Estate agency review site looks to raise £75,000 via crowdfunding

New agency rating website raterAgent has become the latest property company-related company to launch a crowdfunding bid.

The company, which has ambitions to challenge and overtake allAgents, wants to raise £75,000 in exchange for a 7% equity stake.

Within its first day yesterday, it had raised £8,850 from 12 investors, with one chipping in £5,000.

In its pitch, the company says it is “focused on becoming the Trip Advisor of the UK estate agency world”. It says that since its beta launch in January, over 200 branches have signed up.

The funding round has 43 days left to run. It can be seen here

Mal McCallion, CEO of the firm which has also introduced video testimonials on its site, told Eye yesterday that it is continuing to reject fake reviews as it seeks to establish its reputation for trust.

He said: “Since we published data showing that one in eight reviews that try to get on to our site are from agents themselves, we’ve seen that number decrease, and we’ve seen a surge in genuine numbers too.”

The firm has awarded its February agent of the month to Naz Miah of Thomas Marsh in Grays, Essex.

McCallion said: “It’s a real pleasure to publicise testimonies to great quality of service, which otherwise just sit on desks or in drawers unseen.

“And that’s another reason for investors to get involved with raterAgent. We’ve got a clear mission in helping agents show just how great their service is – and we’re going from strength to strength.”

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9 Comments

  1. smile please

    £5000 from one investor – I.E. one of the team have invested to get the ball rolling.

    Already after crowd funding after launch sounds like business not as expected. Or is it “On the contrary, business is so good looking to already develop new products”

    As for not being able to leave fake reviews totally incorrect, just to make a point i did!

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    1. Mal

      Hello again Smile Please, Mal here. As we’ve made really clear all the way through – and refer to ‘reject’ again above – we check reviews then reject those that we find are fakes within 48 hours. You’ll see from your fake one that the ‘text’ is not showing yet and it has the statement: “Review text pending moderator approval“. Once our moderators get to it, they’ll check it and reject it. But I suspect that you’ll say that we missed it, regardless of whatever we do … 🙂

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      1. smile please

        Posted long ago and showing!

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        1. Agent2015

          What a surprise Smile please, Prove it

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          1. smile please

            Ha ha – So you can remove it?

            I don’t need to prove it, i have proven to myself what i thought about the site, basically same as all the others! – No benefit to the agent at all and leaching off our work.

            However i throw the challenge down to any other agent who wants to post a negative comment on a rival or a positive comment on their own site, Its really not that hard!

             

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  2. Eamonn

    Any agent who signs up to  this shambolic idea  is  throwing money down the drain.

    “the trip advisor” of estate agency, really?.    I suppose next we will see Lenny Hemry claiming a good nights sleep in a agents short term letting operation.

    RATER agent ……. GO AWAY

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  3. Agent2015

    Smile please putting in his two bob again – shock!

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    1. smile please

      New poster having a pop obviously associated to the review site – Shock!

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  4. smile please

    I find it ironic that the ‘review’ i am giving the site is met with negativity from a supporting associated member!

    Maybe now you know why we as agents think this is an awful service / product!

    Report
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