Rating the Real Estate Agents - THINK FIRST

Here is an interesting article on rating your Realtor:

http://realtytimes.com/rtpages/20110210_yelp.htm?sms_ss=google&at_xt=4d5423c1732a7e6a%2C0

This is great news! I know more than most that there are a multitude of stupid and/or dishonest and/or lazy realtors that have no business selling flowers for Sun Myung Moon much less homes and businesses.
The more these humanoids can be exposed and avoided, the better.

However.

Before you give your agent a bad rating because your transaction didn't go well, think hard about wether it really was the agent's fault.

School districting is a good example of where an agent can be blindsided or prevented by law from giving you quality service.

A Prime example:
You insist that your precious snowflake attend Little Lord Fauntleroy elementary. The listing agent specifies that is the school districted. Your buyer agent verifies this (your buyer agent should never take the list agent's word for anything). You buy the house. Just after you close, the town redistricts your new home to Landfill elementary on the other end of town.

Well both agents might have screwed up as they should have looked into whether or not the town planned on redistricting or not and whether that redistricting would affect that property right?
But did the town announce the upcoming redistricting? Did the town itself know if that property would be affected? Most important, what are the laws regarding Realtors talking about schools?
It may very well be that the agents don't dare mention anything!
There are likely laws in your state preventing the agents from talking to you about districting and such. It's OK in CT at least for an agent to specify the schools that are districted at the current time but they can't chat with you about much more than that.

So you just dropped $800K on a house in a fine neighborhood, that was districted for fine schools, and now snowflake is attending an inner urban gangland Hell hole.
You of course give a scathing review of your buyer agent and perhaps the list agent as well.

What the agent(s) should have done was to explain clearly that they can't talk about it, that the schools specified are only accurate currently, and could change at any time, and they should have directed you to the school board's website for more information.
Did they? If so, you've got no one to blame except maybe the state for their idiot laws or the town for not being forthcoming with info.

Some list agents will not specify a school for this very reason. They will fill in "pboe" (per board of ed) for all schools, thus avoiding the issue. This is the lazy way out except in certain circumstances.
Certain circumstances? Like what?

Well like the fact that the town of Fairfield redistricts every 2 years. What is an agent to do when that time comes around? When it gets close enough that it will happen soon, but no announcements yet?
Like the town of Stratford, which I'm told completely ignores its own districting. It seems that you can buy a house and the town will arbitrarily redistrict it right after the ink dries, maybe before. I have no proof of this, it's only hearsay, but from realtors who would know.

There are other possible issues that could come up that your list or buyer agent have no control over. So before you rip them a new one on Zillow or Yelp or whatever, do a little asking or thinking. Maybe you should be ripping a town or state instead.