Why you NEED a housing agent when buying a resale

Buying a flat from 🏢 HDB is like winning the lottery. Even if you take up any of the priority schemes, your queue number is still based on your luck. And that is why I decided to inquire with my good buddy, Agent Izzat who is a real estate agent in Singapore. After our discussion, here are some of the tips he shared with me.

First and most important tip: Get an agent to assist you. For most of us, the first thing that comes to mind is commission and why should I spend like $5000 cash for an agent to represent me when i can do it myself. A few things to note, they are the real experts working alongside many other agents who have been in this industry assisting families to transition smoothly.

But is it worth it? IMHO, not really. I could find so much information online to do the calculations myself. Which i did. but when I got to speaking with Agent Izzat, he actually showed me more things that weren't even in my purview.

One example is actually COV which stands for Cash Over Valuation. You can try finding it on HDB website, but you won't. In essence, when you option for a flat at $600,000 and request for a valuation which eventually comes back to value at $550,000, you will be required to pay the difference of $50,000 in cold hard cash. This was not an ideal situation as we had saved our cash for renovations and furnishings. And this situation occurs quite often to buyers who are not well aware of the market value of the areas who end up forfeiting their option fee and waste about 3 weeks waiting out before they can option for another flat.

It made me realise that some people would have bitten the bullet and paid the COV of $50,000 when they could have just paid $5000 to an agent who would negotiate for ZERO COV, provided a detailed financial plan and take them one step closer to their dream home. At the end of our discussion, I was more well informed and felt a better sense of security knowing that someone is taking care of our interests and supporting us all the way.

At the end of the day, we are all working to do our best, and an agent's best is to do their best for you.

#hdb #hdbresale #realestate