Any recommendations for websites which review or rate NYC real estate brokers? The only one I found so far is realestateratingsz.com

realestateratingsz.com 'ratingsz' with a 'z'? Sounds like w67's personal broker rating site. I'll have to check that one from home since w67 rating 'borkers' will be way too R (maybe X) rated for the office computer.

http://www.realestateratingz.com/
shoot first ask questions later

http://www.rateyourbroker.com/ is also a good one

Don't use Amanda J. Young of Brown Harris; she acted shady, got personal, and played around with my time and effort.

don't use modern spaces they r manipulative & greedy. the owner told me that if I didn't use her agency as a dual broker i wouldn't be able to get anything off the asking price. if i brought in my own buy side broker, the 6% would b split. if i used her as a dual she would keep the whole 5%.....nasty.

yelp.com

helphome is still on that... ok

I second what helenwaite suggested, Yelp.

Broker ratings are very tough to do well.

If you make someone "prove" the worked with a broker, then you get very few reviews, if you don't, then you get lots of garbage. Brokers end up rating themselves and their competition (which is a bunch of misinformation). Consumers who have a bad experience tend to be much more vocal and persistent than those who are satisfied.

There are also many different factors at work in determining what is a good match between a particular consumer and a broker. A grade or point scale would be as useless as wine ratings which tell you almost nothing about the probability of your future satisfaction.

Ideas welcome...

streeteasy, exactly. I think you took the right tack by not attempting the subjective stuff and just collecting all the transaction data by broker. As you say, nobody'd use that to select a broker, but the data is an interesting look at the state of the business. E.g., looking at the past year in Lincoln Square and UWS, only 269 brokers had two or more sell-side deals, another 464 had just one, and god knows how many had squat. Those numbers are even smaller when you consider that some sales are credited to more than one sell-side broker.

E.g., I'd known Deana Kory had a ton of closings, but not just how many relative to the others. Then you see someone like Dean Feldman further down the list, but without a coterie of staff, mailings, etc.

I don't even look at the buy-side stats, as most brokers don't bother to self-report them, while the sell-side are thorough and clean.

Brooks2: That is our idea. I was explaining why we don't rate them.

NWT: Yes. We agree that the "hard" data is far more useful at this point. We will continue to show more of it as it's ready.

Thanks. We agree on the second point as well. You should choose who you work based on many different factors. We are just trying to provide additional data as we can, while trying to avoid data that is so inaccurate that it's only value is entertainment.

Streeteasy needs to make it clear that unless brokers sign on to your insider account -- which warrants payment --- Streeteasy does not include their buy-side transactions or let them edit information Streeteasy has incorrect.

At first we tried to rate them based on their atomic mass.

Then we tried to rate them by atomic number.

Turns out they all have the same number protons in their nucleus............2.

OR - you could just go to a "matchmaking" service ... BrickUnderground just launched one; CityRealty also does this.

I think you should find people who actually used the broker and were happy with that broker. Ratings online are bit shady. There are people who hire others to boost rating in other business so I don't trust online ratings.
Personal referrals from people who have had successful transaction with a broker would be the way to go.

What moof3366 said. We loved our broker (from Halstead's Boland group) and recommended him to friends who were similarly satisfied.

Steeteasy,

its really hard to rate brokers even by their closed deals. Biggest reason, some of the largest firms in the city use a round robin system for closed sales deals to prop up the lesser or inexperienced agents. Basically, they put closed sales under inexperienced agents, who had nothing to do with the deal, just so below their profile it can show some closed deals. Now on streeteasy they can fool the public with fake experience. This totally throws off all the data you have in your system. There needs to be a better way to rate brokers. How about a review from the Seller? or Buyer of the property? That would be specific and could give the most details as to what the broker really did.

More suited for Angie's List.

Off topic, but has anyone used Angie'a List for repairs, plumbers, etc.?

SE re: Ideas welcome... How about a style/matchmaking- assessment-check list- you know kind of like a dating service: ie:
Relating Styles: a.Laid Back b.Relaxed c.Formal
Communications Style: a.Daily updates b.Weekly Emails c.No Pressure
Involvement Style: a.Hands-on b.Has Partner c.Team Response etc- etc- etc-

Find someone who is more interested in listening to you and meeting your needs than "closing a deal".

Hi Everyone,

My name is Joyce Liendo and I am an agent with Oxford Property Group. I moved here from Texas a couple of years ago and I remember just how hard it was to find an apartment as I was getting jerked around by brokers and their fictitious descriptions- not to mention renting an apartment in NYC can be as overwhelming as buying a house in any other US city... Two years later, I ended up deciding to become a real estate agent myself.

Now that I have been working in real estate for the last two years I am really fed up with how poorly clients are mistreated by brokers who constantly bait and switch on craigslist, BS you and try to scam you for brokers fees when you show interest in a property after they lured you there by saying it was "no-fee". It makes me frustrated to see how poorly regarded the brokerage community is and how clients almost expect to be mistreated by a broker. I decided it was time to try and clean up the industry so I launched www.kissmybroker.com today. I am still working on getting as many firms and brokers names up on there so that users will be able to read/write reviews on real estate agents. Admin pre-screens every review and we have implemented some other software like Yelp to try and keep it as honest and legitimate as possible. If you have any questions or suggestions we would be happy to hear from you on our site.

