Simply Citified!

It is every newlywed couple's dream to move out on our own, and we decided to just rent a room for now so that we can get used to the new lifestyle. Besides, getting a house in Singapore is a huge financial commitment, and we wanted to just take it slow.

We started our house-hunting a few months back and our idea was to try and find one on our own - you know, without getting an agent involved. So we hunted.. and hunted... and hunted... checked out most of the real estate websites like propertyguru, stproperty, roomsdb, iproperty etc. but most of the listings were made by agents, and they had a very popular method of listing a much lower rental value just to attract possible tenants... and then when you contact them, they drop the bomb on you.

Some of them don't upload photos of the house / room in the listings. Sometimes, they even provide false listings. All in the name of competitiveness (I think there are more real estate agents in Singapore than traffic lights!)

So anyway, as we ran out of time, we decided to just change our strategy and seek the help of an agent. First we contact a Chinese agent, whose contacts we came across online in gumtree.com or something. He had listed a room in Hougang and all the specifications met our requirements as well.

SO we contacted him... and he told us to check out his website (which happened to be a blog) and see if there are any other listings we're interested in. We thought he's just so nice to get a list of rooms we're interested in so he can help us pick out the best one. BUT, it turned out that he'd already closed the deals for most of the rooms mentioned in his blog, and not only didn't he bother to update it but also conveniently forgot to mention that tiny detail to us. We wasted our time searching through his whole "website", and at the end of the day, he left us high and dry with just one room out of our shortlisted rooms available for viewing.

We decided to view it.

So we fixed a time for the next day. The room was at Boon Lay. We left early. We reached Boon Lay early.

BUT the room was so far inside the residential area, that by the time we found the block, we were half an hour late.

Once we were under the block, we called the agent and guess what. He had left the place, because he thought we were "not going to come anymore". Well, for the sake of simple courtesy or at least client service, he could have called me and asked if there were any changes in our plan. I find that very unprofessional and mainly because of that we decided not to take that room. It was a common room in a nice flat, with built-in wardrobes but no bed. We were to share the house with an Indian Muslim family of 3.

That was our first experience with a real-estate agent.

After that we decided not to take our chances with unknown agents, and contacted a friend of my parents' and PropNex agent, Mr. Arun Sathyan. He was really friendly and professional. Believe it or not, he found us a room which matched all our specifications within just one day! We were extremely satisfied with his service and would recommend him anytime to anyone who's looking to rent or buy a room or house in Singapore.

We signed the agreement and shifted on the second day. We're back in India now counting down to our wedding... :)

I will update his contact details here once he's approved of it. Till then, feel free to drop me a message if you'd like to get his details.