RATE MY AGENT….WHAT IS IT?

This week I spoke with the co-founder of a site gaining a lot of traction in the real estate world. The site is RateMyAgent. Below is part of an article recently published in the Australian Financial Review;
Choosing the right real estate agent to sell one of your most valuable assets – the family home – depends on more than a firm handshake and warm smile. Picking the wrong one can potentially lose you thousands of dollars.
Plenty of agents claim to be the best in their area. But knowing whom to believe takes more than a meet and greet.
Agents build listings through word of mouth, repeat business, buyers who go on to sell with them and increasingly, through internet recommendations. The internet is the consumer’s default starting search- point and has shaken up the market place.
Now there’s a further digital disruption, with websites that rate agents based on sales volumes and prices reached.
McGrath Real Estates chief executive John McGrath says a high- performing agent can add up to 10 per cent on a sale price through their ability to negotiate and market a home. That makes picking the right agent an important investment decision.
“Vendors and I bank on the same thing: an agent whose motivation is to not sell the home, but to get the premium price,” he says.
Ratemyagent.com.au is one emerging website that aims to connect vendors with that type of agent. Co-founder Mark Armstrong, a Melbourne property consultant, says the site is an easy and transparent way for home sellers to access sales history and testimonials from previous clients.
Publicly available information is mined from across the web and – combined with input from agents – presents a suburb-by-suburb breakdown of who is selling the most homes at the highest prices.
The site creators have attempted to list every agent in the country. It is up to the agents to “claim” their profile.
Market knowledge, communication, negotiation skills and credibility are ranked on a star-rating system that previous clients complete, along with testimonials.
The rankings are a real incentive for agents to disclose their results. As with any data set, there are gaps. Armstrong says the more agents that come on board, the better the data sample.
Upon launching, the site attracted some trolling, and unsubstantiated nasty comments that did little to inform and educate sellers. Armstrong says the new system, where agents request testimonials, will not jeopardise the site’s transparency, as overall rankings are results-driven, based on sales data, so the cream floats to the top.
“We’re not wanting to show up Australia’s worst agents – it is the good ones who are at the top, who have disclosed their sales and whose clients have taken the time to write a review,” he says.
David Williams, director of corporate adviser Kidder Williams, is a key backer of ratemyagent. Williams describes the site as a “game changer” and says no other site collects detailed data about individual sales and publishes it free to the public.
Williams says the amount of money invested in the real estate market is comparable to the stock market but there is little data transparency between sales, which is unfair as vendors pay between $3 billion and $4 billion in agent commissions each year.
This is more in line with the United States, where agents tend to work for themselves. The British model – on which our industry is based – is more agency-focused. Social media and the internet have allowed agents to publicise themselves individually.
Armstrong says Facebook and Twitter allow agents to post information about themselves and their sales, but ratemyagent combines that information with feedback.
The internet is littered with websites ranking other kinds of services – among the most popular are UrbanSpoon for restaurants, LinkedIn for employees and TripAdvisor for hotels and holiday destinations.
Review-based websites have struggled with false testimonials – positive and negative. Market exposure and a high number of reviews have helped build brand credibility, allowing some sites to stand out from others.
Property industry experts are still coming around to agent ratings websites. Kate Vines, director of Melbourne Property advisory, acts on behalf of buyers and sellers. Having worked with agents across Melbourne attending hundreds of auctions, Vines can pick the switched-on operators from the shonks.
“The ones that don’t feel the need to blow their own trumpets, who are humble and straightforward in what they do – they’re the good ones,” she says. “It does take a while to get to know the agents, it comes down to personality and relationships.”
Vines says the best agents market themselves through their work, gaining their listings organically through repeat business, word-of-mouth-referrals and their rolling database of buyers and sellers. “I know some agents do show their online testimonials when they pitch but they shouldn’t depend on the site for listings.”
Some agents from McGrath Real Estate feature prominently on ratings websites. For now, the group’s chairman has a “wait and see” attitude.
“It’s like checking out a restaurant review – if there are lots of reviews, a few better than others, I’ll take it seriously. But if there are only two great reviews, I’ll think it’s probably the owner and a friend,” McGrath says. “I think it comes down to what motivates someone to be leaving a comment.”
McGrath employs 509 agents across Australia. When hiring, he looks for the same qualities in an agent as a vendor. McGrath says a harder working agent will attract a few more serious buyers and generate more offers or auction bids.
“Having one or two more bidders at an auction can generate another half a dozen bids – on a $600,000 or $700,000 property that can bring in another $30,000,” he says.
That extra money would only amount to a couple of hundred dollars in an agent’s commission, but make the world of difference for a vendor and their future life choices.
Vines says the genuine winners are agents who give sellers realistic price expectations from the beginning and avoid pressuring with the vendor to accept a lower bid.
“Buyers advocates have a love/hate relationship with agents,” she says. “We put them in touch with genuine buyers and sellers but are also a buffer between them; we protect our clients and can negotiate for them.”
The right agent delivers on a promise to sell a home for its highest possible price in an open and transparent way that minimises stress for the vendor, who is often going through buying and moving at the same time. “Everything in this business comes back to personality,” she says.
…..and by the way, here is a direct link to the Bellingen ratemyagent page;
https://www.ratemyagent.com.au/suburb/bellingen-2454-nsw

Regards, from the team at openhomeonline.