Changing real estate agencies: how to keep your name and reviews

Moving agencies is a normal part of a career in real estate. A better fit, a new area, a step up into a senior role: there are plenty of good reasons to go, and plenty of agencies that will welcome you.

The question most agents ask before they move is a practical one. How much of the reputation I’ve built comes with me?

Some of it moves with you without any effort. Some of it was never yours to take. And some of it depends on decisions you make before you give notice. This guide goes through each part, then finishes with a checklist.

Every agency, contract and platform is different, so treat this as general information, not legal advice.

The short version

Your agency profile page

Your profile on your agency’s website lives on their domain, and what happens to it after you leave is their call. Usually it’s taken down. That’s reasonable: their website needs to show who works there now.

The catch is everything that points at it. Links in your email signature, QR codes on old brochures, “find me online” in your social profiles: once the page is gone, they all stop working at once. It’s worth asking your principal whether they’d be willing to redirect the page or leave a short forwarding note for a while. It costs nothing to ask.

Portal profiles

On both major portals, your agent profile sits in your agency’s account, not in an account of your own. When you move, your new agency sets up a new profile for you, and your history doesn’t come across on its own. Here’s what each portal’s help centre says.

realestate.com.au

• Your new agency creates a new profile. When an agent leaves, the old agency removes their profile, and the new agency must create a fresh Agent Profile in its own account. If your old profile is still showing, you need to ask your former agency to remove it.
• Your sold listings stay with your old agency. Listings are contracted to the agency that uploaded them. Your sold properties keep showing under your former agency’s profile, and the agent on a sold listing can’t be changed. You can ask for listings to be moved to your new profile, but both agencies have to agree. Only sales from the last 12 months show on an agent profile anyway, so your recent sales are the ones that matter.
• Your reviews can come with you. realestate.com.au has a request form for transferring ratings and reviews from your old profile to your new one. Not all of them make the move: reviews that mention an agency’s name, and reviews on a team or dual-agent profile, aren’t transferred.
• Linking is something different. Linking profiles is for agents working across several offices of the same brand at once. For a permanent move, it’s a transfer.

Domain

Domain’s help centre doesn’t have one article on agents changing agencies, but what it does say points the same way:

• Profiles belong to each office. Your agency creates your profile in Domain Agent Admin or through its listings software, and Domain can’t merge profiles across different offices. Expect a new profile at your new agency.
• Your old agency decides what happens to the old one. It can make your profile inactive or delete it. Inactive hides it but keeps its details. Deleting it takes your name off all your past listings, which then show under the agency instead.
• Your reviews come from RateMyAgent. The recommendations on a Domain profile are vendor reviews from RateMyAgent, and they only show when the agency’s subscription allows it and the setting is switched on.

Before you start at your new agency, ask their admin to set up your profiles on both portals, and ask your old principal whether they’ll agree to any transfers. Portal rules change from time to time, so check the linked pages, or ask the portal, before you move.

Your reviews

RateMyAgent

RateMyAgent has published a guide to exactly this, How to: Change agency & keep your reviews. Its message is that you don’t need to leave your reviews or your recognition behind: your profile moves with you.

To change your agency, the guide says to go to your Agent Dashboard, open your profile, find the agency section, click the edit icon and select your new agency. It also suggests updating your email, mobile, office number and bio at the same time, and, for paid subscribers, your branding to match the new agency’s colours.

One thing stays put: sales credit. Properties you sold at your previous agency stay credited to that agency, so your sales history reflects every agency you’ve worked with.

Reviews on your agency’s Google profile

Reviews that clients left on your agency’s Google Business Profile belong to that profile, even when they mention you by name. They stay with the agency.

Testimonials on the agency website

These stay with the agency too. If you’d like to use a testimonial again, ask the client directly for permission and use their words exactly as written.

Your domain

This is where ownership matters most, and where it’s easiest to get caught out.

Whoever is listed as the registrant of a domain owns it. If yourname.com.au was registered with your agency’s ABN, the agency is the registrant, and the domain may stay with them when you go. If it was registered with your own details, it’s yours. We explain the rules in .com.au or .au: choosing a domain as an Australian agent.

Check this before you resign, not after. Your registrar can tell you who the registrant is.

When you register a domain through Real Agent Marketing, it’s registered in your details, as the registrant. You can transfer it to another provider at any time, free.

Your own website

If your website sits on your own domain, it can come with you. With Real Agent Marketing, the move looks like this:

1. Update your agency details in your brief.
2. Republish.

Your old agency’s branding comes off and your new agency is shown as the licensee on every page. If your site is co-branded, it takes on your new agency’s logo and colours, once they’re happy for you to use them. Or you can switch to a self-branded site that leads with your own name, with the new agency still shown as licensee. Your domain, your words, your enquiry form and your digital card all carry straight over.

Every QR code and link that pointed to your domain keeps working, because the address hasn’t changed. That’s the main reason we think your name should be your domain.

While you’re updating, review your listings. Current listings you’re no longer handling shouldn’t sit on your site as if you are, and if you show past sales, ask your new licensee how they’d like them presented.

Your database and contacts

This is the part to handle most carefully.

Employment and contractor agreements often include clauses about client information, confidentiality and approaching clients after you leave. Client details collected through the agency’s systems are often treated as the agency’s, not yours. Privacy law may also govern how personal information can be used, by you and by the agency.

So before you export anything:

• Read your agreement. Look for clauses on confidentiality, client information, restraints and notice periods.
• Talk to your principal. The smoothest moves are the ones where you agree, in writing, what you’ll take and what stays.
• Get advice if you’re unsure. A short conversation with an employment lawyer costs far less than a dispute.

We can’t tell you what your contract allows. What we can say is that asking first is the safest place to start.

A checklist for the move

Before you give notice

• Read your agreement for restraint, confidentiality and client-information clauses.
• Confirm you’re the registrant of your domain.
• List every profile you have: portals, review platforms, social media, Google.
• Note where your agency profile page is linked from, so you know what will break.

On your way out

• Hand over current listings and vendors through your agency’s process.
• Ask whether your profile page can redirect or show a forwarding note for a while.
• Agree in writing what, if anything, you’ll take from the database.
• Return devices and hand back system access.

At your new agency

• Update your agency on RateMyAgent.
• Ask the new admin to set up your portal profiles.
• Once your new realestate.com.au profile is live, request the transfer of your ratings and reviews.
• Update your licensee details in your website brief and republish.
• Update your email signature, social profiles and digital business card.
• Let people know where you’ve gone, within what your agreement and privacy obligations allow.

Leaving well

Real estate is a small industry. Your old principal may be a future referrer, a co-agent on a sale or a reference. An agency invests in the agents it hires, and acknowledging that on the way out costs you nothing.

The good news is that the most valuable part of your reputation was never on their website anyway. It’s your name. Make sure the domain, the site and the reviews built around it are set up so they move when you do.

Keep your name, whichever agency you’re with

Every Real Agent Marketing site is on a domain registered to you, and it switches to your new agency in one republish. Read more about co-branded and self-branded sites, or see which branding suits you before your next move.