Industry Professional Rating Sites: Yay or Nay?

At its March Annual General Meeting, the Canadian Real Estate Association (CREA) voted down a proposal to create a Rate My REALTOR® website, where consumers could rate their experience with a particular CREA-affiliated real estate professional.

Proponents of the idea, including the CREA Futures Implementation Team, stated that such a website would improve the professionalism of the industry as a whole by giving REALTORS® important feedback on their performance. Detractors were of the opinion that they did not want negative reviews to be on the web and that new professionals would struggle to achieve a high rating. Sabotage by other REALTORS® was also a concern.

Sites where consumers can rate their real estate professionals already exist, including Rate-my-agent.com, HomeKey and iBidBroker just to name a few. Consumers can even rate real estate professionals on general ratings sites like Yelp, Zillow and Google. A cursory review of professionals in Alberta reveals many negative comments, but also many positive comments.

What do you think?

Do you think sites like these increase professionalism?