CFAA is seeking volunteers to judge in its 2023 awards program.

The judges are independent people with long experience working in rental housing in the area which they are to judge (e.g. building renovations or customer service.) Many will be for-profit landlords or property managers. In appropriate categories, CFAA may include not-for-profit landlords, rental housing instructors or city or provincial housing officials.

Judges are vetted by CFAA for conflicts for the award(s) that they are judging. Judges may include people from companies which enter the awards, except that they will NOT judge any category in which their company is entered, or from companies with which they have had any significant recent relationship.

The judges will be identified, but the particular award which they judged will not.

Sign-up to judge

Each category will be judged by a minimum of 3 judges, who will review the submissions independently and rate them. Judges will then have a conversation by telephone conference to determine the winner.

If the judges have difficulty deciding who the winner should be based on the awards submissions on their own, then the judges may have regard to: 

  1. Whether either of the top two nominee companies is leading the scoring for another CFAA award this year;
  2. Whether there is a significant geographic imbalance which one of the top two would help to rectify; or
  3. Whether it makes sense to declare co-winners.

The judges will prepare a brief statement about the merits of the winning entry (i.e. why the winner won), to be presented at the Awards ceremony.

The judges will keep their discussion to determine the winner confidential, along with who are the nominees and the winner.

Timing for the judging process

Judges will have to review and rank the submissions in the category they are judging, and may make a few comments about why they have ranked their selections as they did. The judges will normally have 7 days to do those rankings. They will access and rank the applications in the awards portal. CFAA will send log-in information to judges once the application deadline has passed and judges are assigned to categories.

The judges for each category will then meet virtually to discuss the awards submissions, their rankings and their comments about the submissions. They will agree or vote on the winner, and agree on a brief statement about why the winner won.

Barring unforeseen delays, the Awards judging will likely take place in mid-late March.