Ratings & Reviews… It’s An R-Rated Topic

RentAdvisor Concludes 5-Month Ratings & Reviews Study
Includes 323 Properties Across 22 Management Companies

Download full study .pdf

RentAdvisor conducted a 5-month study on resident reviews with the objective of proving that apartment communities can solicit and display invaluable renter insights with higher ratings, more reviews, and higher recommend percentages by proactively engaging renters across multiple platforms via a comprehensive reviews program.

The study included 323 apartment communities owned or managed by 22 companies. During the test period, 3,310 reviews were generated for the test communities, an average of 10.25 reviews per community. Some communities received as many as 58 reviews. The average rating for the test communities was 3.9 on a 1-5 scale. An average of 85.4% of reviewers confirmed that they would recommend the community to others…

Read how our results measure up to top review sites and more!

Most Prolific Apartment Review Site Now Accepting RentAdvisor-Powered Ratings & Reviews

May 24, 2012 – For nearly a decade ApartmentRatings.com has been at the vanguard of providing consumer ratings and reviews to apartment seekers throughout the US. As part of a continuing effort to provide more balanced ratings and reviews, RentAdvisor has partnered with ApartmentRatings.com and their Verified Resident Program.

“Over the last ten years we have focused on providing consumers with as much renter feedback and insight as possible when making a leasing decision,” explains Wade Hewitt, VP of ApartmentRatings.com. “Our new partnership with RentAdvisor works in conjunction with our Verified Resident Program and offers properties multiple solutions to solicit solid ratings and reviews, which in turn will be displayed on ApartmentRatings.com.”

RentAdvisor is now helping management companies and properties generate a balanced review and ratings set through various email and social methods. The company then pushes those ratings and reviews out to ApartmentRatings.com, search engines, social sites, property sites, etc.

“ApartmentRatings.com is clearly the leading ratings and reviews site for apartment communities,” said Jamie Gallo, CEO and co-founder of RentAdvisor.com. “Our service works with the apartment community to solicit ratings and reviews from their entire resident base, which results in balanced reviews. These legitimate, verified renter reviews are then displayed on ApartmentRatings.com and everyone is a winner.”

RentWiki Changes Name to RentAdvisor, Gets Multi-Million Dollar Investment, and Launches Killer New Product

March 20, 2012 – Businesses don’t get better by chance, they get better by change.

“In the past 18 months we’ve worked directly with thousands of renters,” said Robert Turnbull, president and co-founder of the company. “We’ve learned a few things: First, ratings and reviews have a much bigger influence on the renter’s decision to visit an apartment community than anyone realizes. Second, what the Apartment Industry needs is a way to proactively tackle the apartment reviews and ratings proliferating the Internet.”

Recently a number of companies have announced what they are referring to as “reputation management” or “reputation monitoring” products. However, these services simply aggregate existing reviews whereas RentAdvisor has created a new product designed to actually enhance the online reputation of apartment communities and management companies.

“Now is the time to take action,” explained Jamie Gallo, CEO and co-founder. “When we launched RentWiki four years ago, our Industry wasn’t quite ready to embrace user-generated content and reviews. Since then a lot has changed. Every Apartment Industry event now has sessions, seminars and panels on how to handle ratings and reviews. Fortunately we have a four-year head start on any other company in this space.”

In short, RentAdvisor works directly with property management companies and properties to establish a baseline online ratings and reviews score. Then – through various and proprietary means perfected in the past 18 months – solicits a much more balanced rating and review set among renters. Finally, these more positive and balanced ratings/reviews are pushed to popular, well-trafficked sites, dramatically improving a property’s online reputation.

So why the name change to RentAdvisor? “We have often been equated to the travel site TripAdvisor due to the similarity of the user-generated content appearing on RentWiki,” said Gallo. “As fun as the name ‘RentWiki’ is to say, RentAdvisor is more akin to what we are actually doing.  We advise renters – and help other renters advise renters – on apartment communities and neighborhoods best suited to their needs.”

Finally, based on the intriguing new direction of the company, RentAdvisor was able to raise several million dollars in institutional and strategic investor capital at the beginning of this year to ensure viability of the company’s products and services long-term.

Edited by Steve McCutchen and 8 others

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