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Two tech players have joined forces to keep agent reviews at the forefront.
Real Estate Industry Partners (REIP) and RateMyAgent have struck a new partnership aimed at “uniting and empowering agents with better data, information and products,” according to REIP CEO Sadhana Smiles.
She explained: “The REIP and RMA partnership is based on two industry leaders working together for the benefit of the industry.”
Detailing that product integration, benchmarking reviews and promoting agent success are some of the areas being worked on by both parties, Ms Smiles said the new partnership “will keep at the forefront agent reviews, agent promotion and industry collaboration”.
Stressing that “the vast majority of the agents in our industry do a great job and their clients are very happy”, Ms Smiles outlined how the new partnership would ensure “these stories are shared across industry, agent and client”.
She also reported that the alignment would enable direct integration of reviews into the REIP Nexus comparative market analysis (CMA) product, first revealed just over a year ago.
For RateMyAgent CEO Michael Davey, the goal has always been about “helping good agents stand out”.
For him, through their work with the industry and the partnership with REIP, the platform’s hope is to “do an even better job of this in the future”.
He believes that the real estate industry “needs to get better at measuring the end-to-end customer experience”.
“Consumers have higher and higher service expectations, driven by other experiences they have across other products and services. Consumers have also never had better access to information on who to do business with, a few simple google searches can be the difference on people even finding you, let alone consider using your services.”
And acknowledging that the industry unfortunately still suffers from a poor reputation, Mr Davey argues it’s “critical” professionals get customer experience right.
That sentiment is shared by Ms Smiles, who said that over the next 12 months, the real estate profession “will evolve just like every other industry”.
In a landscape where leaders are under more pressure than ever before and changes in markets create a highly competitive landscape, Ms Smiles said that instead of defaulting to listings and market conditions as the future of the industry, we must look elsewhere.
“What we need to be talking more about is leadership; who are the people working in our industry and what do clients want?”
She concedes: “Our competitive edge as brands is getting less and less. What this means is there is more focus on relationships, service that is faster, better and price competitive and leaders building environments where people what to work.”
“We will all need a variety of skill sets, over and above simply listing, selling and leasing. Our teams will need to be agile and innovative,” Ms Smiles advised, before warning: “If we remain fragmented and don’t collaborate at a leadership level, in particular, we leave ourselves open for further disruption.”
The latest announcement from REIP follows the recent news that the industry organisation has signed a memorandum of understanding with the Real Estate Institute of Australia.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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