Allagents has claimed that a survey it has carried out among 1,000 vendors and landlords shows that more and more consumers are turning to review sites.
It said that over 60% would choose an agent based purely on reviews on Allagents – a site which many agents have expressed serious concerns about.
The controversial estate agency review site said that members of the public are “turning to reviews to gain a further insight into the experiences of past and existing customers and weighing them up against the reputations and promises” of agents.
Asked where they had first heard about their agent, 24.2% replied ‘online’ compared with ‘personal recommendation’ (23.77%) and ‘used agent before’ (14.31%).
According to Allagents, “a staggering 70.09% of respondents had heard horror stories about rogue agents” prior to finding or appointing an agent, resulting in 64.22% being wary or very wary during the process.
The factors that most helped this group when choosing an agent were personal recommendation (30.55%), independent reviews (22.42%), location (10.87%) and the sales person (9.35%). Agents’ fees, local knowledge, and testimonials supplied by the agent, each collected less than 5% of the votes.
When it came to rating their experience with their appointed agent, 35.55% said it had been ‘excellent’. ‘Good’ and ‘average’ experiences scored 16.97% and 15.13% respectively and ‘poor’ polled 7.56%. ‘Terrible experiences’, however, accounted for 24.79% of the votes submitted.
The survey also asked about the value of a recommendation: 87.43% said they would select a new agent based solely on a personal recommendation if they had one, while 61.45% said they would select an agent solely based on customer reviews on Allagents.
The survey was conducted between March 29 and April 3. The responses were 63% from landlords and 37% from vendors.
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Comments
Hi All, I am tenant of one of the fully manage property in purely. In the beginning of the tenancy I post an review to appreciate effort of Mathew Jonson, sales guy form street ahead, south Croydon branch. This review was append in the allagent site without having any problem. But I wrote another review last month to express my disappointment about shocking poor property management,, But surprisingly this review didn’t appear.. what a surprise. According to my experience.. all agent site is completely lie and fraud
I agree with the spirit of Big Ted's suggestion. From reading through most of the comments below anyone would think that Estate Agents have fully embraced AllAgents.
It seems rather unusual that such a large swing of opinion in favour of AllAgents could have materialised so quickly given the very "choice" words being used to describe them only a couple of months ago.
I have no evidence whatsoever to suggest that all these glowing comments in support of AllAgents have been falsely planted but "in my opinion" from my knowledge of Estate Agents it seems completely out of character.
It will be interesting to see if anyone leaves a few comments attacking my suspicions. It will be interesting to see the wording they use, you know, whether they sound like the normal comments left on this site or whether they read like an advert. Wouldn't it be hilarious if there are some spelling mistakes and grammatical errors possibly to throw us off the scent.
I shall keep an eye out in this post and future posts regarding AllAgents.
Quick note to site admin.
Is it feasible to add green thumbs up / red thumbs down reviews to comments a la Yahoo News ?
What do other posters think ?
@ Anon, please can I sell you some magic beans.
They will make you a really top selling agent. Everyone will be fooled.
Bunch of ****** lemmings !
Sign up to this and you deserve what you get. A quick fix, and a big push down the concrete stairs.
Rm have us by the balls . . .moan . . .moan.
WTF do you think this guy is after ?
Weak, cann't sell agents to the slaughter.
We have a high rating but the overall rank has been removed as we arent transparent agents - seems a tad unfair.
I actually like All Agents, but is it truly transparent to edit rankings?
what a lot of x&*%£! they are
A few weeks ago, I worked my socks off to just about signed a client up just to find out at the last minute they changed their mind.
When i eventually got a hold of the client for an explantion, they said it they went with one of their transparency agents instead!
Something has got to be done here as we are loosing business from this.
God help us all if they do go on Television!
Whether we love them or hate them, one thing is for sure they are growing fast and coming up regularly at our network meetings We are all now are of them.
Other then RM, FAP and Zoopla, there are not many other websites out there that are now being daily by agents as part of the marketing tools.
The point i am trying to make here is that this appears to be getting done with little or no budget. How big and powerful could allagents be if they do manage to get money behind them?
@ agent from london.
So thats 3 tools you take on a val. The ipad, alltheagents and yourself.
Nice
We have got great reviews on the website and it is certainly helping us win new instructions.
We now show use our ipdads at valuations to show clients the reviews of both ours and whoever we are up against.
Last week we won 2 new instuctions from overseas clients based soley from what they read about us on allagents.
What a load cr@p!
I know people who use the site and how they get their good reviews.
Anyone know who the "extension" is who is behind it?
Just enjoyed afternoon break.
Thought I would enjoy some browsing on the net.
Found Allagents.
And next site was called Fall Agents - apparantly they supply zimmer frames with air bags.
Which site should I take seriously?
Its a difficult one.
@scot - go for the extension - for £400 you will end up with 8"
Impressive
NAEA member
The website has not been around since August, it has been running for around 4 years now.
For a website that's just been around since August, it has certainly got the industry talking about.
