How reviews work
Write first, verify later. Your draft stays private — invisible to everyone except you and our moderators, including the reviewed agent — until a moderator has verified the evidence you've added. This page walks through the process end to end.
1. Write your draft
Sign in with a magic-link email, pick the agent you engaged with, fill in your role (seller, buyer, landlord, tenant), rate across five dimensions, and write your review. The property address is required; it's never published (we hash it publicly and store the full value privately so a moderator can cross-check your evidence).
Saving the draft creates a private record in our database. It is not on any public page. The reviewed agent does not know it exists.
2. Add any evidence you have
On the draft page, you can attach evidence in any combination:
- Documents — PDF or photo of a rates notice, utility bill, driver's licence (with your name and address), agency agreement, sale & purchase agreement, tenancy agreement, or invoice from the agency.
- Listing evidence — a TradeMe / homes.co.nz / OneRoof / agency URL that shows this agent listed the property, or a photo of a sold board at the kerb.
- Correspondence — emails, WhatsApp screenshots, or SMS threads that name the agent and the property. Paste-as-text works too; we save it alongside file uploads.
- Combined — most sellers need (a) something that shows you at the address + (b) something that shows the agent at the same address. Most buyers need a signed S&P or a multi-exchange email thread about a specific property.
There is no fixed list. The question a moderator answers is: given everything I can see, was this reviewer genuinely engaged with this agent as they describe?
You can add more evidence any time before verification. Drafts expire after 60 days of inactivity; we'll email you a reminder before they do.
3. Moderation — evidence verification
A moderator checks your uploaded evidence against your claim. They record a short verification note (an internal audit trail) describing exactly what they matched.
Three possible outcomes:
- Verified — evidence is sufficient. Your draft moves to content moderation (step 4).
- Request more evidence — moderator sends you an email explaining what additional evidence would help. You add it on your draft page and it comes back into the queue.
- Disputed — moderator cannot verify engagement with the available evidence. You can withdraw the draft or appeal with different evidence.
Target SLA: verification in 7–14 business days. Content moderation is usually a further 1–3 business days.
4. Moderation — content check
Once the engagement is verified, a moderator reviews the public text of your review for defamation compliance under NZ law. Specifically:
- First-person, describing your own experience.
- Does not name other parties (other buyers, agents not under review, family members, children).
- Avoids unhedged allegations of crime or regulatory breach unless you are prepared to repeat them under oath.
If an edit is needed, a moderator proposes specific wording to you. Your review is not published without your final approval.
5. Publication — signed and anchored
On publication, the review is digitally signed. A SHA-256 hash of its canonical JSON representation is anchored to a public ledger so that once published, a review cannot be silently altered — any edit produces a new record linked to the original.
The ledger used at v1.0 launch is a public Substrate chain, with the anchor transaction ID shown on each review. Between now and then, reviews are cryptographically signed and stored in our immutable review store.
6. Agent right of reply
At publication, the reviewed agent is emailed a notification. They have 14 days to post a factual reply that appears alongside the review. The reply does not change the rating; it gives the agent a voice on the record.
7. Takedown and safe harbour
If an agent believes a review is defamatory, they can request takedown by emailing help at homeowner.org.nz. Takedown requests are handled under the safe-harbour notice-and-takedown framework of the Harmful Digital Communications Act 2015, s.24 (48-hour passthrough to the author). Unresolved disputes can be referred to the NZ Media Council or, if escalated, pursued as a defamation claim under the Defamation Act 1992 in the District Court.
A published review that is later taken down leaves a tombstone: the review ID remains, marked "removed", with the reason summarised. The ledger anchor remains intact. We do not silently delete published content.
8. Privacy guarantees
- Your draft is private. The reviewed agent cannot see it, cannot be notified of it, and cannot influence its verification.
- Your evidence is private. Moderators see it only as needed for verification. It is never published. Storage access is row-level scoped to you and a moderator role.
- Your property address is private. Only a hash appears publicly (and only if your review publishes). The full address is stored server-side and accessible only to moderators.
- Your email is private. We use it only to notify you of review status changes. Never sold, shared, or used for marketing.
- Withdrawing a draft removes all evidence files from storage immediately and marks the review as withdrawn. No tombstone is created for unpublished content.
Why this design
Consumer review platforms usually trade convenience for reliability. Anonymous reviews post in seconds; drive-by attacks are common; moderation is slow and reactive. Homeowner.org.nz is built the other way. Writing is frictionless (no evidence needed to save a draft), but publishing requires evidence that someone has looked at and matched.
A short review from a seller who can prove they paid $35,000 in commission to the reviewed agent is worth more than a thousand drive-by ratings. That's the trade we are making.