Working With Us
What to expect when you engage us.
The scorecards tell you which projects hold up on the fundamentals. They don't tell you what happens once you've decided to move.
This is that part: every stage of a sale or a purchase, what we produce at each one, and what you have to decide. Same principle as the methodology, published in full, so you know what you're getting before you commit to anything.
Every engagement starts the same way
An hour, usually less. No cost, no obligation.
It's mostly fact-finding. Your timeline, your financing, your family stage, and what you're actually trying to achieve, not what you think you're supposed to say. Nothing gets recommended in that hour, because we don't know enough yet to recommend anything.
What you get: a rough read on what would suit your situation, what your real constraints are, and whether the plan is feasible at all.
What we might tell you: don't move yet. If the numbers say waiting is better, that's the advice. We'd rather say it now than eight months into a mandate.
Track one
If you're selling
Whether it's an HDB flat, a condo, or landed, the sequence is the same. We start with the money, not the price.
- 1Proceeds
- 2Timing
- 3Grade
- 4Price
- 5Market
- 6Negotiate
- 7Keys
1 · What you actually walk away with
Most sellers start with an asking price. We start at the other end: the Sale Proceeds calculator works out your net cash after the outstanding loan, the CPF refund with accrued interest, and every cost in between.
That number is usually the surprise. The CPF refund in particular catches people out, because it comes off the proceeds before you see a cent.
What you get: the net cash figure, and the sale price required to produce the number you actually need.
What you decide: whether the plan still works. If it doesn't, we change it here, before anything is committed.
2 · Timing and exposure
We check your Seller's Stamp Duty position, your MOP date if it's an HDB flat, and your ABSD exposure if a purchase is coming.
This one has teeth. For any residential property bought on or after 4 July 2025 the SSD holding period is four years, not three, and the rates run 16% in year one down to 4% in year four, charged on the higher of your selling price or market value. Sell eleven months in and the duty alone can exceed the gain.
What you get: a dated timeline with the cost attached to each window, and a straight answer on whether holding another quarter is worth what it costs you.
3 · What you're actually selling
We run your project through RPS and show you the result, including the parts that don't flatter it.
This matters more than sellers expect. A buyer's case for paying less is built on your project's weak factors: lease decay, distance to the station, a thin school catchment. If you've seen the scorecard, you know which arguments are coming and which ones are worth conceding. If you haven't, you're negotiating blind against someone who has done the homework.
What you get: your project's grade against same-vintage peers, factor by factor, with the drags named. The same scorecard a buyer can pull up for free.
RPS covers private resale condos. For HDB and landed we work the same demand fundamentals manually.
4 · The price the market will pay
Your competition isn't the transaction from eight months ago. It's the units listed alongside yours right now.
So we look at both. On the transaction side, Resale Price Check benchmarks against same-project, same-bedroom sales within ±20% of your floor area, weighted toward recent ones on an 18-month half-life, because the market moves and old sales mislead. On the listing side: how many comparable units are live in your project and your estate today, what they're asking, how long they've sat, and which ones have already cut price and by how much.
What you get: a pricing range the market will actually transact at, with the competing listings named and the transactions behind the number shown. Not a flattering figure designed to win your listing.
What you decide: where in the range to launch. Price at the top and you become the unit that makes every competing listing look reasonable. Price near the bottom and you leave money behind. We'll show you what each end costs, in time and in dollars.
5 · Going to market
Photography, floor plan, listing copy and portal placement are ours, and so is the bill. You are never invoiced for a photographer or a portal boost, whatever your property is worth and however long it takes to sell. You see the listing before it goes live, not after.
Reach.Your listing doesn't sit with one agent. It goes out across the team, which means it's in front of every buyer any of us is currently working with, not just the ones who happen to find the portal ad.
What you get: feedback after every viewing, the actual comments including the unflattering ones, plus running updates on how the listing is performing: viewing numbers, enquiry volume, what competing listings have done, and what the market is telling us about your price.
You get that whether or not there's good news in it. Silence from an agent usually means the news is bad.
6 · Negotiation
Everything up to here is preparation. This is the stage that moves your number. Every offer comes to you in writing with the buyer's financing position, their timeline, and our read on how firm it is.
We negotiate from information, not from pressure: what else the buyer has been viewing, how long they've been searching, what's competing with you, and where their real ceiling sits. Then we take it as far as it will go.
What you get: a recommendation with the reasoning attached. If an offer is the best you're likely to see, we'll say so. If we think there's more on the table, we'll say that too, and tell you what it costs to find out.
What we won't do: push you to accept early because we'd like the deal closed.
7 · From acceptance to keys
Option, exercise, HDB portal submissions or the legal completion, CPF and loan discharge, handover. We coordinate the lawyers, the bank and the buyer's side, and we chase them, so you don't spend your evenings following up on documents you didn't know you needed.
What you get: one schedule with every date and every payment, kept current as things move, and one person accountable for it from the first conversation to the day you hand over the keys.
Track two
If you're buying
- 1Budget
- 2Shortlist
- 3Unit
- 4Offer
- 5Keys
1 · Budget and holding power
We run TDSR/MSR affordability, then stress-test it with the Safety Net calculator: how long you hold if income stops or rates move against you.
If you'll still have a housing loan running when you buy, the ceiling drops hard. A second housing loan is capped at 45% of the property value with at least 25% payable in cash, and lower still if the tenure runs past 30 years or beyond age 65. That gap is the most common reason a purchase plan collapses late.
What you get: two numbers. What you can borrow, and what you should borrow. They're rarely the same.
2 · The shortlist
Scored, not curated. Resale condos come through RPS; launches through NPS, including the buy-new-or-resale-within-1km comparison and the holding period your entry price implies. HDB and landed are assessed on the same demand fundamentals, worked manually.
