Ask for a real estate review just after a moment the client recognises as progress: settlement has completed, the keys have changed hands, a lease is signed or a difficult problem is finally resolved. Name the work you did together, ask for an honest review and give one direct link.

The wording can be simple. Timing and specificity do most of the work.

The best time to ask

For a sale, settlement day is the obvious moment, but it is not the only one.

• Seller: after settlement, once the result is complete and the pressure has lifted.
• Buyer: after keys are handed over, not while finance or inspection issues are unresolved.
• Landlord: after a tenant is placed or a difficult maintenance issue has been handled well.
• Tenant: after move-in or after the property manager resolves a genuine problem.
• Long transaction: after a meaningful milestone, then suppress further requests once the client has reviewed.

Do not ask in the middle of a dispute, before the promised work is complete or while the client is waiting for money. A scheduled automation should still respect the state of the transaction.

A settlement-day email

Subject: One last favour after settlement

Hi Priya,

Congratulations again on settlement. It was a pleasure helping you prepare the property and work through the campaign.

If you have two minutes, would you leave an honest Google review about the experience? It helps people choosing an agent understand what working together is actually like.

[Leave a review]

Thank you, Jordan

“Honest” matters more than “five-star”. You are asking for the client's account, not dictating the result.

A shorter text message

Hi Priya, congratulations again on settlement. If you have a minute, would you share an honest review of working with me? [link] Thanks, Jordan

Keep the link direct. Do not send the client to a page with five platform buttons and make them choose. If Google is the profile people in your market see first, use the Google review link for that office or agent.

A request after buying

Hi Marcus,

I hope the move is going well. Thank you for trusting me to help with the search and negotiation.

If you are happy to share the experience, here is my review link: [link]. A few lines about what was useful would mean a lot.

All the best, Ana

The phrase “if you are happy to share” gives the client a choice. It does not mean “only review me if you are happy”. Send the same request under the same rule, regardless of whether the closing conversation was glowing or quiet.

A property-management request

Hi Taylor,

Thanks for working through the maintenance issue with us. Now that the repair is complete, would you be willing to leave an honest review of how our team handled it?

[Leave a review]

Regards, The Harbour Property team

This works because it names the moment. A generic request sent six months into a tenancy feels like marketing. A request after a resolved issue feels connected to something the client can describe.

A gentle follow-up

One reminder is enough for most agencies.

Hi Priya, just resurfacing the review link I sent after settlement in case it was buried: [link]. No pressure at all. Thanks again for trusting me with the sale.

Do not keep chasing. Once the client reviews, clicks an unsubscribe link or asks you to stop, suppress the follow-up.

Google, Zillow or another real estate profile?

Choose the profile that supports how new clients find the agent.

Google is usually the first choice for a local office because the review sits beside Maps, contact details and directions. Google allows businesses to share a review link or QR code, but prohibits incentives and rating manipulation. Its official review guidance is worth reading before a team writes its own process.

Zillow matters for agents working in the United States. Zillow provides a profile tool for requesting reviews and a direct review-form link. Its agent review FAQ explains the current options.

Local real estate directories may matter in a particular market, but do not scatter every client across several profiles. Check which pages rank for the agent and office, then give each completed transaction one clear destination.

What not to do

• Do not offer a gift card, discount, draw entry or donation in return for a review.
• Do not ask only the clients you expect to rate you highly.
• Do not ask a satisfaction question first and show the public link only after a positive answer.
• Do not write the review for the client to paste.
• Do not ask the buyer and seller to hide that they know the agent personally.
• Do not make staff compete for the highest average rating.

The satisfaction-question trick is review gating. It turns feedback into a selection exercise and leaves the agency with a flattering public score but a distorted view of the client experience.

Give clients something useful to write about

Some people stall because “leave a review” feels like a blank page. A neutral prompt helps:

If useful, you might mention what you were trying to achieve, what the process was like and anything that stood out.

That is enough structure without supplying praise. Avoid “Please mention my communication and negotiation skills” or a prewritten paragraph. Repeated review language looks coached because it is.

Make the office process boring

The best system is easy to explain:

1. Choose the qualifying event, such as completed settlement.
2. Send the same neutral request to every eligible client.
3. Use one direct link for the right agent or office.
4. Send at most one useful reminder.
5. Stop after a review or opt-out.
6. Read and reply to the review.
7. Share recurring feedback with the team.

