The $29,000 Median: What Property Agents Actually Earn, and Why It Decides How Your Home Gets Sold

Half of Singapore's active agents took home under $60,000 in gross commission last year — and that arithmetic, not the headline 2 per cent, is what shapes the marketing behind your listing.

The number that should reframe every commission conversation in Singapore this year is not 2 per cent. It is $29,000 — the median gross commission earned in 2025 by active agents at one of the country's two largest agencies, meaning agents who had already closed at least three transactions between 2023 and 2025.

The median agent is not the agent you imagine

Commission data obtained by The Straits Times from the two biggest agencies — which between them account for 60 per cent of all registered salespersons here — puts hard figures on a profession that has long been discussed through anecdote. Among active agents at one of them, the average annual income in 2025 was $87,300. The median gross commission was $29,000.

Those two numbers cannot both describe a typical person. The gap between them is the entire story. Half of active agents earned less than $60,000 in gross commission in 2025 — before agency splits, before advertising, before tax.

Break it further and the skew is brutal. The median among the top 10 per cent was $341,000. Among the bottom 10 per cent, $12,000. Same licence, same rate card, roughly a 28-fold difference in output.

And remember: this is the filtered pool. Roughly 36,000 to 38,000 salespersons are registered with the Council for Estate Agencies. Around 40 per cent of them closed fewer than three residential deals across the entire 2023–2025 period. The median agent across the whole register transacts about two residential homes a year.

Gross is not net, and net is not soon

Gross commission is the figure before deductions — including co-broking splits — and it is not what lands in a bank account. Three things happen to it on the way down.

• The agency split. Agencies retain roughly 10 to 30 per cent depending on seniority and tier. Newer agents sit at the punitive end.
• Marketing, paid personally. Listing portal subscriptions and ad credits are out-of-pocket. One agent profiled in the reporting, Mervyn Ong, spent close to $20,000 on portal advertising alone in 2025, on top of video production and market reports.
• Self-employment costs. No base salary, no employer CPF. Compulsory MediSave contributions, CEA registration and renewal fees, continuing professional development, professional indemnity insurance, income tax.

Then there is timing. Agents commonly wait three to six months after completion for a resale payout, and considerably longer — into the 12 to 24 month range — on certain new launch developer sales. A deal signed today may fund nothing until well into next year.

Ong's own trajectory illustrates both the ceiling and the grind. He took nine attempts over 15 years to pass the Real Estate Salesperson exam, registering only in 2023. First year: about $80,000 in gross commission. By 2025, his third year, take-home had risen to just over $200,000 — after his agency took 10 per cent and after that $20,000 advertising bill.

The same 2 per cent buys a full marketing campaign from one agent and a photo upload from another. The rate tells you almost nothing.

Why your "2 per cent" is usually 1 per cent

Sellers routinely misread what they are paying for. CEA does not fix or cap commissions — every rate is a commercial negotiation, formalised through a Prescribed Estate Agency Agreement that must state the fee, the services and whether GST applies before work begins.

Market convention runs like this. HDB resale: 2 per cent from the seller, 1 per cent from a represented buyer, plus 9 per cent GST. Private resale: typically 2 per cent from the seller, ranging higher on landed and luxury stock, with the buyer usually paying nothing directly — the buyer's agent is instead paid out of the seller's pool through co-broking, commonly split down the middle.

So on a $2 million condominium at 2 per cent, the commission pool is $40,000. Split 50/50 with the buyer's agent, the listing agent's side is $20,000. On an 80/20 agency split, that becomes $16,000 gross — before tax and before whatever was spent marketing the unit for the preceding four months.

This is why halving the headline rate does not halve the agent's income. It can close it. Cut a private resale listing fee to 1 per cent and there is no room to offer a standard co-broke share, which removes the financial reason for every other agent in the market to bring their buyer to your door.

The fee you negotiate is also the advertising budget for your own home. Push it below the point where the listing agent can still fund portal exposure and pay a co-broking buyer's agent, and you have quietly narrowed your own buyer pool.

The new launch pays more. Price that in.

Here is the structural conflict nobody advertises. On resale, an agent's realistic share is effectively around 1 per cent, contested, and paid months after completion. On a new launch, the developer pays the marketing fee — commonly 2 to 3 per cent, and higher during incentive drives — and the buyer pays nothing at all.

That is not corruption. It is arithmetic. But a buyer weighing a showflat against a resale unit should understand that the two options are not economically neutral to the person advising on them.

The same applies at the other end. CEA's Code of Ethics strictly prohibits an agent from representing, or collecting fees from, both sides of the same transaction. What it cannot legislate away is the softer version: a listing agent who is slow to accommodate co-broking viewings, because a direct buyer preserves the full pool. Sellers should ask, explicitly, how co-broke enquiries will be handled.

A softer market makes the fee matter more, not less

All of this lands in a market that has stopped doing the work for the seller. URA data shows private residential prices rose 0.5 per cent in Q2 2026, moderating from 0.9 per cent in Q1, for cumulative first-half growth of 1.4 per cent — down from 1.8 per cent a year earlier.

The HDB resale index has done something it has not done in nearly seven years: fallen twice in a row, down 0.1 per cent in Q1 2026 and 0.3 per cent in Q2. Meanwhile roughly 13,484 flats cross their five-year Minimum Occupation Period in 2026, and the Confirmed List of the Government Land Sales programme carries 9,320 private units for the full year, more than 50 per cent above the ten-year average.

More supply, flatter prices, buyers with time. That is precisely the environment in which visibility, staging, pricing discipline and negotiation earn their keep — and precisely the environment in which a stripped-down listing sits.

Negotiate the deliverables, not just the rate

None of this argues that 2 per cent is sacred. It argues that the rate is the wrong variable to bargain over in isolation. The Prescribed Estate Agency Agreement is the place to convert a fee into obligations.

• Specify the marketing. Portal tier and boosting cadence, professional photography, video walkthrough, floor plan, open house schedule. If you are paying a full rate, these should be committed, not implied.
• Ask about co-broking. What share is offered to buyers' agents, and how quickly are their viewing requests accepted?
• Check the track record. CEA's public register shows an agent's transactions over the past 24 months, split by HDB, private and rental, plus any disciplinary history. Two deals a year is the median. Decide what you want.
• Consider tiering. On higher-quantum or multi-property mandates, a baseline fee plus a share of anything achieved above a strike price aligns incentives better than a flat percentage ever will.

Buyers of private resale should note the flip side: because you generally pay nothing directly, your representation is funded by the other side's fee. If you want an adviser with no exposure to which unit you choose, you can engage and pay one directly — an option the industry bodies have been pushing for years.

From 2027, the argument gets an evidence base

Everything above rests on data from two agencies. That changes. From 2027, CEA will collect commission data from agencies monthly, as part of a review aimed at professional standards and transparency, and may publish aggregated figures so prospective entrants can see what the job actually pays.

The same cycle brings a currency test: from 1 January 2027, agents must complete at least three transactions over a three-year licensing cycle, or sit a refresher exam, to renew registration. Registration and licence validity move from one year to three.

Read those two reforms together and the direction is obvious. The three-deal threshold thins a register where 40 per cent of agents already fall below it. The commission data does something harder — it gives consumers, for the first time, a public benchmark against which to judge whether a fee is standard, generous or fantasy.

Until then, the honest summary for anyone about to sign an agency agreement is this. The median active agent grosses $29,000 a year; the top decile grosses $341,000. You are not negotiating with an industry. You are negotiating with one person, and the fee you agree determines what that person can afford to spend on your home.