More Google reviews for your estate agency

A homeowner who is selling compares a handful of agencies in the area before making a single call. They check the rating, the number of reviews, and whether the latest one is from this month or from three years back. BIV, the profession’s regulator, does not set a standard fee: each agent sets their own rate, and examples between two and three percent excluding VAT circulate, offered as illustration rather than a market rate.

According to BIV, Belgium counted 10,922 licensed estate agents at the end of 2024, about 16.5 percent more than the 9,379 recorded a decade earlier, one in three of them women. Alongside large franchise networks such as ERA and Century 21 sit independent firms and small one-person agencies, all visible side by side when someone searches for an agent in their town.

The compromis feels like the emotional high point of a sale: the seller has just negotiated a price, a date and a suspensive condition, and signs immediately after. Until that condition is fulfilled, though, the sale is not yet final. Ask once the condition is fulfilled and your work on that file is done, whether that lands shortly after the compromis or only around the deed.

For the buyer, it works differently. Their relief lands at the key handover, which by law can follow up to four months after the compromis, at the notary’s office. That is the notary’s appointment, not yours: you are sometimes not even in the room. The request needs to be ready before that day, not thought up afterwards.

“I am not there any more at the key handover” is the first reason, and it is probably one you have said yourself. The notary sets the appointment, the seller and buyer sit down together, and your role ends where the deed begins. Nobody reminds the buyer of you at that moment.

“If I ask for reviews, I get the candidate buyers who did not get the property” is the second reason, and it holds up too. Anyone who viewed the property and made an offer can write a review afterwards, including the ones who lost.

“My reputation runs through my network, not through Google” is the third reason, and it was truer a decade ago than it is today. A client who reaches you through a referral checks your agency before calling. The referral opens the door, your Google Business Profile decides whether they walk through it.

To Google, someone who made an offer and lost is a genuine user. They viewed the property, perhaps made a firm offer, and were turned down. That experience is real to them, even though it has nothing to do with how you handled the sale.

Reply briefly and factually: that the owner chose a different offer in the end, that the decision was not yours alone, and that you understand the disappointment. Do not get drawn into the amount or into why the other offer won: that is not information that should come from you in public.

• QR code: on the handover paperwork, in the office or at the bottom of an email about the key handover. No app for the client to install.
• WhatsApp or text: to the number you already hold on file, no separate email address needed.
• Follow-up: one reminder for anyone who does not respond, then it stops.
• Team: every agent in the office can contact and follow up their own sellers and buyers, even on a file a colleague closed.

Nothing changes about building the file, signing the mandate or scheduling viewings. Those steps carry on exactly as they do today.

Not every seller or buyer responds, and that is fine: it is a fixed part of every file, not a campaign. With twenty files a year, seller and buyer asked separately, you send forty requests a year, every single year.

Set a target you can sustain and measure it against your own previous year, not a figure from a brochure. Ask on every file, seller and buyer separately. Google itself names relevance, distance and prominence as its three local ranking factors, and reviews sit under prominence.