Google Reviews
Google Reviews for Real Estate Agents: What Actually Works
A vendor you helped sell a house for six figures more than they expected still might not think to leave you a review — real estate reviews don't happen by accident the way a café's do. Here's how to make asking for them, and replying to them, work for how the job actually runs.
Updated 27 July 2026 · 6 min read
Why real estate reviews behave differently
Most businesses get reviewed after a quick, repeatable transaction. Real estate is usually one long, high-stakes process with more than one party in it — a vendor and a buyer on the same sale, a landlord and a tenant on the same lease. It's not always obvious who your "customer" is for review purposes, and the emotional stakes of the biggest financial decision most people make shape what people write.
That combination is exactly why a strong review record stands out so much in this industry — most agents don't have one, so a genuine, well-replied-to set of reviews is a real point of difference.
Your own profile, or the agency's?
Google's guidance allows an individual professional — a real estate agent, much like a doctor or insurance broker — to set up their own Business Profile, separate from the agency's. Reviews left on a personal profile stay attached to the agent if they ever move agencies; reviews on the agency profile stay with the agency.
Think about which matters more to your business before you start actively asking: an agent building a personal book of business usually benefits from their own profile, while a principal building the agency's name benefits from directing reviews there instead. Many agents in Australia also run a profile on a dedicated platform like RateMyAgent alongside Google — the two aren't mutually exclusive.
When to actually ask
For sales, the natural moment is settlement — once the outcome is real and the relief (or excitement) is fresh, not at the emotionally fraught midpoint of negotiations. For property managers, there isn't one big finish line, so build the ask into routine moments instead: a smooth routine inspection, a lease renewal, or a maintenance issue resolved well.
Make the ask specific to what you actually did — how you kept them updated, how you handled a tense negotiation, how quickly you found a resolution — rather than a generic "please review us." A specific ask gets a more specific, more useful review back.
What to say when a client brushes it off
"That's just your job" is a common response, and it's fair — but the review isn't really about whether you did your job, it's proof for the next vendor or buyer that you did it well under pressure. Framing the ask around a specific moment — "the way you kept us calm during the second round of offers" — makes it feel less like a formality and more like a fair account of what actually happened.
Replying without exposing anything confidential
Real estate reviews sometimes touch on details that shouldn't go any further in public — a sale price, a vendor's reserve, a dispute between parties, or why a deal fell through. Reply the same way a healthcare business would to a review that risks confirming private information: warm, general, and firm about taking it offline.
A safe structure: thank them, acknowledge the experience in general terms, and invite them to call or email directly for anything specific. Never confirm or dispute the commercial details of a transaction in a public reply, even to correct the record — it usually creates a bigger problem than the original review.
- Never write or solicit a positive review from a client in exchange for a discount on fees or a referral — this breaches Google's policies and the ACL's rules on misleading conduct.
- A losing buyer in a multiple-offer situation may leave a frustrated review of the agent who didn't choose them for the vendor; a calm, brief reply is still worth writing, even though there's little to "fix."