Personally, I feel house hunting and house selling should be an excited and happy event. But somehow or rather, housing agents are making me feel that moving house is a really bad idea.

They are absolutely a pain to the neck, irritating to the core and money-minded to the max.

Its not that I do not want to give them business. I bought my current unit eons ago through an agent too and had no problems because I wanted an agent to do my negotiation, paperwork, sourcing as I had little time and experience. So I don’t mind paying the 1% commission (which was $1,360 and to us, its freakingly a lot when we were surviving solely on dar’s income only).

BUT this time round, with some years of maturity, I feel I’m fit to handle a sale and purchase plus the high agent commission is really deterring – 2% to sell and 1% to buy. No way would I pay an exhorbitant amount of over $6,000! That can cover a third or so of my planned renovations for the new place lor.

I’v tried to made myself clear to the seller’s or buyer’s agents but they were always like ‘view now discuss later’. View already want to discuss terms and they start showing black face when I say you are not my agent so I’m not obligated to pay you.

The thing is I surf for the units available on my own, I call the seller (or rather the seller’s agent) to fix the appointment on my own, I travel to the unit on my own and I negotiate my own price, so where are your value-added services that makes me willing to part with my money?

There is no such thing as free money where you, just by being the seller or buyer’s agent, happen to meet a agentless (and please note, its not by luck I’m without an agent, its by choice) buyer or seller like me, then demand that we pay you the commission. If its that the case, to save the hassle, I rather find my own agent to do all the neccessary for me isn’t it, with all the service, transport, temporary secretary to arrange for the viewings etc.

Just because its a market practice doesn’t mean that it has to apply to everyone of us. That’s not the law what, right!

If you, the agent, filled up all the forms for me accurately, submitted the documents promptly and your attitude’s sincere and genuine, at your request, I wouldn’t mind giving a token of appreciation. But please, do not expect it!

Real Life Examples :

1. One of the agent agreed on a fixed amount of commission to pay, however, after deciding on a unit, he wrote double the amount on the buyer’s commission form. UNETHICAL IDIOT!
2. Whereas another agent, ‘let’s view first, discuss later’ and we somehow forgot to discuss. Later on, disagreements arises with ‘I thought you have agreed on the terms?’ (when more buyers wanted to view my unit and I did not want before we come to an mutual understanding) which was what I disagreed and wanted to discuss about but he perhaps conveniently forgot. SCHEMING IDIOT!

So anyways, they are really a bunch of pricks!