Is United Real Estate Worth It? An Honest Review

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

United Real Estate is a Texas-based company that offers essential services to buyers and sellers in 32 states. The company has more than 12,000 agents and 49 offices. It was founded in 2011 and has quickly become the eighth largest real estate brokerage in the U.S. by sales volume alone.

As large and prestigious as United Real Estate is, size alone doesn’t guarantee they’re the right fit for your needs. Below we’ll delve deeper into this growing company and see if they might be a good match for you.

Bottom line: Do we recommend United Real Estate?

United Real Estate is a great brokerage option because of its affordability, high quality customer experience, and brand recognition.

The company provides buyers and sellers with all the essential services they need to be successful. Sellers get listings on the MLS and other sites, as well as a marketing plan tailored to their specific property. Buyers get help finding properties that fit their budget, as well as help negotiating the sale price.

United Real Estate has great coverage, with 12,000 and 49 offices throughout the major cities where it operates. And agents at United Real Estate likely have more experience than the industry median. But they complete fewer transactions than the average agent.

United Real Estate is a good choice, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best fit for you. We recommend interviewing your local United Real Estate agent before deciding if you want to work with them.

United Real Estate: Our in-depth breakdown

Reputation and customer experience

United Real Estate doesn’t have a ton of reviews, but the ones it does have are pretty positive.

The company’s locations all have different ratings and reviews. We looked at the reviews for all its locations and calculated an average rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars from 121 Google reviews. A 4.3 is pretty good, especially considering that most people use third-party sites to complain rather than praise.

We ran these reviews through a program that identifies emotional language. Here are some themes we found.

Positive reviewers appreciated the agent’s attentiveness, communication, and ability to find homes quickly. A lot of the negative reviews came from repeat sellers who mentioned surprise fees and higher-than-expected commissions.

United Real Estate has various Better Business Bureau (BBB) profiles for each location. But none of the locations have BBB accreditation, and only one location has a BBB score (D+ with one open complaint).

Agent quality

United Real Estate agents have more experience than the average agent, but the number of transactions per real estate agent is lower than the industry average.

Of the 74 agents we have data on, the average experience is 18.7 years — more than double the industry median of 8.

The company has completed 48,840 transactions in the last year. That comes out to roughly 3.9 transactions per agent, which is lower than the industry average of 12.

We don’t have data on every single United Real Estate agent, so we recommend interviewing them individually to find the right agent for you. Ask them how long they’ve been working in your market, how many transactions they finish in a year, and if they have references from past clients.

Brand reach and visibility

United Real Estate has a strong network of agents and offices within the 31 states in which it operates.

The offices are strategically located in major cities and metropolitan areas. The company has done an excellent job focusing on one or two primary markets within a state, rather than scattering agents throughout different locations. That means the local networks and agents can help you connect faster with buyers and listings. But if you’re in a remote part of those states, they might not be the best choice for you.

The United Real Estate web traffic is not bad but not exceptional. The main page gets roughly 5,700 visits per month, according to our analytics tool. That’s not a lot of volume, especially for a company that has more than 12,000 agents. Our tool also calculated that roughly 6,400 people Google "United Real Estate" each month.

Service value

United Real Estate has stellar value for a full-service brokerage, even if they do likely charge full commission.

Its services for sellers include:

• MLS listing
• Syndication on listing sites like Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia
• Listing on company websites
• A marketing plan tailored to your home and needs
• Virtual tours with a customized URL
• Social media promotion
• Open houses
• A yard sign

Buyers can get help finding a home that matches their criteria, as well as help with negotiations and closing.

If you hire an agent from United Real Estate to help you sell your home, you should expect to pay full commission no matter what the local competitive rates are. For reference, here are the state averages for the markets United Real Estate operates in:

» MORE: Average Commission Rates Across the U.S.

Additional info about United Real Estate

General contact info (corporate office)

Next steps: start interviewing agents!

To ensure you find the best agent for you, we recommend interviewing at least two to three (ideally from different brokerages). We also recommend that you look past big brands and companies and evaluate agents on an individual basis. For guidance on how to interview and choose agents wisely, you can read our guide on how to choose the best real estate agent.

When you’re ready to start finding agents, Clever can give you a headstart: our free agent-matching service will put you into contact with great agents in your area (and you might save some money in the process, too).

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: