‘They don’t simply open doors and earn five figures’: How much do property agents really earn?

SINGAPORE – As a child, Mervyn Ong would follow his property agent parents to house viewings and help them distribute flyers in letterboxes. This stirred in him a passion for the profession which he later spent years trying to enter.

It took the 38-year-old nine attempts over 15 years to eventually pass the Real Estate Salesperson (RES) examination to become a registered property agent in 2023.

“I don’t like to be deskbound. I have wanted to be a real estate agent since young, but the exams were very hard to pass... I am not someone who is study-smart, but I was determined,” said Ong, who even hired a tutor to help him prepare for the examinations.

“It took me 15 years, but I don’t feel ‘paiseh’ (about it),” added Ong, using the Hokkien term for embarrassment.

Ong loves his job as he finds it meaningful to help people find their ideal homes, at the same time “earn a good income”.

In his first year, Ong earned a gross commission of about $80,000. By his third year in 2025, his take-home income had risen to just over $200,000.

But that income came with substantial costs. His agency took a 10 per cent cut of his commissions, while he spent close to $20,000 on property portal advertising alone in 2025, on top of expenses for videos and market reports.

Whether or not these figures are representative of the income of property agents may become known after the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) starts collecting agents’ commission data monthly, starting from 2027. This is part of an industry review to raise professional standards and improve transparency.

The statutory board may publish aggregated figures to help prospective agents make their decision over joining the industry.

Ahead of that, The Straits Times has obtained commission data from PropNex Realty and ERA Realty Network, two of Singapore’s largest property agencies that account for 60 per cent of agents here, for an idea of how much active agents earn.

Among its active agents who have each completed at least three transactions from 2023 to 2025, ERA said the average annual income among this group in 2025 was $87,300.

The median gross commission they earned in 2025 was $29,000. The median was $341,000 among the top 10 per cent, and $12,000 for those in the bottom 10 per cent. Gross commission is the total brokerage commission earned from a property deal before any deductions, including those due to co-broking (where two or more agents work to complete a deal), excluding goods and services taxes.

ERA’s data provided to ST also showed a wide range in earnings. Half of its active agents earned less than $60,000 in gross commission in 2025. Another 16 per earned between $60,000 and below $100,000, while 20 per cent earned between $100,000 and below $200,000. The remaining 14 per cent earned $200,000 or more.

ERA had more than 8,600 registered agents in 2025. Two-thirds of them are active today and have completed at least three transactions in the last three years, said ERA.

PropNex gave ST the average annual income of its active agents, which is about $86,500. This figure is derived from the 81 per cent of its salesforce strength of over 12,600 who are active agents.

PropNex’s data included transactions in which its agents participated in a co-broking capacity.

Huttons and OrangeTee & Tie, another two players in the industry, declined to provide commission data.

ERA’s and PropNex’s data cannot be compared directly – an average figure can be pulled upwards by high earners, while a median represents the midpoint of a group. But they show how agents’ earnings vary widely.

Industry observers also point out that commission and income figures may not show how much work and expenditure agents incurred in generating those commissions and how much they truly earn after deducting those expenses – whether the revenue figures are provided by CEA or property agencies.

Another factor for prospective agents to mull over is the unpredictable nature of income flow – they could swing between famine and feast. ERA Singapore key executive officer Eugene Lim said that unlike salaried employees, property agents have no basic salary, or CPF contribution from employers. And it is very common for even active agents to go months without income.

“The Singapore property market moves in cycles. Seasonal sluggishness, particularly in the festive and year-end lulls, combined with government policy changes, cooling measures or global economic uncertainties, can cause transaction volumes to fluctuate,” said Lim.

The wait for payment can be long even after a deal has been sealed.

PropNex Realty chief agency officer Eddie Lim, said: “Active salespersons may take three to six months to close a deal and then another three to six months after completion of the deal to receive their commission. We have seen salespersons receiving their commission even 12 to 24 months after completing the deal for some new launches.”

For Ong, rental deals helped ease cash flow in his first year in the job. That year, he secured about six to eight sales and rental transactions.

As his business grew, his expenses mounted. In 2025, Ong spent close to $20,000 advertising on property portals. He also paid for servers to host his videos and about $700 a year for subscriptions to property market reports.

Producing a marketing video could cost between $500 and $1,200 each, said Ong.

Like Ong, ERA agent Semantha Soon was attracted to the entrepreneurial side of property sales.

But her route into the industry was entirely different: The 28-year-old business graduate who had received a Singapore-Industry Scholarship got interested in real estate while serving a four-year bond with PSA Corporation Limited, where she handled tenancy agreements for the leasing of warehouses, among other duties.

The flexibility of a property agent’s working hours also appealed to her.

Soon passed the RES examination on her first attempt and joined the industry in January 2025 after the tenure of her bond.

In her first year, she earned $104,000 in gross commission. She recorded more than 20 transactions that year, but commissions for about half the deals were still pending payment by the end of 2025, said Soon.

Soon focuses largely on new property launches. Her biggest single commission so far was about $30,000 for the sale of a two-bedroom condominium unit.

The deal took two to three months of engagement with the clients, a couple looking for an investment property, she said.

During that period, she spent time understanding the buyers’ needs, researching and shortlisting options that matched their budget.

The eventual deal was closed at a second new launch that Soon took the buyers to view.

Soon said besides a 10 per cent cut from her commission that goes to the agency, there are also marketing expenses and entertainment expenses that come out of her own pocket. “If I spend a certain amount on marketing today, I cannot directly attribute that cost to a particular client. I have to look at my total marketing expenses for the year and average them out over 12 months,” said Soon, adding that her expenses amounted to about $30,000 last year.

Not all launches result in successful transactions, she added, as desired units can be snapped up early, or some clients may have cold feet. She recalled a client who decided not to proceed with a purchase on the booking day after feeling overwhelmed by the size of the financial commitment.

ERA’s Lim said a common misconception about agents is that they simply open doors for viewings and earn five-figure commissions. In reality, agents spend heavily upfront on advertising, professional photography, home staging and other marketing moves, with no certainty of completing a transaction.

As Soon put it: “A lot of time and effort goes in before you know whether there will even be a commission at the end of it.”