Speech by SMS Sun Xueling at Singapore Estate Agents Conference 2025
Jun 18, 2025
Mr Adam Wang, President, SEAA
Mr Anthony Gan, CEO, SEAA
Ladies and gentlemen
Introduction
A very good afternoon to everyone. I would like to thank the Singapore Estate Agents Association (SEAA) for inviting me to today’s conference. I am delighted to be here and to have this opportunity to meet many of you for the first time.
SEAA has been a key partner in our collective efforts to achieve high standards of excellence and professionalism in the real estate agency industry. SEAA has spearheaded several initiatives to enhance the training and capabilities of our property agents, and has played an important bridging role through regular engagements with industry practitioners and policymakers.
Let me congratulate the coming together of the Singapore Estate Agents Association and the Institute of Estate Agents to form the new Singapore Institute of Estate Agents. This is an important milestone for the industry.
With a collective strength of over 15,000 property agents and agency leaders, I look forward to the new industry body representing the interests of property agencies and agents, and working with the Government to advance professionalism, capability development and long-term industry sustainability.
CEA’s Public Perception Survey 2024
The real estate agency industry has come a long way in just 15 years, since the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) was set up to regulate the industry. Over the past years, the industry has become even more professional and more trusted.
This is affirmed by CEA’s Public Perception Survey 2024, which found that 92% of property consumers were satisfied with the services provided by their property agents. This is the highest since the survey was first conducted in 2012, and is a testament to the industry’s sustained efforts in uplifting professional standards and strengthening consumer trust.
Specifically, the survey found that consumers found value in engaging property agents to facilitate faster property transactions through the agents’ contacts and networks; assist with procedures and paperwork; as well as secure better property prices or rent.
That said, consumer expectations remain high and consumers wished for property agents to improve in three areas:
First, understanding client needs and offering relevant professional advice;
Second, negotiating better prices and terms for their clients; and
Third, conducting relevant checks to ensure that property transactions are carried out in line with prevailing laws and regulations.
In line with this, about 3 in 4 consumers also expected property agents to facilitate at least one property transaction per year, to ensure that they stay familiar with the latest property transaction rules and guidelines.
Though consumer expectations are high, I am sure that through the hard work of SEAA and our partners, we will be able to meet these expectations.
Compliance
This brings us to the theme of today’s conference, which is enhancing real estate resilience through two key aspects – compliance and AI innovation.
The first aspect is compliance. In Singapore, we pride ourselves on being a clean and trusted financial centre for businesses and property transactions, and we must remain committed to combatting money laundering, terrorism financing, and proliferation financing. I say this with great enthusiasm because I spent six years with the Ministry of Home Affairs, and this was something that I was very focused on.
For Singapore to remain a trusted financial centre requires a strong partnership between the Government and industry stakeholders like yourselves. Property agencies and agents serve as crucial gatekeepers, alongside financial institutions and legal practitioners, in protecting our real estate sector from illicit activities.
Kindly allow me to speak briefly about the new Anti-Money Laundering and Other Matters (Estate Agents and Developers) Bill, which was passed in Parliament in April this year by the Ministry of National Development (MND).
This Bill strengthens current penalty frameworks to ensure more effective deterrence; and further aligns our regulatory regime more closely with Financial Action Taskforce (FATF) international standards.
What does this mean for the real estate agency industry? There are two key changes:
First, the Bill will prescribe maximum financial penalties for property agencies and agents on a ‘per breach’ basis instead of a ‘per case’ basis, for Anti-Money Laundering and Countering Financing of Terrorism (AML/CFT) breaches. This reflects the seriousness of each individual breach, and ensures that penalties are commensurate with the breaches committed.
Second, this will require property agencies and agents to conduct due diligence measures on unrepresented counterparties.
I would like all of us to recognise that laws are in place to safeguard ourselves against bad actors. Though the vast majority of our real estate agents are law-abiding and professional, we have to put in place laws to weed out the bad actors who can tarnish our sector’s reputation. I hope that we can look at these laws in that spirit.
AI Innovation
Beyond compliance, the second aspect to enhance resilience is AI innovation. This is especially pertinent in a digital era where AI and technology have become an integral part of our lives, transforming the way businesses operate and creating unprecedented opportunities.
Just before this, I was having a discussion with SEAA Exco members who told me that our property agents must now have many sets of skills, such as being able to market property listings not just through word of mouth, but through social media. This shows that digital media has become a part of our lives and also part of consumers’ expectations of property agents.
For some of us who might be more senior, we can even ask our teenage children to help us since they are digital natives. We must always think about how best to use AI and technology because it is transforming the way businesses operate and creating unprecedented opportunities for us.
As I said earlier, it is now common to see property agents using apps and tools developed by their agencies to easily pull out a plethora of information on the go for their clients, such as property trends and financial calculations.
They also use GenAI to address customer enquiries and write marketing materials. This also means less time spent on routine tasks, which creates more time to build trusted relationships with clients.
I was also pleased to note Mr Wang’s announcement earlier on the new Multi-Listing System co-broking platform, which will help SEAA members access more property listings and find opportunities to partner each other as co-brokers. The more information you have on hand, the more services and information you can bring to your clients, which increases the value-add that you bring to them.
At an organisational level, property agencies are also continuing the good momentum to digitalise and streamline property transaction processes, so that your agents can provide better and faster customer service to their clients.
Conclusion
There are so many ways we can work together – the Government, real estate agencies and agencies alike – to build a forward-looking real estate agency sector.
Thank you once again for inviting me to the event. I look forward to hearing your views and working together to strengthen the real estate agency industry.