Realtor review examples: 12 samples and what to write back

The realtor review examples below are grouped by what the client was actually doing, because a first-home buyer and an investor are reassured by completely different things. Each group is followed by the reply that belongs underneath it. That second half is what the other sample pages skip, and it is the half that does the work: your answer sits under the review permanently, and the next vendor reads the two of them as one thing.

Every name and detail below is invented, and the agents have first names only for a reason: a full name that sounds right usually turns out to belong to somebody real.

What a good realtor review looks like

A good realtor review names the agent, says whether the client was buying, selling, leasing or investing, and gives one specific moment only someone inside the transaction would know: the reprice in week two, the building report that came back badly, the offer that arrived over reserve. Three or four sentences is plenty. Length is not the point. Evidence is.

Five things separate a review that wins you a listing from one that fills space.

1. The agent's name, not only the agency. Vendors choose a person.
2. What the client was trying to do, so the reader can work out whether it was their situation.
3. One moment only a client would know about.
4. The outcome in the client's own terms: days on market, offers received, the price against what they had been told to expect.
5. Recency. A review written the week of settlement carries detail the same client cannot recall six months later.

You cannot ask for any of that by script. Google's prohibited and restricted content policy says merchants "should not require or pressure users to leave ratings or write reviews while on the premises, nor should they request that specific content be included". What you can do is ask while the detail is still fresh, which is the whole argument for asking at settlement rather than at Christmas.

12 realtor review examples you can use

Buyer's agent

We looked at fourteen houses with Priya over about three months and she talked us out of two of them. The one we bought had been sitting for six weeks and she worked out why before we made an offer. We paid under asking and settled without a single surprise.

Dean ran the whole purchase for us while we were still living interstate. He walked the property on video twice, chased the strata report when the listing agent went quiet, and told us plainly which of the two units was the better buy. We have never met him in person and we would use him again tomorrow.

Both of those name a moment where the agent argued against the easy sale. That is what buyers scan for.

Seller's agent

Cassidy gave us a price range we did not want to hear and then explained the three sales she had based it on. We listed at her number, had eleven groups through the first open home and sold on day nine above the top of the range.

We had been on the market for eleven weeks with another agency before we moved. Tom rewrote the copy, changed the photography and shifted the opens to Thursday evenings. It sold in the second campaign at a price we had been told was not achievable.

Sellers want the reasoning and the number. Neither review gives one without the other.

Cassidy's reply to the first one took about fifteen seconds to write:

Thank you for trusting the range. Nine days and eleven groups through the first open is a good result in any market, and it only worked because you were willing to list at a number you did not want to hear. Enjoy the next place.

Cassidy

First-home buyer

This was our first purchase and we asked Nadia the same question about the cooling-off period roughly four times. She never once made us feel stupid, and she rang the day before settlement to walk us through what would actually happen.

Ben explained the difference between a building report and a pest report before we spent money on either. We ended up walking away from the first place we loved because of what came back, and he backed that decision even though it cost him the sale.

First-home buyers are not reassured by a sales record. They are reassured by patience, and by an agent who lost money doing the right thing. The second of those is worth more to you than any five-star one-liner.

Investment purchase

This was the third property we have bought through the same office. Kieran gave us a rental appraisal that turned out to be twenty dollars a week under what we achieved, which is the first time an appraisal has ever been conservative in our experience.

Sana talked us out of a duplex that looked good on paper and showed us the vacancy history for the street. We bought two suburbs over instead and it has been tenanted continuously for three years.

Investors read for numbers, and for whether the forecast held up.

Rental and property management

Our hot water failed on a Sunday and there was a plumber there before lunch. Two years in the property and every request has been handled the same way.

The new managers took over after a bad run with the previous agency and had the arrears cleared and a tenant in place within a month. We get a rent review recommendation every year without having to ask.

Property management reviews are about response time. Neither one mentions a price.

The deal that nearly fell over

Our first buyer's finance fell through eight days from settlement. Rosalind had the second-highest offer back on the table inside about forty-eight hours and we settled three weeks later than planned instead of starting again.

Selling our mother's house was not something any of us wanted to be doing. Alex handled it with the three of us disagreeing in the background, gave us a clear plan and never rushed a decision. He also made sure the neighbours knew what was happening before the sign went up.

These are the reviews that win difficult listings, because they show what an agent does when the plan fails.

A bad review example, and what is missing from it

A bad realtor review is not always an angry one. Often it is simply useless to you, because it praises nothing a stranger can check.

Great agent, very professional, would recommend.

