I'm Singaporean, but I have to rent as well because of some extraneous reasons I won't go into.
My advice to people intending to rent, is always assume your LL is a money-grubbing POS @sshole, and work around that assumption.
Locals tend to shy away from the blatant scare-tactics and made-up laws with other locals, but I have heard many stories from my expatriate colleagues who have encountered LL's that were the sons and daughters of Satan.
Now, about your Agent.
Unfortunately, because the Agent thinks since you are not local, if you get frustrated enough, you will just never use his/her services again, which is fine by them since they treat you as a one-off commission.
If you have his/her name card and license number, you can report him/her to the company AND the authorities.
Since 2011,
property agents now need proper licenses, so now instead of being mercenary rogues, they are now Government approved rogues.
Find out which agency he/she works for. ERA? DWG? OrangeTee? Each of those companies have a website where you can report bad agents.
Their namecard has their Agent License number and Company registration number.
If that does work, report them to CEA (Council for Estate Agencies). It is a statutary board that regulates agents.
The complaint form can be found here :
http://www.cea.gov.sg/cea/content/resou ... tForm.html
You can tell the agent that unless he responds to your requests, you will file a complaint with CEA. Likely CEA will not suspend their license (meaning they can no longer work) but often the threat of suspension will spur them into action.
Now.... about your POS LL
You have a good case, because the TA includes the rental of furniture.
Now legally, it is always a case of "reasonable" use and wear and tear. It is not able to be quantified, but surely, 5 days is not reasonable by any means.
By the TA, it is my personal belief (which I am not sure has any basis in law) that the LL should provide for you what he had provided already, OR reduce the rental.
Example, you accepted the rental or premises at $2700/month and furniture at $1800/month. This $1800 is supposed to include whatever you got in there, no more no less.
So for example, you can't ask for curtains to be in the kitchen if the kitchen had none to begin with. You SHOULD get the chairs/bed replaced though.
Luckily for me, when I rented, the agent had good sense to tell me to put down in writing on the TA, what the rental covers.
I had a list of 30-40 items that were covered under the TA as rental. When the hall fan and TV died (same week), I had the furniture rental portion of my TA reduced by $100/month, and got an official addendum to my TA to reflect the new lower rental.
