How MHG reviews actually work.

1 · Who can write a review

Only a seller or buyer who closed a real transaction with an MHG-listed agent can write a review of that agent. Reviews are requested by MHG automatically after each verified closing, not by the agent. The agent does not choose which of their clients gets a review request. If the transaction cannot be verified against Medina County Auditor transfer records, the review is not published.

There are no anonymous reviews. Your name appears with your review. Your closing month appears with your review. The property is not published, but MHG has it on file to defend the review's authenticity if the agent disputes it.

2 · What a reviewer rates

The review has two parts. The first part is your narrative — the "friend quote" you write, the "when it got hard" story, and your yes/no on whether you would hire this agent again. The narrative is yours. MHG does not edit it. The agent cannot remove it. Publication is subject only to verification and to the anti-defamation floor described in section 7.

The second part is called Under Pressure. It captures your rating of this agent's performance on eight specific moments that reliably matter in a home sale: appraisal-gap saves, inspection negotiations, buyers going dark, quiet-week price decisions, same-day showing coordination, honest feedback delivery, contract deadline discipline, and finish-line follow-through. Full criteria are published inside the review form and on every agent profile page. Every criterion supports "Not Applicable" so you never rate a moment that didn't happen in your transaction.

3 · How individual ratings become a displayed grade

An Under Pressure rating on an agent's profile shows the most common (modal) response among reviewers who marked that criterion applicable to their transaction. If two grades tie, the more conservative (lower) grade shows. Alongside every grade, the full distribution bar is always visible — reviewers who said "Exceeded," reviewers who said "Met," reviewers who said "Below." Nothing about the underlying data is hidden.

A grade only displays after at least three applicable ratings exist for that criterion on that agent. Below three, the row shows "Not yet rated by enough reviewers." This protects new agents from being defined by a single early review, and it protects seasoned agents from being defined by an unusual outlier transaction.

MHG will not weight, boost, or discount ratings by anything else — not review date, not reviewer profile, not agent tenure, not brokerage affiliation, not any relationship with MHG.

4 · How the Sellers Report comparison grid is ordered

When a seller comparing candidate agents opens the Under Pressure comparison grid in the Sellers Report, agents are ordered by verified review count, most reviews first. This is an experience proxy that is honestly earned — no agent can buy their way to the top of the grid, and no agent can pay to be excluded.

Every column header in the grid is sortable. Sellers who care most about one specific moment — appraisal saves, or finish-line follow-through, or any other criterion — can re-order the grid by that column. The default order is not a ranking of "best" to "worst." It is a starting arrangement the seller is free to change.

5 · What agents can and cannot do about their reviews

An agent can post one public reply to each review. The reply appears directly beneath the review. The reply can be updated by the agent at any time. The reply is not moderated by MHG unless it violates the anti-defamation floor in section 7.

An agent cannot remove, edit, hide, downrank, or delete a verified review of themselves. Not by request. Not by payment. Not through a legal-request pipeline that isn't public. If a review contains a factual error, the agent can raise it with the editor at the email above; MHG will investigate, and if the review is inaccurate, MHG will annotate the review publicly — not remove it. The reviewer's original words stay.

Agents also cannot pay to move up in any list on MHG, cannot pay to be featured, cannot pay for placement in the Sellers Report agent selection, and cannot pay for a higher Under Pressure grade. This is a floor MHG will not cross.

6 · Reprisal protection for reviewers

If you are worried that leaving a below-expectation review will affect the closing week you are still working through with this agent, you have three options:

1. Wait until close. The review request will still be sent after your closing is recorded.
2. Write the review now but ask MHG to hold publication until 30 days after close. Email the editor with your review submission ID.
3. Write the review honestly whenever you want. If you experience retaliatory behavior from an agent after publishing a review, contact the editor. MHG will document the incident and, if it recurs across multiple reviewers, may remove the agent from the platform entirely.

The reviewer owns the review. Not MHG. Not the agent. Not the brokerage.

7 · The anti-defamation floor

MHG will decline to publish a review that names a specific third party in a defamatory way, that alleges criminal conduct without documented substantiation, or that violates Fair Housing Act protections by attributing decisions to a protected class. Everything else — including harsh criticism of an agent's performance, judgment, communication, or professionalism — is fair reviewer territory. Reviewers are welcome to be direct. The reader can decide.

8 · What MHG will never do

• MHG will never remove a verified review at an agent's request.
• MHG will never let an agent pay for placement, ranking, or grade adjustment.
• MHG will never publish a review without verifying the transaction against Medina County Auditor records.
• MHG will never edit the reviewer's original words. Not for length. Not for tone. Not for the agent.
• MHG will never hide the underlying distribution behind a grade. If you see a grade on this site, you see the distribution that produced it.
• MHG will never sell reviewer contact information or use it for anything other than the reviewer's own report and account communication.

9 · How MHG counts an agent's closings

Two numbers, side by side. Every agent profile shows two closing counts:

• MHG-verified closings since the agent joined MHG. These are closings MHG has watched from the sale side, the listing side, or both. For each one, MHG has the parcel number, the recorded deed, the sale price from the county recorder, the date, and a role declaration from the agent (Listing, Buyer, Dual, or Referral). Where the recorder's deed names the agent's brokerage on the transfer, MHG cross-checks that name-on-deed against the role declaration. Discrepancies are flagged before the closing counts on the profile.
• Self-reported prior history. This is what the agent said their pre-MHG closing volume was when they signed up. MHG has not verified these one by one because MHG did not exist to watch them. They are labeled "self-reported" everywhere they appear on the site.

Shared and joint closings inside one brokerage. When two agents at the same brokerage share credit on a deal (team listings, mentor-mentee arrangements, co-listing), each agent declares their own role on that deal (Listing, Buyer, Dual, or Referral). A single closing may count for two agents at the same brokerage, but the roles will be different on their two profiles. MHG cross-checks the pair against the recorder's transfer record where the brokerage name appears.

Dual agency disclosure. A closing declared as Dual (the agent represented both buyer and seller in the same transaction) is flagged Dual on both sides of the profile, in line with ORC § 4735.71.

What MHG cannot see. Ohio is a non-disclosure state and MHG does not have MLS Matrix access as of publication. That means MHG cannot independently confirm which agent represented which party on a closed deed unless the agent declares it and unless the brokerage name appears on the recorded deed. Any closing that MHG cannot cross-check against the recorder or the agent's own declaration is labeled "not yet verified" on the profile.

If this changes. When MHG onboards MLS Matrix data-sharing through MCBOR, the "self-reported prior history" figure will be reconciled against MLS closings for every agent, and the profile will show which figures survived the reconciliation. That change will be dated and posted on this page.