Homes.com Agent Reviews: How They Work and How to Respond

Homes.com agent reviews are ratings and written feedback left on an agent's Homes.com profile, which CoStar Group relaunched as a major consumer listing portal positioning itself as a direct alternative to Zillow and Realtor.com. For agents, that means a third major portal profile worth claiming and keeping current, alongside Zillow and Realtor.com, rather than a niche site that can safely be ignored. Agents who built solid habits around Zillow years ago sometimes treat Homes.com as optional, but CoStar has invested heavily in advertising and positioning the platform as a serious competitor in buyer and seller search traffic. Being able to track Homes.com reviews alongside Zillow is part of making sure a growing audience actually finds a current, well-reviewed profile instead of an empty or abandoned one. How the Homes.com agent profile works An agent's Homes.com profile generally pulls together active and sold listings, brokerage affiliation, and any reviews past clients have left, similar in structure to Zillow's and Realtor.com's agent profiles. Homes.com has marketed its agent profile as free to claim and maintain, which is worth confirming directly on the platform rather than assuming pricing or feature availability hasn't changed since any specific announcement. Reviews generally need to tie back to an actual transaction or client relationship, following the same logic most serious real estate portals use to cut down on fake or unearned reviews — a review from someone who never worked with the agent on a purchase or sale typically won't post, or will get flagged during the platform's own moderation. Homes.com vs. Zillow for agents The biggest practical difference for agents isn't the review mechanics themselves — those follow a similar pattern across all three major portals — it's audience and search traffic. Zillow has the longest-established consumer habit behind it in most markets, Realtor.com leans on its MLS-data positioning, and Homes.com is the newer entrant investing heavily in advertising to build its own audience share. An agent who assumes Homes.com traffic is still negligible based on its reputation from several years ago may be working from an outdated picture, since CoStar's investment in the platform has specifically aimed at changing that. The practical takeaway is the same one that applies across every portal: claim the profile, keep it current, and don't assume a platform's traffic from a year or two ago still reflects where it stands today. How to get more Homes.com reviews without gating Request through Homes.com's own flow where available, since a direct request link tends to convert better than hoping a client finds the profile and reviews unprompted. Ask every client, every time. Request a review when your representation ends — whether the deal closed cleanly, closed after a difficult negotiation, or fell through before closing. Skipping clients based on how the deal went is review gating, prohibited under the FTC's rule on fake and deceptive reviews, 16 CFR Part 465 . Never tie the ask to anything of value. A closing gift given regardless of whether a client reviews you is fine; one framed as a trade for a review is exactly the pattern the FTC rule targets. Mention Homes.com specifically in your review-request message rather than a generic "please review me," since a client who's only ever heard of Zillow may not think to check Homes.com unless pointed there directly. Our guide on real estate review request templates has wording that adapts to any portal. Keeping a third portal profile current without tripling your workload The real risk with a third major portal isn't setting it up once — it's letting it quietly go stale while attention stays on Zillow and Google. A profile with sold listings from two years ago, or a profile that's never been claimed at all, reads as abandoned to a buyer or seller comparing agents, even if that agent's actual production is strong. Checking Homes.com on the same cadence as Zillow and Realtor.com — rather than treating it as an occasional afterthought — is the practical fix, and consolidating new reviews from all three into a single inbox removes the friction that usually causes one portal to fall behind the others. Homes.com next to Zillow, Realtor.com, and Google Few buyers or sellers check only one portal before reaching out to an agent. Someone comparing agents for a listing presentation might check Homes.com, then Zillow, then Google, within the same research session — and each profile needs to tell a consistent, current story. Our companion guide on Zillow agent reviews covers that platform's specific eligibility rules and request mechanics, and our guide to real estate reputation management covers keeping every platform current at once rather than bursts of activity followed by months of silence. A fictional example: filling the third gap Consider a fictional agent, Priya Nagarajan, working mid-market sales out of Harbor Point Properties. Priya has 40 Zillow reviews built up over several years and a steady stream of new Google reviews tied to her brokerage's office, but she never claimed her Homes.com profile — it sat unclaimed with no reviews, no current listings, and a brokerage affiliation that still showed her previous firm from three years earlier. A seller researching agents who happened to start their search on Homes.com instead of Zillow would have found what looks like an inactive agent, even though Priya closed a dozen deals that year. Once she claimed the profile, updated her brokerage affiliation, and started mentioning Homes.com specifically in her post-closing review requests, the profile stopped looking abandoned within a few months — not because her production changed, but because the profile finally reflected it. That gap is common precisely because claiming a third portal feels like a lower priority than keeping up with the ones that already generate business. The agents who avoid it are the ones who treat profile maintenance as a recurring five-minute check across all three portals rather than a one-time setup task on just the one or two that feel most urgent. Common mistakes agents make with their Homes.com profile Assuming it doesn't matter because "nobody searches there." Traffic assumptions based on outdated information miss exactly the audience shift CoStar has been investing to create. Leaving brokerage affiliation outdated after a move. A profile showing a former brokerage reads as inactive or unreliable to a prospective client trying to verify an agent is still practicing. Treating profile setup as one-time. A profile claimed once and never revisited falls behind as sold listings accumulate elsewhere and reviews pile up only on the platforms getting active attention. Forgetting to mention the platform by name when asking for reviews. A generic "please leave us a review" request defaults most clients to whichever platform is top of mind, usually Google or Zillow, leaving Homes.com without the specific ask it needs to build up reviews at all. Does Homes.com review activity affect how I rank in agent search? Homes.com hasn't published a detailed ranking formula for agent search placement, and treating any specific claim about review weighting as confirmed without current documentation risks overpromising what a review increase will actually do for visibility. Can I ask a client to leave a Homes.com review months after closing? Yes, as long as they were a genuine client on a transaction you can point to. A later, low-pressure request — framed around an anniversary of the purchase, for instance — often catches clients who meant to leave a review and never got around to it, the same approach that works on Zillow and Realtor.com. Which platforms does Tailwind support for real estate agents? Tailwind brings reviews from Google, Facebook, and other major platforms into one inbox, with Homes.com, Zillow, Realtor.com, and RateMyAgent support varying by what each platform's current API allows. Check your account's current platform list before assuming full reply-in-app support for any one portal, since marketplace APIs change without much notice. Every review from Google, Zillow, Realtor.com and Facebook in one inbox → Try Tailwind free. Tailwind runs $5 a month per tool, or $50 a month for the Full plan covering everything, with the first month free and no card required to start.