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Sun, Dec 27, 2009
The New Paper
Who needs real estate agents when we can do it ourselves?
By Jeanmarie Tan
FINDING my dream home has turned increasingly nightmarish these past few months.
And with the real estate boom and record number of complaints about rogue property agents this year, it looks like I'm not the only one having sleepless nights.
Three years ago, my husband and I found a three-room resale HDB flat in the Holland area.
We had hired an agent to help us suss out the best deal and duly paid him the standard 1 per cent commission for his efforts.
With a baby now, we looked to upgrade to a five-room resale HDB flat closer to the city, where my parents live.
We sifted through the classified ads and found the flat - at Zion Road - in September.
The seller's agent insisted we pay him the 1 per cent commission, which amounted to more than $6,000. According to him, by responding to his newspaper ad and giving us the unit number, he automatically became our agent and will then handle the administrative paperwork for us.
So due to ignorance on our part, we signed on his commission form at our first and only viewing because we were afraid of losing our dream home.
Well, not many are aware that it's not mandatory for buyers to pay dual agents that fee. Such hindsight struck us a little too late.
Even though the Ministry of National Development (MND) recently suggested prohibiting an agent from acting for both seller and buyer in HDB resale transactions due to the conflict of interest involved, this hasn't stopped them from exploiting "the free and open market".
Our appeals to both MND and Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies to help us intervene with the negotiations came to naught.
MND can recommend measures till it's dry in the mouth, but who will ensure that the agents obey? At present, there is really no option for buyers but to pay any commission demanded.
It's either that, or potentially lose your dream home to other parties during the time spent complaining to the regulating bodies.
The expensive lesson we've gleaned from this episode?
We don't need agents, really.
And we certainly don't want to pay them thousands of dollars to help sell our current place - especially since we now know we can do it all by ourselves, thank you very much.
If more consumers act on this belief, we can help rein in the bad practices in the real estate industry.
This article was first published in The New Paper.