There is nothing in it you can act on, and nothing the next seller can weigh. It moves your star average and stops there.

The genuinely damaging one is specific about a single failure:

I met Paul when I saw a house online and he was the listing agent. It was clear I was not his only client, because he never got back to me in any reasonable time. I tried the office instead, nobody helped, and I missed the closing date.

Every reader takes away one sentence: Paul does not return calls. You may have a good explanation. It does not matter, because the review is the only version on the page until you add yours.

Sort it out privately with the client if you know who they are, because a resolved misunderstanding sometimes ends with the client editing the review themselves. Then reply publicly, calmly, once.

A genuinely ugly one, and how to reply

Some reviews are written to do damage.

Used this agent despite the other reviews because they were the only one who would take the listing. NEVER AGAIN. They insulted the owners of the house I actually wanted, made the whole thing ten times harder than it needed to be, and clearly do not like people or houses. Stay away.

The temptation is to answer it line by line. Do not. Anyone reading a review like this is already discounting some of it, and a long defensive reply hands it credibility. Short, human, and an offer to talk offline:

Hi, I'm sorry your experience was nothing like what we aim for. I don't recognise the account of the conversation you have described, but I would rather hear it from you directly than argue about it here. I'm on [phone] and I will make the time this week.

[Name], [Agency]

If you think the review breaks Google's content policies, flag it as well as replying. That covers reviews from people who were never your client and reviews posted by a competitor. Reporting is slow and often fails. The reply is still the part doing the work. Our guide to removing a Google review covers what gets taken down and what does not.

How to reply to a realtor review: three templates

Reply to everything, positive included, within a few days. Google's own advice on replies is short and mostly about restraint: keep it brief, because people stop reading long ones, and stay conversational rather than promotional, since the person you are answering has already bought from you. Address the reviewer by name and sign off with yours. Never repeat a private detail of the transaction the reviewer did not make public themselves.

The glowing one. Do not stop at thanks. Repeat the specific thing they praised, because that is the sentence the next seller remembers.

Thanks [name]. The building report on that first place was a rough day and I'm glad we walked away from it. Enjoy the new house, and say hello to the neighbours for me.

[Name]

The mixed one. Three or four stars with a real criticism inside it. Accept the criticism without arguing the rest.

Thanks for this, [name], and fair point about the Friday updates. We have moved to a set call time each week for exactly that reason. Glad the campaign itself landed where we hoped.

[Name]

The hostile one. Assume every future client reads it. Be brief and give a real contact.

[Name], I'm sorry it ended this way. That is not the standard we hold ourselves to and I would like to understand what happened. I'm on [phone] this week.

[Name], [Agency]

More reply wording, including the awkward middle cases, is in our review response examples.

Why realtor reviews matter, and where they show

A good review builds your reputation

Vendors shortlist two or three agents and look up every one of them before the appraisal. What is written on your profile is the version of you they arrive with, and you are not in the room while they read it.

A good review establishes trust

Real estate carries a trust discount that individual agents have to pay off themselves. The fastest way to pay it off is a run of recent, named, specific reviews from people who were standing exactly where the reader is standing. One review from a first-home buyer does more for a nervous first-home buyer than ten from investors.

A good review helps you show up in local search

Google's map results usually sit above the organic list, and an office with a steady flow of recent reviews is competing for that space against ones without. Reviews are not the only factor and nobody outside Google knows the weighting, but a profile that has not been reviewed since 2023 is not winning anything. How to get more Google reviews covers the mechanics.

Where the review sits matters as much as what it says:

Where	Who can leave one	How you ask
Google Business Profile	Anyone signed in to a Google account, which they can create with a non-Gmail address	Share a Google review link or a QR code. Incentives of any kind are banned outright
Zillow (US)	Past clients you invite. Reviewers have to create a Zillow account, and moderators check every review before it publishes, typically within seven business days according to the request form, or up to one week according to the help centre	From the edit view of your profile, email up to 50 addresses a day, or copy the direct link to your review form
RateMyAgent (AU and NZ)	A buyer, seller, landlord or tenant who can prove they were part of a transaction in the past 12 months	Request by email or SMS, or import a review from another platform and have the client verify it
realestate.com.au (AU)	Reviews show on agent profiles. The eligibility rules are not stated publicly anywhere we could find	Its Find an agent tool compares agents on their stats and their reviews. What appears sits inside your agency's subscription, so check your own profile

If you only have the energy for one, make it Google. It is the profile that shows up when someone searches your name, it feeds the map results, and it is the only one on that list your past clients already have an account for. Your agency's Facebook Page is worth keeping current, but very few people choose an agent there.

