A New Age Singapore Real Estate Salesperson For You

We’ve discussed earlier on exclusivity and its importance especially for resale homes today to get sold effectively. We will now touch on the trending of real estate salesperson role change for you to understand how market has also evolved.

Buyers Market

For the past 3 years it has been a primary buyers market. There was a short period of time when market started to pick up and it belonged to the sellers until July 2018 when the last cooling measure was introduced. LTV was reduced and ABSD was increased by 5 points.

It wasn’t made any better when the HDB was unsure of how to respond when citizens were asking about what happens thereafter when their apartments reached 99 years; thus floated the tenure decay term. This has been since patched by Prime Minister Lee’s National Day Rally speech in August 2018 with a VERS solution apart from their usual SERS exercises.

Real estate salesperson whom primarily only serves the resale sellers during this period suffers a decline in transactions for both private resale and HDB homes.

New Home Rush Drove Primary Sales Numbers

Home buyers has been predominantly driving up the primary sale numbers on identifying values from prices that the developers are priced for their inventory.

Affinity at Serangoon, one of the many quality products of award winning local developer Oxley Holdings
Affinity at Serangoon, one of the many quality products of award winning local developer Oxley Holdings

The sheer numbers for primary sale to do well has got to do with many effects in play including merits such as developers reputation, location, product offerings and pricing as developers usually priced them well especially at the launch stage before adjusting median prices upwards overtime, allowing home buyers to sit with a paper gain when the developments obtain Temporary Occupation Period (TOP).

There is also a step up on the real estate agencies with consumer enrichment and awareness with great value knowledge not normally presented that steps up the engagement from the realtors to the intended home purchasers for transparency and product awareness.

A SRI Enrich Consumer seminar for home purchasers with SRI Managing Partner Ken Low
A SRI Enrich Consumer seminar for home purchasers with SRI Managing Partner Ken Low

The Consultant Trend

We see a newborn consulting role which salesperson assumes new responsibilities in growing wealth and sophistication methods such as decoupling to assist consumers in leveraging for another asset.

Realtors undergo trainings to understand their clients needs better by picking up skill sets from the banking calculations, and understanding better on possible legal solutions to offer solutions.

Such solutions if being effectively and responsibly offered would benefit home owners in the long run as real estate is a long term investment.

As mentioned with new added abilities of marketing, traditional realtors whom usually chooses sides (doing either more of buyers or sellers) are doing both extremely well with technology adaptation and wide spread knowledge trainings that the realty companies provide them with.

One of the many SRI Enrich for Realtors as they step up their Facebook marketing campaigns.
One of the many SRI Enrich for realtors as they step up their Facebook marketing campaigns.

Trust is a two-way street

Not all clients are suitable for such leveraging and real estate is one sure but not the only way to grow wealth effectively. Again, clients would be in safer hands having trusted realtors since sensitive information such as net worth might need to be diverged for a clear structured advice.

Trust is a two-way. If the realtor exercises responsibility and common sense when advising, the plan should be sound based on the objectives of the client and will nurture a business relationship in the long run.

Commission Structure for Real Estate Agents – Is It a Sin to Ask For More?

Most Singapore realtors (real estate agents) works on the recommendations from Institute of Estate Agents (IEA) to quote their service fees on a successful closure. You can download a copy of their guideline from IEA’s website here.

There’s this grey line which most agents when comes to co-broking may face if its a small rental deal. The guideline is as such, should the rental per month be lesser than SGD $2,500, the Realtors in charged can collect commission from the tenant as well. To make it easy, co broking agents will collect from their own client (aka, the Realtor acting for tenant will take his share and the other Realtor acting for owner doing vice versa)

But have you ever met agents who don’t wish to co broke and even if they do, asks you to take your service fees from your tenant even if it is more than $2,500?

Plenty of agents out there mind sharing their commission and wishes for a direct client to come connect to their ads, but realizing that they can’t do it fast, asks for the tenant Realtor to work for free. While it seems fine and feels right, it’s not at all! When we’re talking about acting ethically for your owner, you should not in any way reject co-broking cases or even ask for the other side to collect commission if it is not under the guidelines. For all you know, you’re rejecting tenants that are willing to pay even a higher commission that your direct cases.

Its never ethical to collect more than you should. And we wouldn’t want our customers to complain that we aren’t professional when it comes to our fees. Why worry about having not enough commission when you spoil your reputation and risk customer satisfaction on your performance?