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