13 million visitors a month and should be able to rapidly expand its database to allow consumers to share their experiences with a particular agent.
“Zillow was created to help people make smarter real estate decisions, and choosing an agent is one of the most important decisions a buyer or seller can make,” said Zillow Chief Executive Officer Spencer Rascoff. “Agent Reviews are another huge step towards transparency for buyers and sellers. For good agents, it’s a terrific way to stand out from the crowd – the next best thing to a referral.”
Current and former clients can also rate and review their agents who have profiles on Zillow by searching for the agent in the Zillow Directory. Ratings and reviews can be accessed everywhere they interact with agents on Zillow.com, such as for sale listings or when agents answer questions in Zillow Advice, since reviews are connected to an agent’s Zillow profile.
Overall ratings are based on a consumer’s likelihood to recommend, running on scale of one to five, with five being “very likely” and one “very unlikely.” Results are sorted by local agents with the highest overall ratings and greatest number of reviews. You can compare an agents overall rating as well as ratings covering several categories of service as well as view qualitative reviews to help further understand a former (or current) client’s experience with a particular agent.
Although there have always been alternatives like Angie’s List and Yelp, Zillow’s is the first “real estate only” service to provide comprehensive information on just real estate agents only.
Tags: real estate agents, zillow, consumers, ratings and reviews, consumer recommendations