Thursday, March 31, 2016

Zillow: 2 Million Real Estate Agent Reviews Now On Site

Seattle-based online home buying and selling site Zillow says it now has more than 2 million reviews of real estate agents and mortgage lenders on the site, as more and more consumers are adding content to the site. Zillow said that the content submission rates for reviews has "significantly accelerated" in the past 12 months, with double the number of reviews since February 2015. Zillow did not say why reviews are accelerating, but did say that reviews are increasingly important for agents and lenders on the site. Zillow--unlike many other sites--says it has a "rigorous moderation process" for reviews, which requires reviewers to have a Zillow account, and where reviewers have to specify very specifically what services and agent provided, and it also screens those reviews for fraud filters and even runs it through a dedicated team on Zillow; those features appear to be designed to discourage bad reviews of agents.