Can you trust online apartment rating sites?

Apartments for Rent by Number Six(bill Lap)

Apologies for the long silence – a lack of opportunity to perendinate is to blame. But, I thought I’d write a quick post on a recent experience. My current lease is about to expire and I’m looking to move soon. As such, I’m in the hunt for apartments and I was checking out what people had to say about places – only, I found it interesting that most places had very few consumer provided ratings and that those ratings usually tended to be very critical.

Does this mean that all apartments/complexes were absolutely horrible? That didn’t sound quite right.

So, I spent some time thinking through it and came to the following realizations:

1. Posting to an apartment rating site involves reasonable effort that requires over-coming inertia.
2. Overcoming inertia is most likely when one is passionate about something – either negative or positive.
3. Positive passion resulting from living in a particular apartment doesn’t seem to be too likely.
4. Negative experiences with management and neighbours can invoke intense passion.

So, is it reasonable to conclude that most people who volunteer their opinions on these online rating sites are motivated by anger and the resulting negative passion?

If this is a fair assumption, then the information in sights like Yelp, and ApartmentRatings etc. can’t be taken at face value – but, rather as a description of things that *can* and *have* happened at these locations but aren’t necessarily the norm.

Thoughts?

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