We Reveal 5 Reasons Why

6 min read

Property agents are usually hungry for work, so it’s a surprise when they put you on the back-burner. This has been increasingly common in 2022, as the market is hot and agents are spoiled for choice of clients – and it’s led to some people wondering: why aren’t agents interested in helping with their listing? Here are some of the unspoken truths about how realtors may play favourites:

1. Fewer realtors want to help with rental listings

This is an industry problem that’s been hard to rectify: the commissions for handling rental are so low, and the effort so high, that many agents give it a wide berth. The typical rate right now is one month’s rent for a two-year lease, or half that for a one-year lease. Also, the typical market practice is that below $3,500, the tenant is the one that has to pay the commission.

At present (2022), the typical 4-room flat rents for $2,500 to $2,800, while a similar sized (non-central) condo rents for about $4,200 to $4,500. 

For this amount, the agent must:

• Pay to put up the listing on a property portal
• Pay to refresh the listing
• Conduct viewings, which incur transport costs 
• Help to vet the tenants, and ensure all their paperwork is in order (some foreign tenants may have communication difficulties, making this an especially time-consuming process) 
• Handle other essential paperwork, such as the Tenancy Agreement 

And given the hot rental market now, a popular listing can garner hundreds of messages, that the agent will have to go through.

Several realtors complained that, in practice, this is not even where the job will end. 

Most landlords in Singapore also expect realtors to deal with subsequent issues, ranging from disputes between tenants, to leases being broken under unusual circumstances (e.g., a student tenant fails their exam, and wants to break the lease to go home a year earlier). 

The landlord may not understand realise that the agent’s job officially ends once the TA is signed. If the agent hopes to get future business, such as during lease renewal, they have to go above and beyond. 

And if you think about it, this is the same amount of work that will have to be done with a listing for sale.

Given the more lucrative selling/buying market, don’t be surprised if realtors show less enthusiasm about taking on rental units. 

2.  Your listing is an urgent sale

The most typical example of this is being close to your Additional Buyers Stamp Duty (ABSD) deadline: if you bought a second property before selling your previous home, you have only six months to sell your old property if you want to claim ABSD remission. 

If you’re down to the last one or two months, realtors may not want get involved – not without a higher commission. The reason is simply that, for such urgent sales, the realtor is required to drop other business to prioritise you. This can result in opportunity costs, such as a slower response to leads for other listings. 

The other concern is how you’ll react, if the realtor’s efforts fail. One property agent told us that, when she failed to close an urgent sale back in 2018, the seller even threatened to take legal action against her for the loss of their ABSD money. This was despite the fact she had only two months to find a buyer, and that the buyer had forfeited the Option and backed out of the deal at the last minute. She has since sworn off similar situations. 

One agent said that raising the commission for urgent sales – a common tactic among desperate buyers – doesn’t always entice realtors. Urgent sales are so stressful and demanding, some realtors will avoid these for the sake of their own mental health. 

In any case, an urgent sale is tough to pull off, and many agents simply don’t have leads on buyers ready to transact so soon – so don’t be surprised if you never hear back from them. 

3. You don’t have an exclusive agreement with an agent or agency 

Taking a non-exclusive agreement represents an extra risk for realtors. The main worry is that the agent may spend time and money to market your listing, but you end up transacting through another agent instead. 

Regarding property portals, for instance, there have been cases where agents spend more on refreshing a listing, but by sheer luck the buyer contacts an agent who barely spent anything. This shouldn’t happen in theory, as the agents who spend more should go to the top of the page – but it has happened. 

Some agents also don’t like how this appears on property portals: the listing for the same property could be linked to multiple agents at the same time, and this gives the impression that something shady is going on. One agent said she once had to explain she wasn’t “stealing” a listing, when the prospective buyer noticed the same unit (albeit with different pictures) was linked to two other realtors. 

When agents do take a non-exclusive deal, it becomes secondary to their exclusive clients, so you may notice fewer viewings or offers. 

4. There are financing issues regarding your property 

In some cases, property agents will back out after buyers mention financing issues. These can occur based on the following:

• Legal proceedings that make it difficult for buyers to obtain loans for your property (e.g., the MCST is currently involved in a lawsuit, or you are currently facing issues related to bankruptcy or divorce settlements). Agents are usually fine to take on your listing after the case is resolved. 
• Cash-only purchases are required, such as for properties with 30 or fewer years on the lease, or are within the Geylang red light district*
• Banks offer a lower loan quantum due to the nature or age of the property (e.g., buyers may require a down payment of 45 per cent for some very old or decrepit properties) 

There are some realtors able to help even in these cases – some realtors are especially experienced in marketing older properties, and may have ready contacts who look out for these units; but these are not most of the property agents you’ll encounter. 

*For properties that must be fully transacted in cash, buyers and sellers sometimes make the transaction via private contracts. For these cases, you need to contact a conveyancing firm, rather than a property agent. There may be no realtor involved in a private contract.

5. Your asking price is too far off the mark 

One of the most common reasons we see realtors back off is price: when you set your rental or sale price way too high, many realtors may give up rather than even attempt it. 

A common question here is “Why don’t they just try anyway? They will get higher commissions.” The reason is that realtors need to pay for the marketing of your property first, and commit time and money to it – failure to close the deal means they won’t be compensated for any of those efforts.  

And the more unrealistic the price, the more expensive the marketing attempts need to be; realtors will need to stretch the perceived value with pricey home staging, video tours, etc. 

So if a realtor has no confidence in your price, they would rather avoid the expense and turn down your listing altogether. 

Do note that even if you are asking for an impossibly high price and the agent takes it without question, that might be a sign your listing is used for price anchoring.

It may seem unethical, that the agent is using your listing for a bait-and-switch. They may show your property first, but imply it’s expensive for what it offers; next they’ll show the property they actually aim to push on the buyer. 

This will make the second property more attractive than yours, due to price anchoring.

On the buyers’ side of the equation, some realtors will actively avoid those with unrealistic budgets (e.g., earning less than $3,000 a month, but trying to buy a four-bedder condo), or some buyer’s that are extremely out of touch with the market, and are hoping that sellers will sell at 2017 prices. Realtors still need to spend for transport, and conduct viewings, even if the property being viewed is way beyond the buyer’s reach. 

Have you had property agents who seemed reluctant to work with you? Let us know in the comments. In the meantime, you can follow us on Stacked to check on news and trends in the Singapore property market.