What Does It Take To Be a Top 100 Real Estate Agent?

A high number of closed deals looks great to a real estate sales manager but what really matters to a home buyer or seller? Client recommendations are one of the more relevant indicators of a successful Realtor. How do I know that the Real estate agent that is highly ranked because he/she sold 75 houses last year didn't make life a living hell for all their clients. Repeat and referral business are also indicators of a successful agent.

If you really want to do your do diligence, you ought to ask for 1-3 references that you can speak to. Fact is most people won't take the time to do that because at some point many home buyers and sellers don't see a lot of differentiation between agents. The bottom line is they simply need to buy or sell a home without a ton of stress.

This is why Agentopolis ranks agents agents by number of recommendations. For busy people it's a lot of work to stop what you're doing and take the time to recommend your real estate agent. For those agents who truly provide memorable service, it's far easier to get past clients to take the time to recommend them. So agents are ranked by # of recommendations versus average rating. It wouldn't make sense for an agent who has only one recommendation with a "5" to be ranked higher than an agent who has ten recommendations with an average rating of "4.5"

Real Estate Agent rating sites and systems

I don’t think anyone will ever build the perfect ranking/rating system for real estate agents, by perfect I mean a system that is all I need to be SURE I chose the best agent. Choosing a good agent will always involve feedback and information from different sources and related to different criteria. Geographic location is important, whether I’m buying or selling a home, I want a local expert. Testimonials are a form of user feedback but as many of you pointed out, it is not hard to “game” the system on most agent referral sites.

That said, I think a simple measure such as “number of recommendations” is slightly more useful than a system that uses only a 5 star rating. Anyone can give themselves a 5 star rating and using a system that uses an email address for verification, if this same agent has 3 or 4 different email addresses, can give themselves 3-4 five star ratings. Even asking your friends to cheat the system for you is going to run dry after a few of your lying cheating best friends anti up their fraudulent reviews. When you see an agent with somewhere between 10 and 40 testimonials, you have to wonder if at least a few of them aren’t real. Also, the longer you have been in the business and exceeding client expectations, the easy it will be for you to get to a higher number of clients willing to take the time to visit a site and give you a testimonial.

As I said above, I don’t think agent ratings will ever be enough to insure a perfect choice but they will always be a part of the process to help you choose.