High Rankings

REALTOR® Magazine tackles agent ratings and reputation in their March issue.  Here’s a snip of the coverage of AgentRank.com:

One site, still in beta testing, is AgentRank. Its rankings are composed of up to 25 data points. When you sign up to be evaluated, you provide information on your professional network, client endorsements, sales history, market forecast, blogs, experience, and designations. AgentRank is a sister site to RealtyBaron, a Web site that matches practitioners with consumers; practitioners pay a fee if the transaction closes.       

At AgentRank, real estate practitioners invite their customers and clients to post reviews, explains founder Marc Dugger. Negative reviews aren’t posted, but they do go into the overall evaluation, he says. “It’s not about tearing down agents or pointing the finger; it’s really about elevating great agents,” says Dugger. “No one is searching the Web for a bad agent.” 

Browsing these sites, it’s clear they’re not yet ready for prime time. A quick search at AgentRank of Dallas ZIP code 75204 shows five practitioners, only one of which has posted a photograph. The first—with a ranking of 9 out of 10—had no client recommendations, market forecasts, blogs, sales, or other information posted, just an invitation to visit her Web site.

The author pans us at the end.  And we probably deserve it for ranking an empty profile so high.  However, a major overhaul of how rankings are distributed is under development and will prevent the scenario she describes above.

Website traffic was up 4,996.43% yesterday after the Associated Press included AgentRank.com in a round-up of real estate agent review web sites:

AgentRank, for example, launched in March and remains in its beta stage of development. The company brews agent rankings through a complex recipe. Put simply, it bakes all kinds of variables into an agent’s profile — recent sales history, client reviews, experience, average days homes stay on market, among others — and assigns them secret values that are then pumped through an algorithm that distills everything down to a rank between one and 10, with 10 being the best.  Visitors can search for agents by ZIP code or city and state, and they receive a list of agents ranked in descending order.  A key component of AgentRank and similar sites is the gathering of testimonials from agents’ clients.  What better way of ranking agents than by the number of positive reviews from past clients?  The site tells agents they can improve their ranking if they “close deals and make your clients happy.”  Currently, agents solicit testimonials from their clients to place on the site. But that will change by next spring, when the site begins accepting unsolicited reviews, says AgentRank.com chief executive Marc Dugger.  A search of agents in Los Angeles on AgentRank turned up only 15, which is a precious few.  Dugger acknowledges the site is a work in progress. It has profiles for up to 5,000 agents spread out nationwide, which can lead to some regions having more than others, he notes.  Ultimately, relying on referrals from friends or relatives doesn’t always work out, Dugger insists.  ”People are very quick to hire an agent based on a single referral, but the power of these reviews are the fact that you get to see a pattern of success for an agent,” Dugger says. “There are some agents that have upward of 15 to 20 reviews on the site, and that, in my opinion, would instill great confidence in that agent.” 

Overall, a solid review.

When AgentRank.com launched earlier this year, location was expressed as list of 300+ metro areas.  Greg Swann called it “annoying” and he was right.   As it should have been from the beginning, the search box now accepts either a city/state combination or a ZIP code:

Parsing a city/state combination is not yet perfect, but it’s definitely an improvement.

AgentRank™ is going communal and we want to include your data points if you operate a website where real estate agent participation is scored. Some data points I’d personally like to see include:

1. Zillow’s Home Q&A - A real estate agent’s answers are flagged as either being “helpful” or “not helpful”. Data point wanted: the ratio between an agent’s “helpful” and “not helpful” answers.
2. Trulia Voices - Similar to above, a real estate agent’s answers voted “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” by visitors. Additionally, a “best answer” is chosen among all answers to a question. Two data points wanted: 1) ratio between “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” answers and 2) the ratio between “best answer” selections and total number of answers given.
3. ActiveRain “Featured Posts” - Blog posts are nominated to be “featured” on the ActiveRain homepage. Data point wanted: the total number of “featured posts” earned by a real estate agent.

Any other data points you can suggest?

AgentRank™ profiles continue their expansion. Earlier this morning, I added a listing of weblog publications to an agent’s profile. I’ll follow up with Technorati stats for each weblog later next week.