For an office managing several agents, the professional-services reputation approach shows how to keep ownership clear without making every reply sound corporate.

A review request should feel like the last small part of a completed job. If it feels like a sales campaign, the timing or wording is probably doing too much.

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:

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.

To send a Zillow review request, open your Zillow profile in edit mode and click Request a review. A form appears with two options: email up to 50 client addresses a day through Zillow's form, or copy the direct link to your review form and send it yourself. A human moderator then reads the review before it publishes, which Zillow's own form puts at typically seven business days.

That is the easy half, and it is where most guides stop. Your client still has to make a Zillow account, write something specific enough to survive moderation, and do it from their own computer. Reviews fail on all three, and nobody tells you which one it was.

Verified 6 September 2026 against Zillow's Real Estate Professional Rating and Review Policy (updated April 2023), How to Request Client Reviews on Zillow for Agents (written by Zillow, 23 January 2025), and the help centre articles linked below.

How do I request a review on Zillow?

Zillow documents the flow in How can I request a review from a client?:

1. Sign in and open your Zillow profile in edit mode.
2. Click Request a review.
3. For a batch, leave Type an email(s) selected and paste in past client addresses, up to 50 a day.
4. Tick I am indicating that this person was a past client, then Send Request.
5. To send it yourself instead, choose Copy and paste direct link and take the URL from Direct link to review form.

The two methods are not equivalent. Emailed requests show up under Sent requests, so you can see whether a client has submitted a review or whether it is still sitting in moderation. Zillow says on the form that direct link requests cannot be tracked and will not appear there. The link wins on everything else: it goes in a text message, and it arrives from you rather than from a platform. Use the link for the client you settled with this week and the email form for the backlog you are working through.

Your client needs a Zillow account either way. Zillow requires a reviewer to create a profile first, which it says keeps reviews coming from actual clients. It takes an email address and a password, the address is never displayed, and someone who would rather not be identified can sign up under another name. It is still a step, and it is where a request sent to a busy seller dies. Say so in the ask.

When is the right time to request reviews?

Earlier than most agents ask. Zillow tells agents to raise it at the first win with a new client, when they get pre-approved or walk into a house they get excited about, then to request at mutual acceptance or within three days after closing. That second window is the one worth defending. The client can still remember the reprice in week two and the inspection that came back badly, and that detail is what moderation is looking for.

Send one request under your own name. Do not send it from the office, from a marketing address, or in a newsletter a month later. For past clients Zillow suggests phoning rather than emailing cold, and using the call to remind them of a specific moment before you send the link.

Ask every client, not the ones you expect to be happy. Google's content policy bans selective solicitation in as many words, and while Zillow does not use that language, a profile where nothing has ever arrived from a difficult sale reads as managed. Nothing goes in front of the ask either: no star question, no filter deciding who reaches the review form. Our guide to asking for real estate reviews is the longer version.

What to send: a Zillow review request template

A request works when it names the thing you want the client to talk about and warns them about the account step before they hit it.

Text message, the day of settlement:

Hi Elena, congratulations again on Wilson Street. If you have two minutes this week, a short review would help the next family deciding whether to list with me: [your Zillow review link]. Zillow will ask you to make a quick account first. Anything about how the second campaign went is perfect. Thanks, Marisol

Email, to a past client:

Subject: A quick favour, Raf

Hi Raf, two years on from the Ashfield purchase I still use that building report as the example of why we walk away from things.

I'm asking a few past clients for a Zillow review. Three or four sentences does it: what you were trying to do, one thing I did that helped, how it turned out. Zillow asks reviewers to make an account first, which takes a minute. Here's the link: [your Zillow review link]

No problem at all if you'd rather not. Marisol

Send one reminder a few days later, then stop.

How long does it take for my Zillow review to show up?

Zillow gives two answers. Where is my review? says it can currently take up to one week to clear moderation. The request form says a dedicated team of trained moderators evaluates every review before publishing, typically within seven business days. Plan on the longer one.

So a request sent on Friday is not a review on Monday, and it will not be there for Tuesday's listing presentation. If you are filling out a thin profile before a campaign, start a fortnight out. Emailed requests sit in the Request a review section of your profile, and your client can see the same status from the Reviews Written section of theirs.

What if a Zillow review gets rejected?