What you get: the same output we look at, with the projects that scored badly left on the list, so you can see what was ruled out and why.
What you decide: which trade-offs you'll make. The framework doesn't score sea views, ID quality, or your commute. You do.
3 · Unit level
The scorecard grades the project. It can't grade the unit. This is where stack, facing, floor, layout efficiency, and the part that decides your exit: your entry price against everything else transacted in that project.
What you get: a per-unit read on what you're paying relative to the project, and what that does to your holding period. Buy well and the exit takes care of itself.
4 · Offer and negotiation
What you get: a walk-away number agreed with you before we open negotiation, and every counter reported back the same day.
What we won't do: talk you past your own ceiling because the deal is close.
5 · From offer to keys
Option, exercise, loan drawdown, stamp duties, inspection and collection. Same as a sale: we hold the schedule and chase the parties.
Track three
If you're selling and buying at once
This is the hard one, and it's where most of the money is won or lost. Not on the property, on the sequence.
If you're upgrading to private and buy before you sell, you pay ABSD upfront: 20% for a Singapore Citizen buying a second residential property. You can claim it back, but only if you sell the first property within six monthsof buying the second, and IRAS does not grant extensions. Not for a soft market, not for cooling measures, not for a property that simply didn't sell. Sell first and you avoid that entirely, but you need somewhere to live, and you're exposed if prices move while you're out of the market.
Downgrading to an HDB flat is a different problem. A Singapore Citizen buying a flat pays no ABSD, so the trap there isn't stamp duty: it's the 15-month wait-out after selling private, and where you live in between.
Neither path is safer in the abstract. The right one depends on which risk you can actually absorb.
Buy first
You front the ABSD
- 20% ABSD upfront (SC, second property)
- Refundable only if you sell within 6 months
- No IRAS extensions — the deadline is fixed
Sell first
You carry timing risk
- No ABSD outlay
- Need interim housing between homes
- Exposed if prices rise while you're out
We map the chain through the Sale & Purchase Planner and put the following in front of you before you commit to either leg:
- Sell first or buy first, with the ABSD and SSD cost of each path in dollars, not principles.
- The gap. If the sale completes before the purchase, where do you live, and what does that cost, including storage and a short lease.
- Bridging. Whether you need it, what it costs, and whether the alternative is simply a longer completion.
- The rules that constrain your order.MOP on an HDB flat. The 15-month wait-out if you're selling private and buying an HDB resale flat. Whichever applies, it decides your sequence before preference does.
- What happens if one leg slips. Buyers pull out. Loans get re-assessed. We agree the fallback before you need it, not during.
What you get: one timeline with both transactions on it and every decision point marked.
Going deeper.We've written the full arithmetic up separately: Buy First or Sell First? The Upgrader Mistake That Costs $360,000 works the numbers on a $1.8M upgrade, and They Bought the Condo First to Lock the Unit follows a composite couple through what it cost them.
How we communicate
- Feedback after every viewing.The actual comments, including the ones you won't enjoy hearing.
- Updates on how your listing is performing. Viewing numbers, enquiry volume, what competing listings have done, and what the market is saying about your price. Good week or bad.
- Reachable around the clock.You deal with one person from the first conversation to handover. When that person isn't available, someone on the team who already knows your file picks up. You never restart your story with a stranger.
- Transparent negotiation. Every offer and every counter reaches you in writing, with our read attached. Nothing is filtered on the way to you.
What we won't do
- Quote you a price we can't defend with transactions. If the number you want isn't supportable, we'll show you why. You're free to find someone who'll agree with you. We'd just rather you knew.
- Steer you toward new or resale before you've seen both. Whether a brand-new launch or a resale is the better buy depends on your entry price and how long you plan to hold. You get the pros and cons of each laid out in full, with the numbers underneath them, before you choose.
- Recommend decoupling, or any structuring, without running the cost first. Here's the calculator.
- Tell you the market is about to move. Nobody knows. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something.
- List your home before it's ready. A rushed launch burns your best two weeks of exposure.
What we need from you
- Your real numbers. Cash, CPF, outstanding loan, other properties, other commitments. Advice built on rounded guesses is worth roughly what it costs to produce.
- Decisions when they're needed. Property moves in windows, and windows close.
- Tell us when you disagree.If a recommendation doesn't sit right, say so. Half the time you're seeing something we aren't.
- An exclusive mandate on a sale.We work sole listings only, and it's not about protecting a fee. A property marketed by four agents at four prices tells buyers the seller is uncertain, and uncertainty is what they negotiate against. One listing, one price, one story, and a team behind it rather than four parties competing to undercut each other with your asset.
After the keys
The transaction ends. The relationship doesn't.
Property is the largest asset most households will ever hold, and the decisions don't stop at completion: refinancing, tenancy, a lease-decay question a decade out, a child reaching BTO age, a parent downsizing. You shouldn't have to re-explain your situation to a stranger every time.
So you stay on our list, and you can call. No campaign, no obligation, nothing to buy.
For life, at no cost
TRIBE Concierge
Everyone who has transacted with us joins, automatically and for life. There's nothing to sign up for and nothing to pay.
- A birthday greeting and a gift, every year.
- Festive gifts through the year.
- First look at anything we're building before it goes public.
We don't think this needs a business justification. You trusted us with the biggest financial decision of your life. Remembering your birthday is the least of it.
Stamp duty, ABSD and loan-to-value figures on this page reflect prevailing IRAS, HDB and MAS rules and are stated for general reference only. They are not financial, legal or tax advice, and the remission conditions summarised here are not exhaustive. Rules change. Verify your own position with IRAS, HDB and your bank before committing.