Woman ’Sells’ 1 Condo To Two Buyers

Source : The Sunday Times, Oct 28, 2007

Property agent sister of condo owner pockets $30,000 in deposits from two buyers; now one of them is suing her to get back $25,000

HER sister had given her permission to sell her private apartment in Sengkang.

But the woman, herself a property agent, managed to ’sell’ the condo unit to not just one, but two buyers, pocketing $30,000 in deposits from them.

Now, one of the buyers is filing a lawsuit against her to retrieve the $25,000 he paid to the woman.

A police report has also been filed against her by one of the property agents who brokered the deal.

But the woman says she did nothing wrong and pins the blame on the other two agents involved instead.

In May, she approached two property agents separately to help her market her older sister’s apartment at Rivervale Crest. Her sister is said to be working in Australia.

The woman is said to be in her 30s and is married, with one daughter from a previous marriage. She is also a discharged bankrupt.

She wanted $570,000 for the apartment.

This is where the two sides’ stories begin to differ.

The agents claimed she collected cheques for payments of 1 to 5 per cent of the condo’s sale price but would delay returning the option-to-purchase (OTP) documents to the buyer until the date had expired.

The date usually expires after two weeks.

Then, she would claim the buyer did not act promptly and must forfeit the payments they had made to her.

By then, she had already banked in the cheques.

One of the PropNex agents involved in the deal, Mr Mohd Rasheed Othman, said he had known the woman for a year, having co-brokered a property with her before.

‘She knew the tricks of the trade and used her knowledge to cheat others,’ alleged the 32-year-old.

Mr Mohd Rasheed visited the Sengkang apartment after his buyer complained. There, he met her aged parents, who were shocked that their daughter was selling the apartment.

He said: ‘Her parents had no idea she was selling the apartment. They were living there as per normal.’

Her reply: My parents have nothing to do with the apartment.

The other agent, Ms S.N. Lee, 30, said the woman would come up with excuses to delay returning documents and would avoid phone calls.

She said: ‘She’d insist on meeting at ridiculous times, in the wee hours of the morning. Sometimes, she’d even tell me to collect important documents from her shoe rack.’

Most of the time, the two agents would communicate with her by SMS.

When contacted by The Sunday Times, the woman claimed that the accusations against her were not true.

She said she did not want to go ahead with the first transaction with Mr Mohd Rasheed because he had cheated her by selling her apartment for $510,000, instead of $570,000 as promised.

‘I’m the victim here,’ she said.

She also claimed he gave her a blank OTP document to sign.

This document usually states how much the property is sold for. Sellers would have to agree to the price stated before signing.

As for Ms Lee, she failed to act promptly, said the woman, and allowed the OTP date to expire. By the woman’s reasoning, the $5,350 deposit paid by the buyer is now rightfully hers.

PropNex has returned this $5,350 deposit to the buyer on a goodwill basis.

The police confirmed that a report has been made against the woman and they are investigating.

This is not the first time someone has sold a property to multiple buyers.

In 1996, a bankrupt cheated eight people of $20,000 in all by pretending to sell his Ang Mo Kio HDB flat to each of them.

The victims, who paid between $1,000 and $5,000 as deposits, found out they had been conned only when they handed their resale agreements to the HDB. The conman was given eight months’ jail.