Here's a shout out to SPH Columnist Fiona Chan, also known as "A Property Agent's Worst Nightmare." You’re not a nightmare.
Actually, you're a professional agent's dream-come-true.
Summarizing your article, you wanted the right home at the right price but kept on finding agents who wouldn't or couldn't give it to you.
Every service industry has its good eggs and its bad. Whether we are employing the services of a doctor, a lawyer or a real estate agent, it's our job as consumers to seek out the best.
Here are 6 tips that will make your next housing-hunting experience a pleasurable and profitable one:
(1). Employ a buyer agent. Let your agent do the dirty work of haggling with the seller agent. Smart CEOs are never the negotiators when buying a company. They use investment bankers. Prime ministers never negotiate foreign treaties themselves. They use expert negotiators. Buying a home isn't bargaining for a trinket at a bazaar. Big money is involved. Get yourself a trusted agent to be your advocate so you don't get taken;
(2). Finding a qualified real estate agent has never been easier. Go to SRX.com.sg, enter your desired location, and browse the Agent CV of agents who have recently transacted in that project or area. By reading the Agent CV you can ascertain the person's qualifications, including his or her track record. When an investment bank does a deal, they advertise the results in a graphic called a "tombstone". The real estate industry's equivalent is called an "SRX Verified Sold Listing".
(3). Location-based search. New technology makes this easy. You want to live within walking distance of an MRT? No problem. Simply go to SRX.com.sg and select the MRT of your choice. Your search result will give you the nearby listings and the walking distance. You can do the same thing for multiple MRTs (in one search), schools, office buildings, parks, clubs, and many other amenities. This type of advanced search is only possible on SRX.com.sg or the mobile application SRX Home Search.
(4). Put your agent to work on finding the real listings. The market is full of duplicate and dummy listings. Let your agent deal with the painful process of separating the wheat from the chaff. Good agents have access to networks and technology like Agent Connect and SRX Circles that help them identify real listings as well as co-broke listings unavailable on the listing portals. In the next few weeks, SRX and STClassifieds will introduce to agents a new digital feature that will make it even easier for agents to help their clients find the diamonds in the rough.
(5). Use mobile technology to make your house-hunt more efficient and, therefore, fun. From any comfortable chair, shortlist homes, set up viewings, and share listing-linked notes with your family, friends, and agent. If your husband happens to be overseas, no problem. Sending him a note or photo attached to a listing is free. With SRX Home Search, you don't have to worry about showing up at a viewing and finding no one home.
(6). Use X-Value and Home Report to negotiate the right home at the right price. Never again do you have to worry about the integrity of a valuation. SRX Property has solved this problem by introducing a standardized pricing mechanism called X-Value. There are over 60,000 requests for X-Value every month on srx.com.sg alone. Home Report provides all the supporting information for X-Value as well as a whole bunch of details on a project and its individual units, including its track record of capital appreciations and rental yield. A professional buyer agent knows how to use X-Value and Home Report to negotiate the right home at the right price.
Fiona, the real estate industry is leveraging information and technology to improve the professionalism and integrity of its agents and the market-at-large. You don’t have to settle for the type of house-hunting experience you described.
There are plenty of professional agents out there who would welcome the challenge of serving you and, more importantly, will not disappoint you.