I’m sure the public isn’t pleased, but Realtors everywhere sure are!
It’s not that rating your Realtor is a bad idea, but rather the implementation and maintenance present a big problem…
“Thumbs Down For Rate Your Realtor”
By: Tony Palermo
REM Online.com
The CREA Futures Implementation Team (FIT) Rate Your Realtor proposal was voted down at CREA’s March 24 Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Ottawa.
“The membership has spoken and the proposal was turned down,” says FIT chair Cliff Iverson.
Noting his disappointment, Iverson says all of FIT’s research pointed to several benefits of the Rate Your Realtor service for both consumers and Realtors. In large part, this included allowing consumers the ability to check on Realtors they are considering using in a transaction – something Iverson says could also increase and promote professionalism for Realtors.
CREA’s 2013 AGM agenda documentation echoes his thought. It says the goal of the Rate Your Realtor service was to demonstrate the value of Realtors to consumers while promoting Realtor professionalism by capturing consumer feedback on their interaction with a specific Realtor. This was to be done via a five-star rating system, where both parties could comment on the interaction. The recommendation said this tool had the potential to create leads and enhance the overall perception of the value of a Realtor to consumers.
“There were a number of supporters who saw the benefits of using the Rate Your Realtor service,” says Iverson. “Some of the people that came up to me after the meeting were quite disappointed that it didn’t move forward.”
Reflecting on why he believes the proposal was voted down, Iverson says the main concern coming back to FIT was the hesitation of Realtors to display negative comments.
“I think the one main theme we kept getting was negative comments being offered up by the consumer,” says Iverson.
Doug Pedlar is president of the London & St. Thomas Association of Realtors, one of the groups that voted against the proposal. Pedlar said that CREA’s past president, Gary Morse, attended one of his board’s meetings to explain the Rate Your Realtor feature.
“There was a lively discussion, to say the least,” says Pedlar. “Our members were telling us that they did not want this to happen.”
Pedlar says his members had several concerns, including the possibility that new agents wouldn’t get very high ratings; that people or agents could alter or sabotage the ratings; that CREA’s original survey did not conclusively show that Realtors were in favour of the feature; and if an agent didn’t want to participate, it wouldn’t look good on the agent and therefore, forced agents to participate.
His members also disputed the notion that the Rate Your Realtor service promoted professionalism, noting that other professionals are not rated in such a fashion.
New CREA president Laura Leyser believes that what it really came down to was that some Realtors didn’t feel the Rate Your Realtor service should be offered by CREA.
“It wasn’t as much about the fear of being rated as it was about the diversity across the country in the difference brokerages, big and small,” says Leyser. “(Realtors) just felt this was something the brokerage should be offering and not organized real estate.”
Another FIT recommendation that was passed was the alternative option to the creation of an independent technology company. At CREA’s Special General Meeting in Winnipeg last fall, FIT presented their original proposal to create an independent technology company. However, after much resistance, FIT was asked to go back to the drawing board, deferring the vote until this March’s AGM.
“After the fall Special General Meeting in Winnipeg, there was consultation with boards and associations across the country,” says Iverson. “We wanted to be able to offer up another alternative that people were asking for, and that was basically to streamline how we deal with changes to technology. That’s where the third option came from.”
Instead of creating an independent technology company, CREA will now address the technology decision-making process in two ways. First, it will alter the role of the MLS and Technology Council (MTC) to an advisory one where internal and external experts, as appropriate to the issues at hand, can be called upon by CREA. Second, CREA will eliminate the current required votes on national technology, including the double majority.
Iverson says this alternative option will still have a significant impact in terms of the responsibility and the timing of technology-based decisions.
“The onus will be placed more on CREA’s staff to make decisions and, of course, under the current structure, it sometimes takes up to a year and a half to get changes passed,” says Iverson. “And when you’re dealing with technology, that’s certainly too long a period of time.”
Leyser says it’s all about being nimble, noting, like Iverson, that it’s no longer going to take years to make decisions. And that, she says, will have a positive trickling effect right across the country with the various real estate boards.
Leyser also says that CREA is undergoing a full governance review, noting that this will be an opportunity to do further housekeeping.
I know, I know. You’re all sooooooo disappointed!
You would L-O-V-E to be able to rate your Realtor!
Especially after Tuesday’s blog, when we talked about a Realtor who submitted a bully-offer on his/his own listing, below asking, and sold it before they offer date. My readers suggested that the $10,000 fine was not stiff enough, and that this Realtor should no longer have a license.
