FAQs for Review Verification and Publication

All reviews are manually examined by our team of experts in an effort to ensure published reviews are from verified sources and provide helpful content. All reviews are treated equally during the verification process, regardless of rating or Builders. During this process, the team verifies the reviewer’s identity, checks for conflicts of interest, and evaluates the review against our site guidelines. For a more in-depth overview, please see our Quality Assurance guidelines.

Yes. We treat one-star reviews no differently from five-star reviews. Like all online reviews platforms, our sites are intended to provide a forum for honest discussion between builders and property buyers. By remaining neutral, they can host a wide array of opinions that help buyers make informed decisions. For this reason, and also to ensure compliance with applicable laws, we do not modify content or remove an opinion or statement from a valid review.

The reviews guidelines is continuously evolving. As we improve our methods, we periodically audit previously published reviews as they are flagged by our system. If a past review does not meet our current standards or our current guidelines, it may be removed by our team.

If a review is found to be fraudulent by our team, it will be removed from our site. In addition, the reviewer may be subject to removal from any outreach campaigns, and/or banned from leaving future reviews from our site. If a vendor is found to have participated in fraudulent activity, their account may be subject to future penalties such as a publically visible warning about suspicious activity.

Propryte is committed to providing our visitors an unbiased reviews catalog with content from other community members. Though every reviewer is entitled to–and encouraged to share–their own opinion, Propryte is vigilant against attempts to deceive others through their review’s content. Any reviews found to be fraudulent will be removed, and the submitter of the review will be subject to penalties.

Fraudulent activity may include, but is not limited to, the following:

Attempts by a builder to influence the reputation of themselves, or another builder, by:

• Paying for the services of a third party, such as a marketing agency, to post reviews
• Submitting reviews of their own projects, or of any other projects (such as a competitor’s projects) in which they have a financial interest
• Submitting reviews on behalf of an actual user, with or without their consent
• Encouraging reviews to be posted based on false pretenses
• Discouraging users from posting negative feedback
• Harassing or bullying a reviewer over a review in an attempt to force its removal

Builder should also refrain from reviewing a competitor’s product or paying for reviews to be submitted to a competitor’s account.

Fraudulent activity may also include attempts by a reviewer to damage the reputation of a builder, or obtain incentives, through false pretenses such as:

• Writing a review of a property without actual experience using the property
• Writing a review of a property after being solicited by a competitor
• Copying content from another source, including our own site
• Allowing a third party to post a review on your behalf

A reviewer should not review a project for which they have a conflict of interest or a financial stake in its success.

We believe it is important not to focus on the star rating alone. Our research has shown that people actually find reviews of products more believable if they have a variety of star ratings. In addition, a detailed review, even if a “lower” score, provides a much clearer picture of an experience than a five-star review with few details.

We encourage our builders to respond to all customer reviews, regardless of rating given. We believe (and research shows) that a builder’s willingness to address critical reviews builds credibility, shows responsiveness, and generally creates a more favorable opinion of the builder and project.

No. When our QA team verifies each reviewer’s identity, we take steps to ensure that they are a real person, not a scammer, and (among other items) do not have any conflict of interest (financial or competitive) with the builder they are reviewing. Please see an overview of our Quality Assurance guidelines for more details.

We take several steps to safeguard against fraudulent reviews. We have technology in place, as well as a team dedicated to moderating reviews. But no system is perfect, and occasionally an inappropriate review may slip through the cracks.

We’ll request proof of use from users when investigating reviews, but it‘s not required. Our experience has shown that “proof of use” is a valuable piece of the puzzle, but not a reliable source of proof on its own. It’s just one aspect among an array of considerations we use when evaluating a review. Faking proof of use through doctored screenshots or images taken from web searches is a method favored by those looking to scam our system.

In our effort to treat all builders equally, we must not fact check the opinions submitted by our reviewers. Instead, our Quality Assurance team focuses on verifying the identity of the reviewers and ensuring that reviews posted meet our site guidelines.

At this time, we do not accept reviews submitted in languages other than English. Any review submitted in another language would need to be translated into English and re-submitted to our site by the reviewer. We will only accept a translation from the reviewer themselves, as we need to ensure the review is authentic.

As per our reviewer policies, we will never make an edit that would change the original intent of a review. However, we may make simple edits to correct typos or remove non-standard characters. Edits may also be made to hide sensitive data (as further described elsewhere), such as personally identifying information, or private contract terms that are not intended for public disclosure. The reviewer will not be notified about these edits, which are made at the discretion of our site.

No. A reviewer does not need to be a customer in order to leave a review- so long as they are a direct user of the property, they may submit a review. For example, if a reviewer stays as tenant or lease in a property, their review would be valid even though they may not be listed on any contracts, or have their own.

Reviews must be written in one language and cannot contain a mix of languages.

Published reviews that are submitted in a non-English Language supported by our sites will display in the language in which they were originally submitted. In addition, reviews submitted in a language other than English may be displayed higher on a local version of our site where the language is natively spoken.

All reviews submitted through our sites, regardless of their location and language in which they are submitted, undergo the same quality assurance process, and are held to the same set of Community Guidelines. Please note that only reviews submitted in a supported language are eligible for consideration.