Methodology

The Agent Advice team has a combined 136 years of experience, they’ve built successful teams, coached other agents how to become top producers, and have gone on to become advisors for some of the biggest tech companies in the real estate space. Together they’ve evaluated hundreds of real estate companies and services within their respective categories, including the best real estate lead generation companies, best real estate CRMs, real estate schools, and software.

This part is important: Because Agent Advice is a major editorial website in the real estate space, our editors are able to get hands-on access to products reviewed & talk to the companies who make these products as well. This allows us to get “behind the scenes” information about the features provided and how they’re received by agents. For each company, we gather, analyze, and synthesize details that agents need to consider in their decision-making process, including:

• Cost vs. value
• Features & UX
• Customer support
• Overall performance
• User reviews (from actual agents)

For different categories, there are other factors included, which are mentioned on the individual pages. For example, if you’re looking to buy real estate leads, we’ll look heavily at lead quality. For real estate schools, we look at the pass rates and weigh those vs. other value created.

These factors allowed us to compare real estate companies objectively. Each category is rated on a scale of 1-5.  Important characteristics are weighted more heavily than features only some real estate agents may use in order to develop a star rating between 1 and 5, where a score of 5 is the best. These scores allowed us to rank them based on their terms and features and select the top-performing real estate-related tools for this list.

 

High scores (4-5)

Companies and services that are highly rated on Agent Advice tend to provide value for a variety of real estate agents, no matter where they are in their career. They scored highly across the board when our industry experts looked at everything from pricing and ease of use to the specific real estate industry features that are available. The tools that are highlighted in green are Agent Advice frontrunners.

Medium scores (3-4)

Companies that are marked in orange are average. While these tools didn’t make the cut (frankly, they’re not as great as our top picks – they were also considered). They may be great for real estate agents looking for something specific to boost their business. However, they likely won’t be for everyone.

Low scores (<3)

Tools and services marked lower are not recommended by the Agent Advice Editorial Team. We had a high bar in picking the top companies, and these tools don’t hit the mark. The companies that fall into this category have negative reviews for a variety of reasons.

Not scored

These are companies that we evaluated but don’t recommend. Generally, this happens in categories where there are several clear leaders bringing the most value to real estate agents.

Not included

Generally, we won’t even mention a company if it’s not reputable or useful to agents.

More detail:

Of course, user input is also a major factor in our rating system. We hear directly from thousands of Agent Advice agents who have used these real estate tech providers themselves. They leave detailed reviews spelling out the aspects they enjoyed, while also listing any quality issues they came across. We know that each user experience is unique, so our experts listen to the feedback they provide and take that into consideration when determining the overall grades of our tech providers. Want more info? Check out our full terms of use.