Rate my landlord: how landlord review sites work

What a landlord review site is

Rate The Landlord is a platform where tenants give an account of a particular landlord or letting agency. A 2024 Irish magazine feature reported that the platform had gone viral in Canada and Australia, that it started with two Reddit users posting anonymously, tired of how tenants were treated, and that it was being launched in Ireland after running in Canada, Australia and the UK. The feature framed the platform as a way to give tenants information and hold landlords to account for their actions.

The Irish feature described how the site works. A user stays anonymous and gives the name of a landlord or a property management company, along with the city where they are based. The user then rates the landlord from 1 to 5 across areas covering repairs, health and safety, how stable the tenancy is, and privacy and respect, and adds a written review. The Irish feature also noted that the site carries resources for tenants, covering legal options and unionisation.

Checking reviews and landlord replies

A comparison published by one landlord review site sets out what it weighed across the main options: reach, moderation, anonymity, search, and whether a landlord can reply. The publisher of that comparison runs one of the sites in it and says its own reviews attach to the landlord and the property alike, that every reviewer is verified, that an anonymity toggle keeps identity hidden, and that landlords can claim a profile and respond. The same comparison says the site's city and university pages gather reviews by area.

Where else tenants post

The comparison published by one landlord review site says generic review platforms such as Google and Yelp can carry a landlord review only if the landlord has a business page, and that their categories are not built for housing matters like "slow maintenance" or "deposit issues". It adds that most landlords, small individual ones especially, have no profile at all. On Reddit, the comparison says, naming a landlord draws attention quickly, but posts are buried within hours, no lasting profile is created, and many city subreddits have rules against naming specific landlords.

For records, the comparison published by one landlord review site points to public housing-court databases that some cities keep, naming NYC's OpenAccess and Boston's eviction court records, where a landlord's eviction history can be looked up, and to tenant unions that sometimes publish bad-landlord lists. Those are databases of legal records rather than places to post a personal review, the comparison notes. The comparison also says a viral post on social media can reach millions, but that such posts leave feeds within days and there is no way for someone specifically searching for that landlord to find the post six months later.

What the site's makers say

The Irish feature quotes a software developer who helped create Rate The Landlord as saying the response had been very positive, though a large contingent of landlords were not happy the site existed. The software developer told the Irish magazine that the makers had held the view that, as with any business, a landlord who is doing well has nothing to worry about from reviews.

The Irish feature also quotes an engineer and tenants union member who had been evicted from his home in Ireland and who approached the developer about bringing the platform there. The engineer and tenants union member told the Irish magazine that information matters and that, in his view, information and action go together. He asked that anyone using Rate The Landlord be as open and honest as possible, saying the makers were not there to judge and inviting people to share their experiences, positive or negative.