Why Engage a Property Agent When Buying Your Property?
Buying a property is one of life's major decisions and having a property agent can greatly benefit...
In Singapore, PropertyGuru or propertyguru.com.sg is usually the first to mind for most when they think about selling or buying their dream home. With such a powerful tool at the hand of consumers, real estate agents are faced with difficulties in marketing their services when the market is so transparent and listing information is readily available online.
We feel that having such educated consumers and clients enables us to truly provide them with the services they need, and our clients understand and find value in the services we provide.
Tips to Best Utilize PropertyGuru
We have seen great improvements in PropertyGuru over the years on what they showcase for property owners. Having said that, we will be sharing 5 tips on how you can use PropertyGuru today to search for your next property.
1. Applying Filters
We need to talk about filters. We've used filters in excel, at work on our CRM systems, and even through our own contacts.
Applying a detailed filter will greatly help you in pinpointing the best fit properties for you.
Examples of filters being applied to illustrate how filters can be used.
2. Using Search Alert
Efficiency matters. Why repeat a process over again when you can perform a setup once and receive regular updates on your potential listings. Creating a search alert would be the way to go.
Toggle the Save this search for later which will prompt your email to send you email notifications.
Having set that up, any time a new listing gets populated in PropertyGuru under your specification, an email notification will be pushed to you based on the filters you have created. This will greatly automate your property search.
3. Property Guides
We're impressed with the large amount of well-written articles on nearly every topic on PropertyGuru. You will be able to find valuable information almost for anything:
An example of the types of articles you would find on PropertyGuru.
4. Finding Rentals and Ruling out Fake Listings
Unfortunately, as the platform scales, there are some who take advantage of the platform and "fish" for clients by placing fake listings on the site. And when you reach out, they'd swoop in to say that the current listing has been sold but they have others available for you.
To make things worse, there has been news coverage on a rampant new type of scam involving the collection of rental deposits by scammers who pretend to be real estate agents. Be aware that these scams may also happen on other listing sites such as 99.co, EdgeProp.sg, and even marketplaces like Carousell.
The benefit of searching for listings on PropertyGuru over say Carousell is that PropertyGuru accounts are usually set up by an account manager who will verify the person's real estate license status — but it's always in your best interest to be wary of anything that may look suspicious.
So how do you mitigate these risks when looking for a unit on your own? How do you know that you are dealing with a legitimate registered real estate agent? CEA stipulates that for all advertisements, real estate agents have to clearly display their CEA License for both the Estate Agency and Salesperson.
For context, the license that begins with an “L” belongs to the estate agency while the license beginning with an “R” belongs to the real estate agent. 
With this, you can do a quick check on CEA's public register to verify that this agent is a current practicing real estate agent.
5. Using CEA's Public Register
You can click here to visit CEA's public register.
From here, you use the agent's information listed on PropertyGuru or any other property website you've found to search the following:
Searching by License number:
Searching by contact number:
Searching by business name:
From this, you're able to verify if the real estate agent is currently practicing and has been registered with CEA to avoid scams and to ensure your agents are exactly who they are.
More Tips and Tricks
These are the best tips we've shared with our clients and have used ourselves when serving clients. One part of being able to search for the right home is how familiar you are with the different tools and platforms out there. Another aspect of finding the home you want is the network and resources that you'll unlock when working with a real estate agent.
Working with Keystone allows you to access our network, resources, and more to ensure that your needs and wants are met. If you've tried searching on your own to no avail, reach out to us (or WhatsApp) and we can share how we're able to add value for you.