Zillow comes second in the US, and its process is stricter than Google's in a way that catches agents out: the client has to make an account, and a moderator reads the review before anyone else does. A request sent on Friday is not a review that appears on Monday. There is a longer walkthrough in our Zillow review request guide.

In Australia and New Zealand, RateMyAgent is where vendors go to compare agents, and its rules are built around the transaction rather than the reviewer. Only people who were in the deal can review it. You can also import a review from another platform and have the client confirm it, which helps if all your history sits on Google. Its Trusted Agent badge goes to agents who sent a review request for every transaction in the past twelve months, so the badge really measures whether you ask consistently.

RateMyAgent's public FAQ, read 6 September 2026.

How to ask a client for a review without it being awkward

Most agents never ask, which is why most agents have four reviews. The awkwardness comes from asking badly. Too late, mostly, and in words that read as a favour rather than as the normal end of a job.

1. Ask at the moment, not at the milestone. Keys handed over, or the day the contract goes unconditional. A week later the specifics have faded.
2. Ask the person who dealt with you, by name, from your own number or address. A request that reads like a marketing blast gets treated like one.
3. Say what it is for and how long it takes. "Two or three sentences about how the sale went" gets written. "Leave us a review" does not.
4. Send the link, not the instructions. Google's own advice is to ask customers to visit a Google link or scan a QR code. Anything that involves searching for your profile loses most people, and a Google reviewer has to be signed in as well, so give them one tap instead of a search and a sign-in.
5. Follow up once. One reminder a few days later roughly doubles what you get. Two reminders make you the agent who nags.
6. Ask everyone. Google's policy says a business must not "discourage or prohibit negative reviews, or selectively solicit positive reviews from customers". There is no legitimate version of screening clients by how you expect them to rate you, and it is easy to spot from the outside. Ask the client whose deal went sideways too. Their review, with your reply under it, is often the most persuasive thing on your profile.

Google Business Profile Help, read 6 September 2026.

The rules on incentives are worth getting straight, because US law and Google's policy do not draw the line in the same place. The FTC's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials went into effect on 21 October 2024. It bans buying and selling fake reviews, paying for a review on condition that it says something positive, insiders reviewing their own business without disclosing the connection, and using threats or unfounded legal demands to get a review taken down. An incentive offered for an honest review, with no strings about what the review says, is not banned by that rule.

Google is stricter. It treats offering free or discounted goods or services in exchange for a review, a changed review or a removed one as fake and misleading content, and prohibits it outright. If your client is reviewing you on Google, Google's line is the one that binds you, and it is the safer line to work to anyway.

If you are doing all of this by hand, that is what review campaigns automate. The ask goes out when the deal moves into the stage you nominate in your CRM, on the timing you set. A repeat client stays one contact asked once rather than one message per transaction. Anyone who reviewed you in the last 90 days is skipped. Follow-ups stop the moment the review lands, and giving each agent their own review link credits the review to the person who earned it.

More for real estate agents

• How to ask for real estate reviews, the longer version of the section above.
• Zillow review request, for US agents working the Zillow profile.
• Review request email templates to adapt for settlement day.
• Review response examples, for the replies.
• Reputation for professional services, if you are running this across an office rather than one personal profile.

Common questions

Why would someone want to review a realtor?

Because you asked them, in most cases. Buying or selling a house is one of the largest transactions of a client's life and they are usually glad to say something about it, but almost nobody thinks to do it unprompted. The gap between agents with forty reviews and agents with four is rarely the service. It is who asked.

What should a client actually write?

Three or four sentences: who the agent was, what the client was doing, one specific thing the agent did, and how it turned out. You cannot dictate that, but asking soon after settlement and saying roughly how long it should take gets you most of the way.

How long should a realtor review be?

Long enough to carry one piece of evidence. Two sentences with a specific detail beat two paragraphs of adjectives, and readers do not scroll past the first three lines on a phone anyway.

Can a real estate agent ask a client for a review?

Yes. Google's policy explicitly allows soliciting content that represents a genuine experience. What it does not allow is offering anything in exchange, asking only the clients you expect to be happy, or telling people what to write. Zillow and RateMyAgent both build their own request tools for agents, which tells you how normal asking is.

Should I reply to five-star reviews as well?

Yes, and briefly. A profile where every review has a reply reads as a business paying attention, and the reply is your only chance to repeat the specific thing the client praised in words a future client will read.