Zillow will not publish everything it checks, on the reasonable grounds that the people gaming the system do not need the list. It does name the common failures in When would a review get rejected? and in its review policy, and nearly all of them are avoidable in the ask.

The compensation line has teeth. Zillow withholds reviews from anyone offered payment for one, and separately makes you agree not to solicit a review from any person, family and colleagues included, in exchange for compensation. There is no gift-card version of this that works. The last sentence of the policy is the one to read twice: if Zillow decides you are enabling reviews that were not submitted directly to Zillow by the client, it reserves the right to terminate your Agent Profile and any Zillow programme attached to it.

A review is not posted if it rates you on skills that were not applicable to the interaction, so a buyer's-agent client praising your listing photography is rating something outside their own transaction. By creating an Agent Profile you also agree that some reviews will be negative. If you do not want them, Zillow's only remedy is deleting the profile.

Replying to a Zillow review, and what to do about a bad one

To reply, open your profile from the Agent Hub dropdown, scroll to the review and click Respond to review. Your answer publishes underneath it.

Reply to all of them. Zillow says people find a 4.8 or 4.9 more credible than a perfect 5.0, and that its data shows the number of reviews drives more contacts to an agent than the rating does.

For a review you think is unfair, Zillow is blunt that reviews are very rarely removed once approved. Flag it from your profile for re-moderation and it comes down only if the team decides it breaks the guidelines. Respond publicly, which for a review that passed moderation is the only recourse the policy offers you: a clarification comment under it, in your words. Report it to Consumer Care if the person was never your client. Then go and collect newer reviews, which is Zillow's third suggestion and the one that changes what a stranger sees. Wording for all three cases is in our realtor review examples and review response examples.

How to optimise your Zillow reviews

Zillow tells agents to think about where they want the next deal to come from and point the client at it. More listings in one suburb means asking the clients who bought there and suggesting their review mention the area. Zillow's only condition is that you request accurate and honest information.

Google's rule is different. Its content policy says a merchant should not request that specific content be included in a review. If the same ask goes to both profiles, write to Google's rule. It is the stricter of the two, and it governs the profile that comes up when someone searches your name.

Aim for at least five recent published reviews, the number Zillow itself suggests. A profile whose newest review is from 2023 tells a seller something you did not mean to say.

On a team, the roll-up matters before you quote a team rating. Reviews published to a Member Agent's profile while they are on the team are attributed to the team profile as well; a Referral Agent's are not, which is the setting leaders use for someone still building a history. When a member leaves, reviews from their time stay on the team profile and anything they collect afterwards does not count toward it.

Zillow reviews versus Google reviews for an agent

If you can only sustain one, make it Google: it is what a seller sees when they search your name, and your clients already have accounts. Zillow is the strong second in the US, because it is where people go specifically to compare agents and because the review attaches to you rather than to your brokerage, which matters the day you change office. How to get more Google reviews covers the other side.

Running this across an office rather than one profile is what Cloutly does. The ask goes out when a deal moves into the stage you nominate in HubSpot, on the timing you choose. A repeat client stays one contact asked once, anyone who reviewed you in the last 90 days is skipped, and follow-ups stop the moment the review lands. Zillow is one of the 39 review sites Cloutly reads, so what arrives there lands in the same inbox as Google.

Common questions

Can I write the review for my client?

No. Zillow's review policy reserves the right to terminate your Agent Profile if it determines you are enabling reviews that were not submitted directly to Zillow by the client. Even with the client's blessing, it is the one thing on that page that risks the profile itself.

Does my client need a Zillow account to review me?

Yes. Zillow requires a reviewer to create a profile before submitting. It takes an email address and a password, and the address is never displayed. Warn them in the ask so the sign-up screen is not a surprise.

How many Zillow review requests can I send a day?

Fifty email addresses a day through the request form. Zillow publishes no cap on the direct link, and sending that one client at a time is the version that gets written anyway.

Can I get a bad Zillow review removed?

Rarely. Zillow says reviews are very rarely removed once approved. Flag it for re-moderation if it breaks the guidelines, report it to Consumer Care if the person was never your client, and otherwise respond to it and collect newer ones.

Why did my review request never turn into a review?

Check Sent requests first, because a review can sit in moderation for a week. After that the usual causes are the account step, a review too short to pass, an office computer, or an overseas client who never replied to Zillow's confirmation email.