Well, kinda. Scares are important but I still think (and I think a lot will agree) that design is still the most important. Havoc, for instance, was a poorly-designed house, but it was super intense. Still, you don't hear anyone say it was the best of that year, even though it may have been the scariest. On the flip side, I hear tons of rave reviews about Winter's Night on here (never really got the hype personally) and that was a very understated house with a great design.
The best houses have good scares and good design working together. It's also very hard for a badly-designed house to be scary because the whole point of the design is to mask scares, have good scares, set up good effects, etc. It's almost like saying a house is scary is also saying it's well-designed...the two go hand in hand. So, everyone is pretty consistent with opinions on here if you ask me.