Forum: More awareness needed for home owners to conduct property transactions independently

I welcome the latest measures to raise salespeople’s professional standards and improve transparency among property agents, their agencies and their clients (New rules for property agents likely to weed out inactive ones, help consumers make better decisions, Aug 14).

However, as people are increasingly tech-savvy and more educated, and housing policies have been explained clearly by the relevant government agencies, I wonder why members of the public need to depend heavily on real estate agents for their property transactions, including the buying and selling of their HDB flats.

For example, the HDB resale flat listing service, which was launched two years ago, has been a one-stop platform for prospective buyers and flat owners to perform their own transactions independently, without a property agent. 

However, my own experience of using the listing service has yielded no results since July, with no inquiries so far.

A close friend of mine, who wanted to sell his flat early in 2025, had also listed his flat on the same portal for more than two months and received only one inquiry during that period.

In the end, he had to engage property agents to market his flat on other portals and on social media.

I hope HDB provides a breakdown of the number of visitors to its resale portal and reviews whether enough effort has been made to educate the public on performing resale transactions on their own.

I am certainly not downplaying the presence and importance of real estate agents, but it would be beneficial if concrete steps were taken to enable flat owners to carry out their own sale or rental transactions.

Muhammad Dzul Azhan Sahban