Review Policy

1. Reviews are independent

Reviews on OffCampusReview are the statements of the students who write them, not of OffCampusReview and not of the landlord being reviewed. We publish them as an independent service to students.

Reviews, ratings, and accountability metrics are not for sale. They are not affected by whether a landlord pays to list with us, how much they pay, or whether they renew, cancel, or decline a listing agreement. The one thing a landlord can buy is sponsored position in result lists, which is labelled Sponsored wherever it appears and changes nothing else — see section 8. No OffCampusReview employee, contractor, or agent has authority to offer the removal, suppression, editing, reordering, or de-emphasis of a review, advance notice of a review, or an adjustment to a rating or accountability score — for payment or for any other reason. If someone tells you otherwise, please report it to contact@offcampusreview.com.

2. Who can write a review

Reviews may be written by current or former residents of a property, and by people who applied to or toured it, describing their own first-hand experience.

We verify reviewers by confirming an institutional (.edu) email address, and we apply additional anti-manipulation measures. Verification confirms that a reviewer is a student — it is not a guarantee that any individual review is accurate. Reviews are published under the protections described in our Terms of Service, and reviewer identity is not disclosed to landlords.

3. What we remove

We remove a review when we determine that it:

• is not from an actual resident, applicant, or prospective resident of the property;
• contains unlawful content;
• discloses personal information about a landlord, an employee, or another resident; or
• is the product of manipulation — including reviews that are purchased, incentivised, written by someone connected to the property without disclosure, or submitted as part of a coordinated campaign.

We also remove content that breaches our Site Guidelines, including hate speech, threats, harassment, and spam.

4. What we do not remove

5. Requesting removal

Anyone may ask us to remove a review that breaches this policy. Landlords with an account can submit a request from the Reviews page of the landlord dashboard; everyone else may write to contact@offcampusreview.com. Tell us which review, which ground in section 3 you are relying on, and anything that supports it.

We review each request in good faith and apply the same standard to every request, regardless of whether the property is a paying customer. We aim to respond within five business days. Our determination is final. Removing a review does not remove the property profile or its other reviews.

6. Responding to a review

Landlords and property managers with a claimed profile may publicly respond to any review from the landlord dashboard. A reply is usually more effective than a removal request: students can see that you engaged.

Replies must not disclose a reviewer's identity or personal information, and must not threaten, harass, or retaliate against a reviewer. We remove replies that do.

7. Rules for landlords and property managers

If you own, manage, or market a listed property, you and anyone acting on your behalf — officers, employees, agents, family members, contractors, and reputation-management vendors — must not:

• write, buy, sell, solicit, or procure any review that misrepresents the reviewer's identity or experience, including reviews from people who never lived in or applied to the property;
• submit a review or testimonial about your own property without clearly disclosing the connection;
• offer any incentive — rent credits, deposit treatment, gift cards, renewal terms, maintenance priority, waived fees — conditioned on writing a review, on what a review says, or on removing or changing one;
• suppress or discourage a review, including through groundless legal threats, physical threats, intimidation, or false accusations; or
• create or operate any account or property profile that falsely appears to be an independent source of reviews.

You may invite residents to leave a review, but only through tools we provide or by a neutral request sent to all residents without regard to what you expect them to say, and without any incentive. You must not filter, gate, or pre-screen residents based on their likely rating.

Much of the conduct above is prohibited by the Federal Trade Commission's Rule on the Use of Consumer Reviews and Testimonials, 16 C.F.R. Part 465, which carries civil penalties. Separately, under the Consumer Review Fairness Act, 15 U.S.C. § 45b, your leases, applications, and other resident form agreements must not contain any clause restricting a resident's ability to review your properties or penalising them for doing so.

8. Ranking and sponsored placement

Ratings, reviews, and accountability metrics are calculated the same way for every property on the platform. Nothing a landlord buys changes a rating, a review, a review's position on a property page, or an accountability score.

We do offer optional paid sponsorship. A sponsored property can appear above non-sponsored properties in browse and search results, and is labelled Sponsored wherever it appears so you can tell it apart. Sponsorship buys position in those result lists and nothing else. Discounted-rent badges are display only and do not change a property's position at all. The filters you apply — campus, price, bedrooms, and the rest — are always applied first: sponsorship never inserts a property into results it does not otherwise match.

9. Enforcement

Where we find a breach of section 7, we may remove the affected reviews, suspend or remove listings, suspend or terminate the account, and — where we consider it necessary for students to have an accurate picture — add a neutral factual notice to the property profile describing the action we took.

For a paying landlord, a material breach of section 7 is also a material breach of the Listing Agreement, and may be grounds for immediate termination without refund. Property profiles and their reviews are maintained independently of paid listings — see Landlord Policies, section 11.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy. Changes apply going forward from the date shown at the top of this page. Where a signed Listing Agreement conflicts with this policy, that agreement controls.