"Your agent slammed down the phone on me. Only 3 years’ experience and he thinks he is great. I do not want his services" shouted Mrs Tan, a prospective HDB buyer who had been making numerous calls to us, the IRAS, the private lawyer in charge of this divorced HDB resale case and all the authorities with the ulterior motive to find a way to back out of the deal since a new valuation showed a drop of S$7,000 in price of the 3-room Bishan apartment. Usual allegations of incompetence, inexperience and insults.

Sellers are a divorced Malay couple; ex-wife did not want any reduction and rolling stone ex-husband was "looking after newborn baby with jaundice" in Malaysia with new wife and no telephone numbers to contact.

Advises to new agents:

1. Just listen to all complaints and abuses from Buyer. Put the phone down and do your other work.
2. Just parrot by repeating "Mrs Tan, please write down what you want…..please write down what you want…." Mrs Tan obviously did not anything in writing. We advised that she wrote to the Seller regarding a reduction in selling price.
3. Count from 1-30 if you feel like hanging up the phone.

Do not slam the phone down on Buyer. The Buyer pays you 1% of the purchase price as commission. You get abuses as part of the job. Some agents feel that they should not be compliant in this profession but you meet all sorts of clients.

4. For those clients you do not want to serve, refer them to other agents or agencies, rather than show your temper.
5. Quit the realty profession since you don’t know who you will encounter. We had suffered abuses from the ex-husband for taking a long time to find a Buyer, a common situation nowadays. It could take 3 months or more to find a Buyer and we advertised 3 times a week in the Straits Times and many times in the Internet.

In this case, we did the following:

1. Get the first agent, an elderly person but more patient.
2. The ex-husband, needing money, agreed to a $2,000 reduction in selling price. We had to "escort" him to the private lawyer to sign the documents as he was finding all ways such as "his baby would be killed if he did not go back to Malaysia in 30 minutes’ time, the private hospital bills would be mounting".
3. Obviously, he was trying to get money and sympathy from his ex-wife, saying he needed money all the time. His ex-wife believed that he needed to go back to Malaysia (with the money) and return in time to sign the Statutory Declaration after that. We know it would be no return. He was smart to know how to "extort" money in return for his signature, at critical moments and signing of the statutory declaration was one of them.
4. The private lawyer wanted all 4 parties to be present if the selling price would be reduced by $2,000. We advised that only the ex-husband needed to be present to agree to deduct $2,000 from his share of the sale and therefore, no need for all 4 parties to make a new sales agreement.
5. We rushed to the HDB office to make the statutory declaration. Buyers and Sellers must be present just to make a statutory declaration to declare the selling price and the payment of option money to be <$5,000 and then go home. Of course, the ex-husband took the next taxi back to Malaysia and we are keeping our fingers crossed again hoping we could locate him for the next HDB meeting, one of several.

It is hoped that one day, the Singapore Government would reduce by 80% the massive amount of time and paperwork needed just to sell or buy one HDB apartment.

The statutory declaration could be made at the private lawyer’s office and that would save a lot of heart ache, especially in divorced cases where the ex-wife had to work night shifts to support her children and there are great financial hardships not experienced in air-conditioned offices of bureaucrats. Combine both declaration and meeting of HDB officials.

• Good luck to your new Career in 1998.

Anne Brocklebank

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