The public wants input. That’s the bottom line. The public is saying, “If the industry can’t police itself, then let us do it!”
The “Rate Your Realtor” initiative, however, was actually put forward by the Canadian Real Estate Association itself, and wasn’t a public initiative, or something that was going to be done outside the real estate community. The idea, of course, was to promote professionalism, but in the end it seems the Realtors who voted it down were afraid of the possible negative consequences.
I’m on the fence with this one, to be quite honest.
I think it could do a lot of good, promote professionalism, highlight top agents, and expose the scummy ones. But I also think it could blow up in our faces, and here are the questions I would want answered:
1) Who can post?
Ideally, only somebody who has transacted with the Realtor in question should be able to post feedback or a rating. It’s not fair, nor is it relevant in any way, for a host of people to rate a Realtor that they ran into at an open house and didn’t like. That has no benefit.
So how do you allow somebody to rate or post? Do they need approval? Do they need a user-name and password? How do you stop spammers and/or angry basement-renters from pretending to have transacted with an agent and then rating them?
2) Who oversees the system?
This one is a big problem for me. It’s one thing to implement this rating system, but who would monitor it? Who would deal with complaints? Who would intervene in a dispute? What’s the difference between a fair rating and one that should be removed?
3) Are the Realtors involved?
Can the Realtors respond to a positive comment, or a bad rating? Or is this simply for the public to opine?
4) Positive vs. Negative
People are 15 times more likely to write a letter, post a comment, make a phone call, or tell a friend if their experience is negative as opposed to positive.
You’re always ready and willing to tell your friends, “You won’t BELIEVE what happened to me today….” But somewhat less interested in talking about the surprisingly good sandwich you got from Esso On The Run that didn’t make you throw up, as you thought it would.
My concern would be that people with a positive experience wouldn’t use the site, and people with a negative experience would.
My sister is a high school teacher, and she is one of the best. The problem with that, of course, is that today’s spoiled youth only view teachers as “the best” when they let them slack off, give them good grades, drive them home in their cool cars, and go out of their way to appease kids who already have it so good. A true “great teacher” isn’t going to get favorable reviews from kids. My sister shows up on www.rateyourteacher.com and the comments are stupid, and you just know they’re from tomorrow’s deep-fryer operator at McDonalds.
.
The list goes on. I could be here all day…
The only problem I have with the decision not to implement this system is that it seems the main objection is the idea that (gulp!) some Realtors might not get favorable reviews! As per the article the “hesitation of Realtors to display negative comments” got in the way.
Personally, I would love to see a system like this, as it would bring to light bad business practices by bad Realtors, and showcase the cream of the crop.
But to back to my #4 point above, I still think majority of the people who make unsolicited comments/ratings would be those with negative feelings, although savvy Realtors would probably encourage each and every client to go to the site and post something positive, if their clients are happy with their service.
I don’t think we’ve heard the end of this, so stay tuned!
AndrewB
at 7:30 am
I still believe that the best way to find a realtor is word of mouth and that realtor having experience with someone you know.
The flip side to the worry about the positive or negative is that you’re focusing on two extremes. There will be people who have a mediocre experience as well. They will and can voice their opinions as well. In regards to rate my professor/teacher, there are plenty of teachers who get great reviews so to speak, and are realistic in student expectations and push them to do better, yet are still “cool”. It’s all about attitude and delivery. Realtors with positive, professional attitudes will be looked at positively even through bad situations.
George
at 10:08 am
“Reflecting on why he believes the proposal was voted down, Iverson says the main concern coming back to FIT was the hesitation of Realtors to display negative comments.”
I like how they interviewed Captain Obvious for this article. And here I thought Realtors were more hesitant to display positive comments.
To be fair, I think public ratings are inherently unfair. Too many people only know how to use extreme adjectives such as “terrible” and “great” instead of more apt adjectives such as “average.”
PMaitland
at 10:41 am
David, you use the example of rateyourteacher.com, which is a great example of why Realtors should have strongly endorsed this proposal: If you don’t, SOMEONE ELSE WILL.
You have seen over the years in the comments on your post that there is a public perception that Realtors are rarely held accountable when they are bad at what they do. RECO does not seem to do enough (your bully offer story as a prime example), and there is very little available to consumers other than word of mouth.
