Why you should avoid “Top" Vancouver Realtors
Why hiring “Top Vancouver Realtors” backfires
Today’s homebuyers and homeowners are tech-savvy and 95% research real estate agents online before choosing someone to work with. Astonishingly, 37% are not very satisfied after the purchase or sale.
After all that research, why are people less than very satisfied? In this article, we will explore how ratings and awards are used to help real estate agents market themselves whether they are deserving or not. Finally, we provide an alternative approach to finding a real estate agent.
What is a “Top Vancouver Agent” or the “Best Vancouver Agent”?
There are a few definitions of “Top” and “Best” agent and we will tackle them one by one.
Industry Award Winners
There’s no real estate consumer association collecting votes and awarding agents for good service, but the agents have industry groups that award them for “production”. Real estate agencies have awards for their agents – kind of like employee of the year awards – but how do these awards work? Do they tell you how the agent treats their clients and looks out for their interests?
Let’s look at the Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver club level awards[DS1] [AD2] . According to the RE/MAX career recruiting website “Hundreds of Western Canadian [RE/MAX] associates are inducted into these club levels each year” and Club Level Awards are based on annual gross commissions. The first tier begins at $50,000 in commission…not very high.
Similarly, RE/MAX has its own awards for the number of transactions and commissions.
Winning a “production” award is not that difficult. So, seeing award on an agent’s website doesn’t mean much but it does mislead homebuyers.
As a client, you may know the difference between the Executive Award and the Diamond Award and believe Diamond Award recipients are better agents. Production is the same as commissions, and to earn higher commissions an agent can either serve more clients or focus on more expensive homes. As a result, first-time buyers and sellers with modestly priced homes will struggle to find a “top agent” that is willing to spend adequate time with them. “Top agents” will likely pass you off to an “associate on their team” because they can’t prioritize your modest home and generate enough commission to win these awards. It would be very difficult for them to give you the attention you need to get good value for a home.
Rating Websites
Rating websites like Yelp, Google Maps, RateMyAgent and RankMyAgent allow an agent’s past clients to rate them. RateMyAgent and RankMyAgent reviews are “verified” so you can have a higher level of trust in them. Can you?
We all know that Google Maps and Yelp can be fooled. Anyone can rate an agent on these platforms whether they worked with them or not. As well, there are businesses on Fiverr and UpWork that will write 100 great reviews for you in return for a fee.
For example, on Fiverr we found one freelancer who would write 12 verified Google posts with a photo of the reviewer for $83. Hey presto 5-star reviews! Unfortunately, current rating sites have no way of blocking that fake reviews.
RankMyAgent and RateMyAgent, which are competing platforms, market themselves to agents by promoting the agent’s ability to control their online reputation.
To test RankMyAgent.com, we wrote a fake review of a realtor and gave the individual 5-stars across the board. The agent was notified and contacted us concerned that he had no record of working with our “mystery shopper” and the rating was never posted. What can we learn from this experiment?
Agents can choose which clients to invite to write a review (these reviews are a lot of work and include photos) and we can assume they only invite the most satisfied clients to make a review.
For reviews that come directly from the site, agents benefit from the ability to control which reviews are posted. They can block bad reviews (real and fake) and they can approve fake good reviews if they occur. It’s up to them whether they allow fake good reviews to show on their profile.
Referrals from Friends
All of us know a family member or close friend that has bought a home and it can be tempting to take their recommendation for an agent. This saves hours reviewing agents online and makes us feel like we’re removing uncertainty. However, there are two difficulties with referrals from friends or family:
Real estate is local so, unless your friend lives in the neighbourhood, their realtor is not best suited to help you.
Most people only use a realtor every 5 years so their assessment of the quality of a realtor may not be that accurate. They may have simply been lucky.
Complaints with the Regulator
Here’s one that never lies but is difficult to find. They usually don’t make the disciplinary actions easily searchable by the public. It’s difficult to get in trouble with the regulator so if a realtor is on the “naughty list” it’s best to stay away. Here’s where you can check for bad real estate agents:
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