The last thing I want is for the site to become a broker-bashing site. Streeteasy's post is correct- Consumers do tend to be a lot more vocal when they're dissatisfied than when they're happy but I wanted to find a way to reward the good and trustworthy brokers. When a broker receives a review, they automatically get notified and they get the chance to respond to it. Therefore, you get to see both sides of the story and come to your own conclusion about the broker. If the review is a 4 or 5 kiss rating, they get rewarded for being a good broker with a free listing to advertise an apartment for either rent or sale. Similarly, if a broker was dishonest, unethical, or incompetent- that needs to be said as well.

We hope that this makes brokers more responsible for their actions and brings accountability to the brokerage community.

Thank you,

Joyce

Hi Everyone
No matter what do NOT hire Matthew Pope from Town & Hudson. I hired him as he offered 3% commission and I am losing 6 figs in my sale. But so far he didn't do a jack shit. First he lost and didn't even remember that he took the papers including the building financial statement as a part of the offering plan. (He voluntarily paid for a new copy) Second he never went over the requirements in the sales package to be submitted to the building board. The buyer ended up doing his work although he had weeks of time to do that. Every requirement was written on the second page of the package. No excuse not to do that.

And then he submitted the sales package with my sign, requirements nor to my knowledge. And got rejected of course. I didn't know anything about it until the buyer told me. I asked Pope about it and he said he knew the package would be rejected. WTF?

And still 3 days prior to the closing he is not even mentioning about the carbon monoxide detecter paper let alone providing the paper that was supposed to be a part of the sales package. I had to handwrite it and get it signed by the handyman.

Now even with 3% commission, the numbers are in 5 digits. Can anyone tell me one good reason why I need to pay this lazy ass other than the legal binding? In my opinion do NOT hire a broker unless you know he/she will actually WORK.

Oh by the way Pope's recommended attorney (his pal) almost screwed up the whole sales. I will tell you if anyone wants to know.

Oh forgot to say that I got a buyer in 1 week after signing with Pope. Lucky bastard.

It is best to read all the user comments and review first before getting a real estate broker. There might be instances where a very bad service is lost in the general good reviews.

re: Angie's List - I found it unhelpful for broker selection. They list agencies, not individual brokers, and in the NYC area they have about 4 reviews per agency, max.

Angie's List also doesn't offer a real estate attorney category, so that was no help either. You could let your broker find you one, but that's generally not recommended as (I'm told) they favor attorneys who prioritize speed of close over thoroughness.

Similarly with home inspectors, another service that you should select yourself, but where Angie's List reviews are sorely lacking (though not as bad as with realtors).

Angie's List requires a paid account before letting you see any of the reviews, you wouldn't know this until it was too late. The service doesn't have critical mass in NYC yet, it seems, at least in these categories. Maybe in a year or two it'll be better. For now, asking for broker recs from your friends seems like the best alternative.

I am looking for a broker, who has experience selling $1 million plus properties, to sell an apartment in the Sutton Place area. Any recommendations would be welcome.

It is about time condo and coop managements provide owners and shareholders with sales, rental and sublease data in their monthly minutes report. This data would assist owners to know who is actually selling and leasing in their bldg so, they can call and interview the broker/agent. Rating brokers is difficult without actual data and statistics. I've been in the business since 1981, started in Manhattan and relocated to Queens in 1987 and I have come across more agents and brokers who are unprofessional and unethical than ones that are good. I just wish the process could be made more difficult to get a license. I have also encountered many clients and customers who are dishonest and unethical. It's a coin toss. If I meet a client or customer who seems unethical and difficult ,I gently let them know I am unable to work with them since they can be malicious. It's like looking for the perfect or good match and it requires working at it. Call your friends associates and acquaintances and get referrals .

re: Angie's List For a business that has been around so long and advertises so heavily it seems odd that I have never heard of anyone that uses it either.

We all get drawn into trying to pick nuggets of truth out of Riccardo65's story-telling, instead of just reading them as Oxycodone-fueled entertainment.

Anyway, the timing of http://streeteasy.com/nyc/sale/676900-coop-330-third-avenue-kips-bay-new-york looks right. Double-exposure (if a brick wall counts) but it went to contract in only six weeks. 330 Third also has a bunch of studios with terraces, but I don't see which one is meant.

Halstead and REBNY probably don't allow brokers to publicly discuss clients, or we could get the other side. Maybe there's some venting site where the story starts "Something about him said 'bad news', but a client's a client, so ...."

Several posts here were deleted including my post about other people's posts being deleted.

It was just my responding to "I for one have never taken one of these" with a verbatim quote of his from another site. That was google-able, leading once again to his real e-mail, which he now realizes shouldn't be scattered all over the web.

Then he came back with "yeah but yeah but yeah but" and more vitriol about NYC being a sewer of nasty people. I.e., anyone contradicting his stories is malevolent.

There was more than that. The first response to him was by me and a reference to a post in a thread a month or so ago using riccardo's type of nasty anti-women language, but oddly posted under a broker's name - it was that broker's first post. And then that post was deleted.

That part I missed. There's been a lot to select from. I let the story go by about his buying something here, and immediately selling, as not worth the trouble. Not that any of this is, but there's something irresistable about a guy who's both a fabulist and prone to using his own e-mail.

What did he say NWT stood for?