So, all it will take is one sufficiently disgruntled customer taking the time to put together a website to rate their agent, and then it wont matter at all what CREA thinks of it.
If this had been adopted, the concerns you outlined could be addressed, and are simply implementation details that need to be figured out. By voting the concept down, it leaves the door wide open for someone else to decide.
Dan Dickinson
at 12:56 pm
Absolutely right. There’s no question: it’s only a matter of time before a 3rd party creates their own rating tool. None of the 4 issues David raised above would be hard to overcome.
David, the rateyourteacher.com comparison is useful, but only to a point. Sure, kids will rate their teachers based on what what *they* want and like, but teachers are evaluated on other criteria such as pass rates, average grades, curriculum completion, graduation rates, etc. with peer comparison within the school and vs. other schools. So the rateyourteacher.com ratings are, at best, secondary to that…and in many cases, irrelevant. It not like kids really have the option to choose a different teacher based on that site’s scores. Meanwhile, realtors have no publicly-facing evaluation criteria that I can look up to know whether I’m getting a good one.
Transparency’s not perfect — people will try to game the system, stupid people will give stupid feedback — but in the end open always beats closed (unless the government *wants* it closed). Good realtors will push for transparency because it should a) tend to get them more business and b) tend to force the bad ones out of business. Meanwhile, bad realtors will fight like hell to protect the uneven playing field which has heretofore earned them money. If the bad realtors keep the industry from driving their own solution, someone else will do it for them and the result will be the same. It’ll just take longer.
jeff316
at 1:42 pm
There are already a few: http://www.rate-my-agent.com/
jeff316
at 1:46 pm
http://www.realestateratingz.com/SelectThing.jsp?state=ON&city=Toronto&otcvid=6490
jeff316
at 1:46 pm
And someone else should decide.
As a system it’s unfair, unaccountable, inaccurate and ultimately not particularly reflective of the service provided by individual agents anyway.
It’s not the place of a professionals organization to establish the equivalent of a “hot or not” website allowing the public to rate their licensed members.
ScottyP
at 8:36 am
Agreed.
Dave
at 4:37 pm
I think the vast majority of the comments would be negative, like you already posted, most people will only post the negative and rarely the positive, but another thing to watch out for is the realtor posting comments about themselves and using it as a marketing tool. ie… I worked with Joe Blow from ABS Reality and he was BEST realtor I have ever worked with, I highly recommend him/her to anyone. I see it all of the time when it comes to reviews and something that has some sort of rating system, even though the comments are very transparent it still could be very effective.
Perfect Fit
at 4:39 pm
It would be easy to implement a system that is based on actual usage, rather than open to the public. Simply implement a Token based feedback system. If a client signs a contract, the brokerage could then send them a link to the survey with a Token. This Token identifies who submitted the survey (even if that info is not published, it is available to the administrators) and they are single-use only.
Smart brokerages would be doing this for themselves and taking the positive feedback and posting the referrals on their own site.
Ocelot
at 9:33 pm
Not that it is a perfect system, but I am a big fan of using an agent that has been referred to me or someone that I know has used them in the past.
So, for those morons who call Johnny off the bus shelter ads…you get what you pay for (yes, I know DF has that big one out there…not meant to paint him with that brush)thinking that ‘oh he must be good because it says he’s a Presidential Circle Jerk Award Winner and his hair looks Fabio!”.
Same thing applies to other sales environments.
David Fleming
at 11:11 pm
@ Ocelot
Bus shelter? Nah man, I’m CLASSY! Parking lots for me! 🙂
You’re right about the “awards” though. Most companies give awards to about 70% of their agents, so the “Bright Shiny Token Award” could go to somebody who grossed $50K, netted $30K, declared $18K on their tax return, and paid less in taxes to Ottawa than your standard Starbucks barista.
Devore
at 12:46 am
“But to back to my #4 point above, I still think majority of the people who make unsolicited comments/ratings would be those with negative feelings, although savvy Realtors would probably encourage each and every client to go to the site and post something positive, if their clients are happy with their service.”
So? Amazon has gigabytes of customer reviews and comments. Nearly every major retailer (and many not-so-major) have visitor and customer comments for their products. That people are more likely to make their feelings known when they are unhappy with something is hardly a reason to not do it. Benefits will always outweigh the drawbacks, and I sure as heck would want to know who the scummy realtors are. I’m pretty sure I can filter out the bullshit comments complaining about trivial things on my own.
jeff316
at 7:16 am
But products on Amazon aren’t individual people providing individualized service. Big difference. Not comparable.
