Review Guidelines
These rules decide what gets published. They are applied identically to positive and negative reviews. A review is never removed for being critical, and never published for being flattering.
What we require
- A verified email address. You must click the link we send. Unverified reviews are never published and never count toward any ranking.
- A transaction declaration. You must state whether you were buying, selling, both or leasing, and the property type. This is published with your review.
- Direct personal experience. You must have worked with the agent yourself on the transaction you describe.
- One review per transaction. You may review the same agent again for a genuinely separate transaction.
What we reject
- Reviews from connected parties. The agent, their family, their colleagues, their brokerage or a competing agent.
- Hearsay. Reviews describing someone else experience.
- Unlawful content. Defamatory statements, content that breaches a court order or anything that would put us or the reviewer in legal jeopardy.
- Personal information about third parties. Property addresses, other people names, phone numbers or any detail that identifies someone who did not consent.
- Discriminatory content. Anything targeting a person based on a ground protected under the Ontario Human Rights Code.
- Allegations presented as fact without support. You may describe your experience and your opinion of it. Stating as fact that an agent committed fraud or breached the law is a matter for the Real Estate Council of Ontario, not a review. We will point you to RECO instead.
- Commercial content. Promotion of another agent or service, or any content submitted in exchange for payment or incentive.
- Price or commission disputes without context. A review that consists only of a complaint about the commission rate agreed in a signed agreement.
How moderation works
- Email verification must be completed first. Nothing proceeds without it.
- A moderator reads the review against the rules above. We are checking for guideline breaches, not for tone.
- If it passes, it publishes and the agent is notified so they can respond publicly.
- If it fails, we tell the reviewer which rule it breached and, where the problem is fixable, invite them to edit and resubmit.
Editing and removal
- Reviewers may ask us to correct a factual error in their own review, or ask for it to be withdrawn. Contact kcd.ryanc@gmail.com.
- Agents may respond publicly to any review. Agents cannot delete or edit reviews. An agent who believes a review breaches these guidelines can use the dispute process.
- We remove a published review only where it breaches these guidelines, where we are legally required to, or where the reviewer asks us to withdraw it. We record every removal.
Agent responses
Agents may respond once to each review. Responses are held to the same standards: no personal information about the reviewer, no discriminatory content and no disclosure of confidential transaction details. A response that breaches these rules is rejected and the agent is asked to rewrite it.
Response rate is one of the six components of our ranking formula. Responding to a critical review counts exactly the same as responding to a positive one.
Manipulation
We monitor for coordinated review submission, reviews from connected addresses and incentivised reviews. Where we find manipulation we remove the affected reviews, which changes the agent ranking because the formula simply recalculates without them. Repeated manipulation results in the profile being flagged publicly.