Rental negotiable

[lovescatsanddogs]

SMS is right. "Negotiations" often means "I've decided to raise my price, take it or leave it."

Crap. I wish I knew that when I rented my place out. Might not have gotten less than what I originally asked for, then.



lol

[sundaymorningstaple]

You mean finally at least one landlord got their just deserts?

[erikpatsg]

Forks, what we did whenever we had to deal with an agent was to simply ignore all their beautiful offers and only talk about the deal/condo that we were interested in. If they still didn't listen we would simply walk away. Worked brilliantly

[Forks]

Forks, what we did whenever we had to deal with an agent was to simply ignore all their beautiful offers and only talk about the deal/condo that we were interested in. If they still didn't listen we would simply walk away. Worked brilliantly

I learnt that second time around, I was a bit slow on the ball first time but yes, its better to stick to yer guns.

[rchdk]

15% off the asking price is not "rentals are falling" if the asking price was 50% more than the landlord was receiving on the last lease. It just means you got him to come down on his asking price. Unless, of course, you were able to document the last lease amount being the same as the asking price offered to you.

This just means the market is "softening". As of yet, rental are not decreasing from former lease levels.

If the unit next door (identical, same condition etc etc) got renewed/leased out last week at 1000sgd and you can only get 900sgd today for the exact same type of apartment then "the market" for that type of units has fallen since last week iregardless of what your previous rate was. Yes, it might have increased for your specific unit in the long term but guess this thread is more focussing on the short term hence not really relevant what the rent was 1/2/3 years ago but more which way its moving now - and that's south...

[sundaymorningstaple]

come back again when your lease is renewed. If it's lower than your last lease in the same unit, then and only then can you say the market is softening.

[rchdk]

is that your way of defining a market trend? i'm talking about how the general market is moving now... are we talking about the same?

[durain]

let's put it this way, it's a tenant market now, not a landlord market.

[sundaymorningstaple]

I would suggest you do a little more research besides looking at the local paper. What they call softening is incorrect if you look at it objectively. If the units are anything but brand new, then you have to look at the previous rentals and the current actual renewal/new lease rates. If they are still increasing over the previous leases amounts, the rates are still increasing, just not as at just a high level. If you want to call increasing rents as softening of the market, feel free to do so. But if I have to pay more than last years, it is not softening to me. The majority of renters are still paying more for renewal of their previous leases. So I'm afraid that while my explanation may not be the newspapers, my is based on logic and not BS.

[rchdk]

I would suggest you to stop making assumptions as to which background I made my comments on as long as you clearly don't know.

In addition I would also suggest you to do a bit more research on how to define market movements in the short run which is what this thread is about (if rentals are negotiable ie what happens right now) - you could start looking at my previous post. If you wanna keep talking about what the market has done in the long run, feel free to do so, but it's quite irrelevant in this thread.

[sundaymorningstaple]

rchdk, you are actually pretty funny. Your are talking textbook meanings. I'm talking reality. Big difference.

It's okay though, you can have it your way. I'm not in the rental market.

[lovescatsanddogs]

You mean finally at least one landlord got their just deserts?

lol. I prefer to think that it means that I am a reasonable landlord.

I'm just of the school of thought that the supplier/landlord should be prepared to expect to get less than asking price, and buyer/tenant should be prepared to pay more than the opening price. Meeting in the middle and all that.

[jpatokal]

This is not going to work if you don't already know Singapore, but if you've been here for a while and found some nice places to live, then you can just trawl the Internet yourself and search for listings in that/those specific condos. No one site has it all, but through Google you'll cast a wider net than you could through any single agent, you'll get a very good idea of the prices, and with luck you'll even find those (rare) listings where the landlord is renting directly, without an agent's fee needed. It does take a bit of patience and footwork (mousework?) though, and you can basically forget any listing that's been up for more than a week.

But for your first apartment in Singapore you'll definitely want to engage the friendly and knowledgeable professionals at singaporeexpats.com