John L. Scott Real Estate Review: Is it Worth It?

Overall rating | Customer experience | Agent quality | Brand visibility and reach | Service value | Locations | Methodology

John L. Scott is a family-owned real estate brokerage and one of the largest in the Pacific Northwest. First founded in 1931, the company now operates 100 offices with over 3,000 agents across California, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington.

If you’re looking to buy or sell a home in the Pacific Northwest, you’ll no doubt come across John L. Scott Real Estate agents. How do these agents compare with other brokerages, and could you be better served elsewhere?

Bottom line: Do we recommend John L. Scott?

Based on our analysis, we think John L. Scott lives up to its reputation. As a full-service brokerage, it offers all the basic services a brokerage is expected to have, plus an invaluable historical perspective on markets it's operated in for decades, such as Seattle and Portland.

The company operates on high volume. With 3,000+ agents at its disposal, John L. Scott completes around 34,000 transactions per year and bills around $16 billion in sales. That’s around 11.3 transactions per agent, which is above the industry standard of 8.

John L. Scott, however, will likely charge fixed real estate commission rates for their agents (i.e., non-negotiable), no matter what the market standards. For a full price, you might be working with a reputable brand, but keep in mind it’s the agent that determines your experience, not necessarily the company. To ensure you find the right real estate agent for you, we recommend interviewing at least two to three agents (ideally from different brokerates).

John L. Scott Real Estate: Our in-depth breakdown

Reputation and customer experience

After analyzing 516 reviews across 26 offices, we found that John L. Scott has an aggregate customer rating of 4.27. That means for every 10 people that work with John L. Scott, 8.5 are likely to have a positive experience. That’s fairly good when compared with similar brokerages.

When we ran those same 516 reviews through a program that picks out emotional language we found the following themes:

From our analysis, we found that reviews were overwhelmingly positive. The balance of negative, neutral, and positive sentiments tells us most clients reported good experiences, even despite the fact that people use third-party review sites to complain more often than to praise.

There are no reviews filed with the Better Business Bureau.

Agent quality

Compared with similar brokerages in the Pacific Northwest, the quality of agents at John L. Scott is remarkably high.

For one, agents have an average of 16 years of experience, which is double the industry median of eight years (based on 198 agents who listed their experience on Realtor.com). Agents also complete around 11.3 transactions per year, which is pretty standard.

The few individual agent reviews on Facebook and Yelp are outdated. The little we could gather told us that clients appreciate the thoroughness and professionalism of John L. Scott, but they sometimes regret not shopping around for a lower agent commission.

Because these reviews aren’t necessarily representative of the entire company, you should still evaluate individual John L. Scott agents before enlisting their services. Ask the listing agent thorough questions, and request sales numbers and references from past clients.

Brand reach and visibility

As one of the longest-standing real estate brokerages in the Pacific Northwest, John L. Scott has certainly cemented a reputation of excellence.

It has good brand reach and visibility online, especially for a regional company, with 35,000 monthly searches for "John L. Scott realty" and other branded terms. According to our analytics, John L. Scott’s website receives over 49,000 monthly visits, which is above average for a company of this size.

Although the company claims to operate in four states, most of its offices are divided between Portland and Seattle, with a smaller number representing cities in Oregon and Washington. The company has fewer offices in Idaho (mostly found in Boise) and only two in northern California.

Buyers and sellers looking for homes in rural areas might be better served by a local real estate company, rather than John L. Scott, which mostly covers metropolitan areas. That's because brokerages with strong local networks can connect you with buyers and listings faster.

Service value

John L. Scott seems like a good value. As a full-service real estate company, agents at John L. Scott offer services buyers and sellers need, such as home valuations and walk-throughs, as well as some neat features to serve clients' best interests.

Buyers get:

• A customizable mobile app for a unique home-search experience
• Free property tracking with new-listing alerts for targeted markets
• Free guide to jump-start the buying process (access it here)

Sellers get:

• A free home valuation assessment, which claims to be more accurate than Zillow’s "Zestimate," though that's not verified
• Free guide to pricing strategies (access it here)

Sellers should keep in mind that John L. Cline agents will charge fixed real estate commission rates — no matter what the local rates are. To give you a frame of reference, here are the state averages for the markets in which John L. Scott operates:

Additional info about John L. Scott

General contact info (corporate office)

John L. Scott local offices and contact information

The website provides a helpful search tool to filter through dozens of John L. Scott offices. We've also listed the locations that get the most search on Google, indicating they're probably popular or in a highly populated area.

Other John L. Scott services

This review is focused on John L. Scott's core real estate agent service. We’ve listed its other services (mortgage, title, insurance, etc.) and links to their respective websites below.

Make sure you shop around to get the best fit and value. Don’t go with a John L. Scott service just because of the convenience!

• Home valuation
• Relocating

Next steps: Start interviewing agents!

Interview multiple agents (ideally two to three) to ensure you get the best fit and value. Remember: always hire the agent, not the brand. When you’re ready to start searching, check out our guide on how to choose the right real estate agent. Clever’s free agent-matching service makes agent shopping fast and easy, and it can save you money.

Rating methodology

We evaluate brokerages based on four core criteria we think will help readers make informed decisions. We broke those criteria down into discrete metrics so we could make the score as objective as possible. Here’s a quick breakdown of that criteria and methodology: