Are you buying or selling real estate?

Neither is an easy task, as it consumes a lot of time and energy. Having the support of a qualified real estate agent provides great benefits. Your agent helps to make sense of the complexities while looking out for your interests.

The challenge of finding a reliable agent can be daunting at first. Nowadays, browsing online reviews is an obvious choice, and he number of real estate agent reviews grows on a daily basis, but there are still concerns, such as:

• How to find the best real estate agent for your needs?
• What is the appropriate strategy for filtering reviews?
• Are there any ways to weed out the fake testimonials?

Having spent years helping property managers with their online presence, Upkeep Media marketing agency has learned what’s important when it comes to online reviews of a business. In this article, we will go over the top suggestions on how to get the most out of agent reviews.

When you are looking for reliable reviews, paid ads are the last thing you want to see. However, many top review sites use paid results as a revenue stream.

How do you cut through this noise? Paid search results need to come with a tiny disclaimer that these are sponsored ads. This disclaimer often comes in the form of a small "AD" text next to the agent's name. It's easy to glance over this when zipping through a lot of sites and reviews. You should be extra careful while browsing smaller and less popular review sites. These could be subject to less supervision, leading to dishonest conduct.

How do you know that the reviews you read are real? Reading dishonest or fabricated reviews could be worse than not following any reviews at all. You should always browse sites that post only verified testimonials.

The website should check whether there is a real sales transaction tied to the particular review. The verification is frequently based on matching the client's name with the address of the sold property.

What happens if reviews are unverified?

• The real estate agent's friends and family could write reviews to support a person close to them.
• Random people using the site might leave both positive and negative reviews for various reasons.
• Some reviews aren't based on a sales transaction. Instead, these could be left after a phone call or a brief chat.
• There is a risk that the real estate agent uses the platform for dishonest marketing strategies
• Competitors may leave negative reviews to boost their own presence on the review site.

Not all of the genuine real estate agent reviews are useful for you. Most review systems have numerous filters that you can use to narrow down your results. The most important filter is the location - you need to find someone working in your area, determined by your city or zip code. Depending on the site, you could make use of additional filters that provide value, such as:

• Most listings sold
• Most recent sales
• Most active
• Most listings active
• Highest review scores in your area

Applying various filters is a great way to use the power of online reviews.

You don't have to be an expert on linguistics to pick up on questionable writing style. Pay no attention to reviews that:

• Look like they could have been written by a robot. 
• Sound self-congratulating or too good to be true.
• Attack or discredit the person without any constructive feedback or solid claims.