The best part, however, is that each weblog listing has a backlink to your weblog without a “nofollow”. If you’re as SEO obsessed as most agents, you know that means these links are primed for search engine spiders and deliver link “juice” to your blogs!

Similar to Drew’s call for a Virtual Housing Stock Market game, but based on “drafting” real estate agents rather than “trading” houses. How it might work:

1. Start a new “season” on the first day of each quarter.
2. Using AgentRank API’s ‘profiles’ resource, players browse agent profiles and “draft” a sales team consisting of no more than 10 real estate agents.
3. Scoring is based on home sales and can be determined using AgentRank API’s ’sales’ resource. A player is credited points when an agent on the player’s team closes a sale during the quarter.
4. Players can “hire” and “fire” agents throughout the season.
5. Maintain leader boards in each metro area for player teams.
6. End the season on the last day of each quarter and tally the “gross” sales for player teams to determine a winner.

Maybe a good candidate for the Facebook Developer Platform? Again, if you have the programming skills and want to take a shot at it, lemme know and I’ll personally help you get it going.

I appreciate simplicity in web design. And no one does simplicity better than SimpleWeather. SimpleWeather is a single-page snapshot of today’s weather plus an extended five-day forecast. SimpleWeather is an underdog considering the incumbent, Weather.com, but both my wife and I prefer SimpleWeather because it loads fast—only a single banner ad—and it’s easy to understand.

I’d like to see the same simplicity for real estate. Just like weather, the real estate space has its incumbents, too. But if done right, a simple view of local real estate could draw a crowd. I imagine entering my ZIP code and quickly seeing a single-page “cheat sheet” containing:

• Price-per-square-foot charting
• Plotting of median sale price forecasts
• Reviews of the agents selling in my area

Our AgentRank API provides all the necessary data to make this happen—sales history, market forecasts, and agent reviews. If you have the programming skills and want to take a shot at it, lemme know and I’ll personally help you get it going.

One of the biggest components of AgentRank™ is an agent’s sales history. And one of the biggest complaints I receive from agents is how tedious reporting individual sale transactions can be. So, I’m thrilled to announce agents can now easily upload multiple sale transactions from a common-delimited file.

And remember, agents, quality sale transactions can not only boost your placement in AgentRank.com search results, but they also act as virtual ’sold’ signs on any website that uses AgentRank.com’s open API.

There’s lots of chatter about reviewing and/or scoring real estate agents lately—Joseph Ferrara, Michael Wurzer, Mike Farmer, Dustin Luther, and Dave Phillips—and it will only get hotter as spring approaches.

Two themes jump out at me:

1. No particular agent reviewing/scoring website has gained significant traction yet
2. Agent reviewing/scoring websites can be easily gamed or are unfair

Whether true or not, if the perception of #2 exists in the minds of either Realtors or consumers, #1 will never be resolved. But my gut feeling is someone will get it right in 2008.

Interestingly, just as our press release hits the wires this morning, IncredibleAgents.com is getting a face lift the very same day. They’ve added a scorecard to agent profiles and the ability to save agents in an “Interview Cart”. I especially like the Interview Cart since I pitched the same concept to Yahoo! Real Estate last year. It seems natural to shop for an agent like you would any consumer product.

. . . hit the wires this morning:

Dallas, TX (PRWEB) March 18, 2008 — RealtyBaron™ (www.realtybaron.com), a pioneer in REALTOR® selection for the consumer, launches AgentRank.com (www.agentrank.com), a consumer destination website where thousands of REALTOR® profiles in the United States are available for searching and filtering by sales activity and client reviews.

With market conditions in the United States deteriorating, it’s never been more important for consumers to hire one of the best agents in their market. AgentRank.com helps consumers anonymously and objectively evaluate agents when preparing to buy or sell a home. AgentRank.com can guarantee objective results because no advertising or preferred placement is available to participating agents.

Consumers can make contact with agent candidates free of charge. Likewise, participating agents receive notification of consumer inquiries free of charge.