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Sign into your accountA Better Approach to Agent Ratings
January 28 2013
There is a long and dismal history of online rating of real estate agents. With so many of us chasing so few transactions — the average agent only has about three per year — we agents eagerly search for ways to stand apart from our colleagues.
Many agents boast about their "Five Star Real Estate Agent" rating from a prominent Denver magazine. However, you won't find either the program or the agents on the magazine's website. Why? Because it's not the magazine's editorial product, but rather an advertising feature in which agents pay different rates for different size write-ups (basic listings are free). Once published, agents routinely claim they were "named a Five Star Agent" by the magazine. But that's not quite true.
Years ago, I lost a listing in Wheat Ridge, CO to another agent. The seller cited the agent's Five-Star rating by that magazine as one of the reasons for selecting her. Since I hadn't heard of this agent, I checked the MLS for her transactions over the past three years. She had had no listings and had only had three buyer transactions in the last three years, yet she had been selected as a "Five-Star" agent. I was stunned.
If you Google the phrase "rating real estate agents" you'll find many websites claiming to recommend highly rated agents. Since I know the top agents in my area, it is amusing to search on sites like Zillow or Angie's List for my area's "best" agents. On Angie's List, the agent with the most reviews when I searched "Golden" had 10 glowing reviews, all dated November and December 2012, but on the MLS, I found only two sold listings in the last 12 months, both of them in Park County, and nothing in the metro area.