I can’t be the only one feeling like reviews are ruining the job…?

We seek them, we get glowing reviews - they have a fight with the neighbor & neither wants to relocate - you meditate & it’s a 2 week battle of no one budging. You finally say you can’t do more, they move out & now it’s them deleting their positive review & posting a new one (x2 roommates) negative because management got involved in their personal business…

Or you have a gossip group who wants to corner the maintenance and get the tea… when management puts a stop to it & they move out because they don’t have a job… same - deleted good review and new 1 star pops up.

I could go on - but what gives?!?

Why are people so miserable?

What are they hoping to accomplish? They loved it when they were here and they have bought a house now - what is the point??

Too much emphasis on reviews, they are running our business - and us away.

Sincerely a tired veteran manager.

Our marketing team researches and responds to every bad review. My faves are the folks who move out and say they had all these things wrong in their apartment blah blah blah, but we have no work orders on file. We call them out….very professionally of course! 😊

So being in the industry and being renter I see both sides.
I’ve had residents leave outright lies as reviews and then I have also had to leave bad reviews because management and maintenance have been that awful.
Right now where I rent, I’m in a spot where the maintenance team and management are on it. They respond to work orders same day. They address issues. They don’t neglect the property. Like 5/5 stars for them. But I absolutely wouldn’t recommend the property to others.
The floors and walls are paper thin. I hear everything. To the point where my own children don’t wake me up if they come wake my husband in the middle of the night but my neighbors walking around late at night will wake me. It genuinely disrupts my sleep. Startles me awake. Keeps me up. I can hear them flushing their toilet and draining the tub. I hear the people stomping up the stairways and hall. Then the neighbors are so rude. Neighbors just throw trash on the ground when dumpsters are empty because one person did, so then it’s like a domino effect. I have neighbors that take their dog out and don’t clean up after them. I even called one guy out from my balcony and he just looked at me and kept walking. Then I had the upstairs neighbor that let their dog live on the patio—their dogs pee and poop allll over my patio. I couldn’t even use my patio.
Then 3 gun violence issues not even from our community but one across the way. Then I’ve had to call 911 on my neighbor for assaulting his wife and then some guy tweaking across the way.
Again, management is great. But people literally ruin it. So yeah, how do we fix that when we have fair housing?

Valid to be tired. Putting oneself in their shoes, reviews are one of the last things tenants know they have as leverage when it comes to apartments. When it comes to spending high monthly amounts of money like rent, most become extra sensitive towards any inconvenience, especially when renewal increases happen at the same time. They don’t buy the “market” excuse anymore; they see service depleting in their eyes and rent going up at the same time. I would say companies prioritizing reviews, they are the problem because they pit the tenants and office staff against each other, like how you feel in this post.
Compartmentalize and realize reviews aren’t truly ever about you or the service. They are a moment in time the resident felt happy, and can change on a dime when they need it later. Reviews are a business tactic they can leverage and residents know that nowadays.

My property has 2 negative reviews. Both are from non-residents. One review was from a delivery driver back in November 2025 that was told not to drive in through the exit because it can cause an accident. The other review was from a prospect that visited the property on a day that the property was closed. She was furious that we didn't apologize to her for being closed on the day that she decided to visit. She Didn't call ahead, she didn't have an appointment. She visited when we were closed. How do you stop people that have nothing to do with your property from posting bad reviews.

If renters read the reviews of multiple properties, they'd see it's the same problems everywhere. Same reviews - different community. Bugs, parking sucks, you can hear your neighbors, no one picks up after pets, blah blah blah and there isn't a dang thing management can do about any of things to prevent these issues. Residents think management has some type of divine power over the community to control people and everything in between. I remember a resident constantly complaining about birds crapping on his car. Complaining to me and expecting me to fix it. I said what would you like me to do? He told me I could cut down all the trees. Umkay. His review was about bird crap on his car and having to wash it every day. 🙄 Apartment reviews are a joke and they're all the same. The real review should be of the ownership/investors & management companies by property managers. Then reviews could be taken more seriously!

I know reviews are important but I recently learned they are vital to the marketing money spent! Anything less than 4 stars and youre waisting your money! Thats tough to accomplish when you need 200 5star and 0 negative to hit 4.....its definitely a balancing act for sure!

Coming from marketing, MANY reviews CAN be removed as most are not valid. It takes time and diligence to do so but it is possible. Otherwise, keep canned responses handy, reply to everyone, and hope they change it to positive if it’s valid.

The world is broken right now.

Many People are so unreasonable. I didn’t even know I had a problem with a person and when she moved out, she posted that every time she came to the office I was mean to her. She never even wanted to talk when I was friendly and smiling. She put a review that said I must’ve had a bad childhood. Unbelievable.

Ohhhh you took the words right out of my mouth. But also don’t forget when something happens that they don’t like and versus coming to the office they go straight to google first.

You are definitely not the only one! I only know to try to "kill the customer with kindness" and be really kind in how you say anything, even telling someone you have to evict them, and be willing to say you're sorry - not that you DID anything wrong, but you're sorry they have the circumstance, or you're sorry their experience was not what they expected or...
But that said, people can still be wicked with reviews. We have a beautiful apartment community with the nicest and most professional team. A resident's dog bit a neighbor badly and the resident wasn't willing to give up the dog so we asked him to move. In less than 2 weeks our google rating went from a 4.6 to in the mid 3s. People who don't live there, made up people, people we could prove had never lived there wrote scads of made up negative stories, some related to how un-pet-friendly we were, but other things too, like maintenance issues or feces or bugs or mean staff. We have written google with proof the reviews are not residents or former residents, and we await their final "ruling" on removing the reviews. And they keep coming. More every day. We respond to everyone, including a kind way of saying we have no record of your having lived here...Will let you know the outcome!
I still say, you'll always have the "mean people," but to your best ability, be kind, be respectful, be honest and firm, and usually it will go better!