Rebranded & Rennovated: Can we start fresh with reviews?

I work with a group that recently acquired a community that had been mismanaged for years. Low/no screening criteria, deferred maintenance and LOTS of resident complaints. The online reviews were/are terrible on sites like ApartmentRatings.com and Yelp.

The new owners have rebranded / renamed the community and completed major renovations. Deferred maintenance is resolved and a new management team has the property completely turned around. New residents are happy and old residents are happy with the changes.

The problem? There are years (literally hundreds) of old negative reviews from before the takeover.

Question: Is there a way to "wipe the slate clean" and start over with a new listing on ApartmentRatings.com and Yelp?

It seems Google accommodates this scenario by marking the old listing as "permanently closed" and setting up a new listing. Unfortunately, it looks like both ApartmentRatings and Yelp simply updated the name on the old listing(s) and the old reviews remain.

Anyone have experience with this?

Your insight is greatly appreciated!

We just acquired a property, and when I signed up for the Yelp enhanced listing package, they automatically started us fresh without me even asking.

That's cool. I will look into that. I'm sure you can get a lot more assistance with these type of issues as a paying customer. It's probably worth the investment just to get the support. Thanks for the suggestion.

I'm very curious about ApartmentRatings.com. I looked for an official policy on rebranded/renovated communities on their site, but I couldn't find one?

Hey Nick, I'm Micah the head of Product for ApartmentRatings.com. My team and I have been thinking of a number of ways to help properties who have made significant improvements to their communities communicate that to prospective residents. I'd love to share some of those ideas with you and get your feedback.

If you are interested, email me at [email protected] and we can set up a time to chat.