That’s not to say if a private citizen wants to set up a system, Homestars-esque, sure go ahead, but it’s really inappropriate for TREB or CREA or OREA to do so.
Plus, if you think you’re going to be able to figure out who the scummy real estate agents are from a rating on a website, you are very mistaken. The scummiest will find ways to have the best ratings. It’s well known that many of the worst of the worst on Homestars have great ratings.
Chuck
at 3:19 pm
The thing that’s different for a Realtor compared to a carpet cleaner is the complexity of the transaction.
In any real estate transaction, there are dozens of people that get involved – buyers, sellers, appraisers, home inspectors, mortgage professionals, lawyers, etc.
The emotional investment is a lot higher too.
So I could see one thing happening that the Realtor couldn’t control that paints the entire experience in a different light.
And yes I agree about the disproportionate share of bad reviews likely to occur.
RealtorAlexL
at 8:16 pm
Thanks for writing this article, I wrote a simliar article in my blog in Vancouver. Unfortunately my name was entered into one of these rating websites as well. Realestateratingz.com
Apparently the business plan of theses websites are to blackmail realtors into subscribing into a monthly service plan to delete negative comments. The plans range from $300-$1000 per month. Funny these websites will also block positive comments on your profile
George
at 11:01 am
My wife’s and I used a real estate team (Cindy and Craig in Courtice Ontario) and he hit on my wife and started to text inappropriate messages to her cell phone. Would I recommend them….no!!!
Allen Jhon
at 5:26 am
Few months ago I bought my house with the help of real estate agents Winnipeg, Manitoba. They provide the best real estate agents services to the client. They helped my to buy the best property in very genuine price. Furthermore, they have good agents who always ready to do to satisfy their clients according to their requirements. You should connect them at once to getting some advice about selling or buying property.
Emile Solanki
at 10:34 pm
Review Santo Sessa
Mr. Sessa has the ability to negotiate a fair market value price for his client, and looks to insightfully navigate through the negotiation process with the cooperating brokerage. Mr. Sessa enjoys showing his listings in-person. We believe this is an added benefit that enhances the viewing experience.
In general, when looking to work with a realtor we recommend:
Always using a schedule A to clearly stipulate what the commission rates are for various scenarios that may play out.
For example, specify what commission rates apply to exclusive vs. MLS listings. OR, Multiple Representation vs. Paying a cooperating brokerage.
Do not forget that commission rates should vary for the various services offered. For example, are you getting floor plans, photography, videos, social media advertising, staging, cleaning, etc.?
Attach the schedule A to each listing agreement, within docusigned / authentisign altogether, executed at the same time.
Always avoid a % where your listing agent has control to split the commission at their sole discretion. Always specify what each representing realtor gets paid. Do not write terms in generalities.
Remember without the schedule A, the standard wording of a listing agreement is very general, and written in favour of the listing brokerage. The schedule A is for your protection to define your best interests upfront. When you’re interviewing agents for your business, mention schedule A right away.
The housing market prices are inflated by realtor commissions. So do not be afraid to stipulate what you think a realtor’s services are worth to you. There is enough data, information, and plenty of realtors to interview to get an idea of price points and strategy. The schedule A is your opportunity to summarise all of this in one place.
We also strongly encourage consumers to create a spreadsheet, and calculate what the commissions could be before you negotiate rates. For example:
Sold price: $1,000,000.00
Cooperating Brokerage 2.5%
Listing Brokerage 1%
= 3.5% + HST
= $39,550.00 total realtor commissions Inc. HST
= $960,450.00 NET
All realtors want listings. It’s a way to also help their seller buy a property, and pick up new business on the same street.
In our experience, every realtor says the same thing, and offers the same services. So pick the right ‘personality’ for the situation at hand. Do not be afraid to change realtors according to particular circumstances.
Oh, and do not forget to have the deposit from the buyer go to your lawyers firm in trust.
We have found these suggestions to be good healthy consumer practice, and we hope these tips are helpful in your search for a realtor.
You only get one opportunity on each real estate transaction, and you want to ensure you’re not only getting top market value, but also maximum NET value.
After all it was you who took the risk to buy/sell the place!
Edmonton Real Estate Brokers
at 10:40 pm
Raises an important conversation! Transparency in agent reviews matters, but balance is key.