Mark Armstrong joins Heidi Armstrong and Steve Price on 3aw’s ‘Money To Love’ radio show
(source: www.3aw.com.au)
Heidi Armstrong – “Just putting it out there as a disclaimer; Mark Armstrong – no relation to Heidi Armstrong.”
How does RateMyAgent get paid?
Heidi Armstrong [15:35] – “…How do you get paid?”
Mark Armstrong – “We’re completely independent … it’s always free for consumers and vendors to come and use our site, in the same way it’s free to use Google.”
“Real estate agents then have the choice to upgrade their subscription and subscribe to our suite of digital marketing tools…” [continue listening @ 15:35.]
So what is RateMyAgent?
Heidi Armstrong [03:43] – “…for people who aren’t aware of RateMyAgent, what is the business model and what is it that you offer?”
Mark Armstrong [03:01] – “…RateMyAgent is a completely independent agent review platform … there was no website that helped vendors find the information they needed to select an agent. There was no place for a consumer to go and find the facts and find out who is selling the most property…”
“So when you go to RateMyAgent, you can type in your suburb and find every single agent in the country and their statistics from the last twelve months”
“We rank every single agent in the country”
Heidi Armstrong [04:41] – “…so even if they’re not subscribing to your service, you’re ranking them.“
Mark Armstrong – “That’s right. Because selling real estate is a public process we collect all the information along with the information agents feed us.“
“At the moment RateMyAgent collects around 4,000 reviews per month which represents about one in every three properties sold across Australia.” [continue listening @ 03:43.]
Does every single vendor rate their experience?
Heidi Armstrong [06:26] – “Does every single vendor rate their experience?”
Mark Armstrong – “At this stage RateMyAgent is a request platform only. So what happens is a real estate agent sells a property, confirms the sale results and then they can request a review from the vendor or buyer…”
Heidi Armstrong [06:44] – “So they can choose who they send it to? So if they know they’ve done a crappy job they don’t have to send it.“
Mark Armstrong – “That’s right, they don’t have to send it to every vendor that they deal with… The issue we had in the early days in that we opened the doors for anyone to review. But we all know the reputation of the real estate industry. What we found was some disgusting and really derogatory comments coming through…”
“And we made a really conscious decision that, this is not about a race to the bottom.”
“This is not about finding who the bad agents are … this is about helping consumers find the best agents on RateMyAgent.” [continue listening @ 06:26.]
“We always say, good agents love, and use RateMyAgent .. because it identifies them as a good agent. “
Have the markets in Australia peaked?
Steve Price [02:40] – “So John McGrath comes out today to say, ‘well the markets have peaked’. What does this actually mean?”
Mark Armstrong [03:01] – “…property markets in Australia don’t tend to go through a boom/bust cycle. They tend to go through a period of growth and then they level off, and then go through a period of growth. So what we’ll start to see happen is that the market will start to level off. But the other interesting thing to be aware of is…” [continue listening @ 02:40.]
(source: www.3aw.com.au)
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