Is There Any Way to Make Brokerate.com Work?
The Real Deal has an article on Brokerate.com in its new June issue that a pretty fair critique of both our intentions in creating the site and the results in practice. (They run a pretty misleading picture of the Homethinking CEO given that he’s not mentioned until three-quarters of the way through the article. Just…
The Real Deal has an article on Brokerate.com in its new June issue that a pretty fair critique of both our intentions in creating the site and the results in practice. (They run a pretty misleading picture of the Homethinking CEO given that he’s not mentioned until three-quarters of the way through the article. Just to be clear: That ain’t the ‘Stoner!) Gary Malin, chief operating officer at Citi Habitats, summed up what we expect a lot of people’s reaction is: “In theory it sounds like a good thing, but in practice I don’t see how it can work.” As most of you know, we pulled the comments from the site within a few days of launch because they were just too nasty; more importantly, we had no way to verify if any of the things people were saying were true. Were brokers just writing raves of themselves? Were they making up negative reviews of their competitors? Ah, yeah. We had made a big effort to get a bunch of Brownstoner readers rating and commenting on the site pre-launch in an effort to set a constructive tone but things quickly slid. So now we have a few options: 1) Spend time and money trying to create a registration system; 2) Restore comments but only allow positive comments; 3) Allow all comments but just edit with a heavy hand and use our best judgment; 4) do not restore comments; 5) just bag the whole thing. Or maybe there’s something we haven’t considered that involves more of a community-based wikipedia-type approach. Frankly, we’re not sure what to do and are curious to hear everyone’s advice.
Broker Web Ratings Get Nasty [The Real Deal]
You get to choose a broker when you are selling a property. Since sellers, not buyers, are where brokers make their money, it makes sense to keep something that lets potential sellers know a little about the person who they will hire to sell their property.
I say lose it. In New York, there is no MLS, so you have to go to brokers who have the listings. It’s not like you can pick a broker to work with based on some kind of high customer satisfaction score anyway. What purpose does it serve?
you could have a forum in addition.
I think that the Wikipedia idea is a good one, but you also should work out a way to take advantage of the fact that unlike Wikipedia, where people can’t meet, this website is much more local where people live only a few blocks from each other. Some kind of face-to-face review could be necessary for membership. The meeting face to face could really be a minus more than a plus if people like their anonymity. Maybe organize a weekly or bi-weekly event at a local coffee house where people meet to give feedback on brokers (similar to the above suggestion of seeking buyers out). This way you can at least determine who’s who and you’d be meeting as a group in a public place. You could do that until you have enough comments and people interested in the site that you can verify particularly vile or optimistic comments about a broker.
I still don’t see the reason for getting rid of the comments. You’ll make yourself crazy, to no purpose, trying to make sure that any rating or comment submitted is on the up and up. This is the Internet. Will there be shilling? Yes. Will there be gratuitous ad hominem attacks? Yes. Will there be out and out lies? Absolutely. But there will also be a lot of people motivated to post honestly. I think at this point people realize that and take any online ratings with a grain of salt. I use epinions; I read reviews on Amazon and sites like that. I don’t take them as gospel. They’re one resource among many.
The one option you mention above that would cause me to have no faith in brokerate would be to allow only positive comments.
i say bag the whole thing. people should be able to figure out for themselves pretty easilt who the good/bad brokers are just by the interactions they have with them. if you want a property, does it really matter what your broker is like?
i say bag the whole thing. people should be able to figure out for themselves pretty easilt who the good/bad brokers are just by the interactions they have with them. if you want a property, does it really matter what your broker is like?
I think you have to keep it online and running, because it could generate a lot of traffic, and eventually be a viable business. You will just have to hire some (free) interns to edit the most nasty comments, and let opinions be their opinions.
The truth of the matter is that most people consider brokers to be a neccesary evil, and if the brokers complain that everyone writes nasty things about them, then maybe some of them will start taking a long hard look at the way they do business.
Here’s an expensive option:
Instead of letting commentors come to you, you could go to them.
Surveying a sample of recent buyer and sellers would eliminate the shills. There are a lot of web and phone survey outfits that can do this relatively cheaply. Buyer and often seller names and addresses are publicly available in the property and transfer records.
There may be an existing survey of buyers and sellers that you could add a broker questions to.