Are you financing your property agent’s next million-dollar home or next vacation in the Swiss Alps?

More often than not on social media, we will see real estate agents flexing on their new flashy cars and luxury goods.

To those who do not know, real estate agents’ salaries are purely commissioned based and they receive a cut after each rental or sale transaction.

The sale commission ranges from 1 to 3%, depending on the arrangement between the buyer and seller. It is good to note that this is purely negotiation-based and there is no legislation governing on the agreed amount.

That means with every sale of resale private property, each agent gets paid a minimum of S$10k, assuming the property is $1m and the agreed commission is 1%.

This 10k is a conservative amount and is likely to be higher as agents will “fight” for higher commission percentages and private properties now run in the millions.

Granted, property agents face stiff competition and there are many who will claim tremendous marketing-associated fees with each sale.

I do not undermine the efforts of every agent, but in my opinion, this commission is extremely over-proportioned for the effort involved.

This is especially true for new launches. For every new launch unit sold, agents can receive S$30k easily up to S$100k+. From the many cases I’ve heard, the agents secured walk-in customers to the show flat who purchase units.

The effort involved is literally convincing the customers why the development is good and doing some simple loan calculations & eligibility.

The next time you see your fellow agents flexing their five/six-figure commission, don’t be salty about your salaried 9-5 job because all of us contribute to the problem. We directly enabled their lavish lifestyle.

Comments from property agents

Please lah. You “enable our lavish lifestyle”? How many luxury properties have you purchased?? 

You have no idea how hard we work. We work 7 days a week, regardless of weekends or PH. We work till wee hours of the night sometimes.

Our commission may be high, but our expenses are also super high.

PropertyGuru credits cost $15k. And that’s just ONE portal. There’s EdgeProp & 99.c0 as well.

Petrol costs $$$. Plenty of leads are time wasters who just wanna look see & window shop, with no intention to buy anything.

Lead generation costs thousands of $$$ every month. Facebook ads, Google PPC, newspaper classified ads, flyers.

Agents go through droughts & dry spells where there’s no income at all for months.

For every seller listing, we have to fork out the marketing costs (hundreds to few k) upfront to market the unit with NO GUARANTEE of returns.

So yes, we earned that 2% commission and we deserve every cent.

We have no CPF, medical or dental benefits.

Please don’t judge the entire profession based on just a few agents & assume that it’s a “lavish lifestyle” that consumers are enabling. We work extremely hard for every cent we make.

We are paid fairly for the work we do and the value we provide to our clients.

If you’re transacting a 6-7 figure property, you really wanna wing it yourself, DIY the whole process & handle all the paperwork & negotiations, be my guest and go ahead.

If you think it’s that easy, why don’t you go get your real estate license and lavish lifestyle? Or are you just so salty because you cannot pass your RES exam? Lol

Is it okay to be an enabler of other people cheating?

I met this girl one day during a dorm event and we hit it off pretty well. Went out for a drink at night when she told me that she’s in a LDR with another guy from China.

Due to their COVID protocols, they haven’t seen each other since 2020 and she’s feeling physically lonely. A lack of physical love, she said.

So anyways, we started drinking me and she inched closer and closer into my boundary and I guess you can infer what happens next.

We discussed for a little bit and agreed to be friends with benefits, purely friends with benefits. Did it around a dozen times since our first encounter 2 months ago.

My story doesn’t end there. By chance, I met another older woman through a dating app, and after hitting off for a few days, she revealed to me that she’s married with a son.

Similar to the girl before, she told me that she lacks physical love because her husband is cheating on her with another woman.

One thing leads to another and now I have another friend with benefits, both being females of non-single status.

I stand my ground that I did nothing wrong because all these time because I merely reacted to the situation instead of pushing it forward.

I did not flirt nor try to push these women towards the decision that they ultimately made, they were the ones who hit on me and engaged in their debaucherous acts. I merely obliged.

My pet dog was attacked and bitten by another (larger) dog. Is there any way I can seek compensation for my vet bills?

For context: this happened around 8am this morning (as of writing this)

My helper was walking my pet dog (8yrs old mini poodle) back from the park near our house (we stay in landed property). Neither my helper nor my poodle noticed a much larger dog running toward them from across the street next to them. When the larger dog got to them, it immediately bit my poodle on its hind leg. It took 2 helpers from the house the larger dog came from to separate the larger dog from mine.

Immediately after separation, my poodle was still able to walk away but was obviously very shaken. However, right now he is limping on his hind left leg and there was bloodstains on his fur (has sort of faded or smeared around the surrounding fur). We will be scheduling a vet appointment to see if is any further injury.

The attack was unprovoked as my poodle didn’t notice the larger dog approaching it until it was too late, and it clearly was not play since there were visible wounds.

I know the house that the larger dog came from so I will be speaking to the owner about the incident. I’m looking for some advice on how I should approach the issue. Should I get a diagnosis or quote from the vet first? More crucially is whether I am able to claim any vet bills from the large dog owner if it happens to be very expensive.

Some issues that may be brought up is:

I was not present during the incident, I am merely going off the account of my helper

The helpers of the large dog owner may not have informed their employer about the incident truthfully (although they did mention that they would)

We do not have photo evidence of the incident.

Any other Singaporeans here have had something similar occur? I would like to approach this politely but I’m aware of how defensive we can get sometimes, especially when it concerns our precious pets.

Hi admin, please post this please. I need some input from people ):

Sad but true reality, and sometimes I feel that we just have to accept the truth. This has happened to quite a number of my friends in their late 20’s to mid 30’s.

If a guy/girl is physically unattractive, earning low or average income, doesn’t have a nice body (flabby limbs, tummy, flat or saggy boobs, skinny), they’ll only end up with someone of similar trait.

A few of my closest friends are experiencing this. As much as I wanna tell them to wait longer instead of settling for someone they aren’t attracted to just for the sake of being accepted by the other party who is similarly unattractive, I don’t think it’s a good idea because it’s legit difficult to find guys/girls who would wanna give them a go.

Like they have been on tinder and other dating apps for years but sadly they don’t get any matches. Is this really how relationships in a modern society works?

Like you’re so unattractive to the point where only somebody unattractive would go for you?

Netizens’ comments

• Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. Live appreciative, live happy, live well. = )
• So…. unattractive people complain that they have to end up with other unattractive people…. which clearly shows that they are also biased against unattractive people… so how liddat?