I have personally never seen them advertise anywhere so if it's true that they gave a tv campaign in September then it can certainly become the Bigger than RM as far as vendor and landlord leads are concerned.
Where have the survey results been published? Nothing on the 'news' page at AA .....
Idea: Great.
Execution: Not so.
There is an agent in my area. They have 5 reviews. An average of 4 stars. 3 "recommend" and 1 "disapproves".
ALL of that masses of data puts them 670th out of 9333 in the country.
Hardly an accuarate reflection?? Especially as they have not had a review since 9 months ago!!
Just enjoyed an early lunch and used the time to do a bit of general browsing on the net.
I found Allagents.
Followed by a neighbouring site called Small Agents which offered me a 6 inch p*nis extension for £400.00.
Which site do I believe and trust the content?
Its a difficult one.
Who was surveyed?
If it was folks who've already posted on allagents, doesn't that lend some bias to the results?
The main problem for us is not our service, rather the perception of the same from a) tenants whose Landlords wont give them what they want or b) Landlords who don't get what they want from the tenant
Stakeholder = impartial = complaint
We had one last week from a Landlord who complained to TPOS, was deemed not to have any complaint whatsoever and we were indeed complimented for our diligence - so let rip out of some misguided vengance - all because she couldn't get £700 for a 9 year old carpet which had a stain.
So we have written proof that we were good boys - yet get one star.
@ Dave@CW
I wish .................I think Im the only sober person here.
I can Google every connotation of estate agent in my area and there is no mention of Allagents.
Does this mean there are no disgruntled clients??
Allagents is on the whole reviewed by agents and clients steered to the site by agents.
I am not picking an argument here I am just warning anyone who is interested to be careful who they chose to promote as bed partners.
Historically Allagents have been anything but transparent and their only interest lies with Allagents.
Allagents cannot be compared with Rightmove who are a paid for advertising vehicle.
REMEMBER THE WOODEN HORSE OF TROY.
Anonymous Coward is spot on. Those moaning are those with bad reviews.
We actively promote AllAgents because we have 96% 5star reviews. On a val - we know which other agents are going and often suggest that the vendor look at our reviews - safe in the knowledge they will check out the other agents - whose reviews are rubbish.
Bingo.
I noticed they have changed their "search for agent by area" page so that visitors can now filter agents that are NAEA and ARLA members. That's quite a cool tool
I have a feeling this AllAgents thing will probably catch on.
Why? Because RM & FAP make us all seem the same.
And because their is a (misplaced?) desire for transparency which in the end will mean that the winners are better are covering up bad press.
The ONLY type of news is BAD news, people don't want to read about good quality, they just want to avoid bad quality.
So if you are a good agent, pricing honestly with sensible fees you will nearly always lose the instruction to the overpricing, undercharging liar agent down the road.
Unless they have bad reviews that the public can see, why would you go anywhere else?
@scotavingabeer - Its a bit early to drink, but clearly you have been.
You said "Whats the chances of a client finding this site?"
The answer is "Very Likely" - In fact, when we type our company name into Google, All agents comes up just below our actual listing with the words "Customer Reviews" - are you suggesting people wont look?
They will - and they do.
No no no guys.
Im not having that. Its not a matter of "burying my head in the sand". You need to "wake up and smell the coffee".
We all choose our business partners.
Remember the wooden horse of Troy.
I spoke to these allagents last week. They are actually good switched on guys that have some great ideas and are prepared to listen to feedback. It really is worth while trying to talk to them.
They are also actively in dialogue with venture capitalis for funding. and have told me that they will be launching a nationwide consumer awareness campaign on TV in September.....
We have good reviews - so I like review sites.
If we get bad one's, I will change my mind.
@ scottavinabeer
You are deluded. We have secured 3 instructions THIS week off the back of good reviews. The other agents who valued the properties had much worse reviews - so we won the instruction and justified a decent fee!
@ scottavinabeer - well, if you type in 'Estate Agent Reviews' into google they are top.
Or type in ' Reviews of [insert agents name]' and they are also top.
Their web rank is improving fast.
Dont bury your head in the sand mate
He he he.
Another headline grabber.
Anyone and everyone connected with the property industry takes "Allagents" and their various press releases with a "pinch of salt".
Legal action? Its not worth it. Whats the chances of a client finding this site?
If they do happen to fall upon it then any reasonable person will quickly realise that it is an imbalanced soap box for the generation X "victims".
Please can we have a daily Allagents press release as I find them so therapeutic.
its good to see that fees is not a major factor at all when it comes to selecting an agent.
All Agents is an enigma.
They are passionate about Transparency - says a man who will only identify himself as 'Martin' and whose sole Director is Jodie Maclean.
A company only formed last August.
They appear accountable to no one and ignore requests to challenge blatantly false reviews.
Their site is of little value. 19,000 reviews of 9000 agents over 4 years....
Now they are focussing on individuals when their own terms of business state: "Do not name and criticise individuals." - yet it allowed unchecked.
Legal action is afoot I hear...
People visiting a review site to post reviews. Whatever next?