...........and now for something completely different..........
F A N T A S Y R E V I E W S ? ? ?
...are on-line review sites any help to landlords and tenants ?
On-line review sites are very much a phenomenon of the last
8 to 10 years. There are more and more of them and like it or not they’re here
to stay. But do they really matter and are they pertinent to landlords and
tenants?
Very commonly they’re used in travel/holidays. If you book a
holiday do you use sites like trivago, tripadvisor or booking.com to check out
a hotel you’re thinking of? I do, always. Why, because it gives me a very good
idea of how good the hotel is. But, and this is the thing, I read them with
care and do not necessarily take them at face value. So, I look at a selection
of the reviews going back over a period of time and if the hotel has left a reply
comment about the review I also read that. Key to
the usefulness of these types of sites though is the volume of reviews and because hotel review sites have a high volume of reviews they are quite useful. The more
reviews the better your chances of getting a balanced picture - it helps smooth out the extreme reviews. (There’s
always the professional ‘moaner’ who uploads a rant which is likely to be
neither accurate nor helpful).
So what’s this to do with choosing a letting agent for your
valuable asset, your investment property? These review sites are becoming
common for lettings now. If you look up a lettings agent on google there are
likely to be google reviews left for them indicated next to their result in the
search. If you look at www.allagents.co.uk
you will see many reviews. But beware of the pitfalls: on allagents unless you
specify a town or postcode then if it is a nationwide agent, you will struggle
to find the specific one you want and you’ll end up reading about a branch of
ABC Ltd in a town miles from the agent you want and not relevant. Also
landlords and tenants are not like holiday makers (yet) in the way they use
review sites e.g. they are not prolific users/contributors, so the volume is comparatively
low. Often they only use these review sites if they have an axe to grind and in
the case of tenants may well leave reviews if they’re simply unhappy about
deductions from their deposit.
So review sites in our industry do have a use and are
becoming more popular but treat them with caution. Finally, you’ll often read
unhappy clients (tenants usually) writing that it’s all a fix and the agents
have written the reviews themselves. This is a smoke screen. Agents might
perhaps be able to get a couple of friends, staff members to write a spoof
review but ISP checks and careful precautions by the review site owners pretty
well preclude this. To leave a google review you'd have to be a google account holder properly logged in.
If you really want to find out about an agent before using
them, ask them if any of their current customers would be willing to talk to
you about their experiences.
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