No wonder complaints against them are on the rise this year
MY LOONY neighbour has a new hobby: bombing people with the remains of his packed lunch.Every time I go to the coffeeshop, I pass yet another burst plastic bag, rice and curry oozing from it. It’s enough to make me turn home, lunch forgotten. As usual, I get no sympathy if I complain about Mr Loony. “Move lah! After all, you’re only renting that place,” my friends say.
“But I like the location and the landlord’s really nice,” I protest. “Besides, we can’t afford to rent or buy anywhere else now that property prices are stratospheric.” Okay, that’s partly true.
The real reason is that I’m afraid of real-estate agents. I’ve had enough problems dealing with them to last me a lifetime.
Before I met my husband, I was living in a small studio apartment, which I had scrimped to buy. It was so tiny that when we married, we had to find a bigger place. We found our present flat via a friend’s recommendation.
At that time, the property market was so bad that I would have had to pay the bank money if I sold the studio. So for a long time, it lay vacant, a very expensive storeroom. “Rent it out,” urged everyone I knew. “It’s so simple. Just get a property agent.”
Novice landlady that I was, I believed them. Bad idea.
The first agent that I met took one look at the place then said: “It’s going to be tough to rent out. Why don’t you sell?” When I insisted I wanted to rent, he grudgingly listed the unit.
In three months, he showed the unit to only one potential tenant. “See? Very hard to rent. Better sell,” he reiterated. He kept at it until the penny dropped: He wasn’t interested in helping me rent out the place because he’d get only one month’s rent in commission.
However, if I sold it he would get tens of thousands of dollars in commission. When he realised I couldn’t be bullied into selling, he tore up our contract.
The second agent was even worse. She looked at the place, took the key and promised to list it, then stopped taking my calls. Six months later, when I finally caught her on her office phone, she said airily: “Oh, I lost your keys.” No apology for losing an expensive electronic gate pass. I had to threaten her with a lawsuit before she compensated me for the loss.
Fed up, I listed the studio in the classifieds myself. A few calls were from potential tenants but most were from agents, all asking me to sign up exclusively with them — which meant paying them commission if they found me a tenant. “I advertised the studio myself. Why do I need you?” I asked.
They hemmed and hawed. Finally, one guy, more honest than the rest, confessed: “If I’m the agent for only one party, I get one month’s commission. But if I also become your agent, I get one month from you and one month from the tenant.”
So that was the game. Sensing I was a newbie to the game, these double agents were moving in with a view to a kill. Forget about having my best interests at heart — they were all just looking out for number one.
Given my bad experiences, I was not surprised to hear that complaints against estate agents have been increasing.
The Consumers Association of Singapore fielded 57 complaints from January to July this year, compared with 32 in the same period last year. There were 40 complaints lodged with the Singapore Accredited Estate Agencies in the first seven months of 2007, up from 31 last year.
I’m amazed that the numbers aren’t any higher, especially since the property market is so good now. It stands to reason that the hotter the market is, the more agents join the fray. The more agents there are, the higher the proportion of bad hats.
Thankfully, my tenant search had a happy ending. After fending off countless agents, I received a call one day. “Don’t tell me, you want me to hire you,” I said wearily.
“Why should you?” came the surprising answer. The agent got the place rented out in three days — at $200 more per month than I’d expected to get — without a commission.
Hey, maybe she’s the answer to my loony-neighbour problem. I’ll keep you posted on any developments.
Tabitha Wang doesn’t believe in fining unscrupulous estate agents. She prefers to bomb them with packets of curry rice.
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