Within the last 60 days, Aspen Heights Condo (606 units) in the River Valley Road, The Capri (18 units) in Stevens Road, Parc Vista (2^nd phase but total is 638 units) in Jurong, The Blossomvale (220 units) in Dunearn Road, Fifth Avenue Condo (70 units) and The Sierra (60 units) have been approved for occupation.

Many first-time Owners discover that the Developers are renting their own units as well. Developers need to rent out their unsold units and have the people and money to advertise and promote their rental properties. Many give standard or even 1.5 months' commission to agents too.

Many private owner Landlords are busy working and are difficult to contact. Many also don't want to incur any advertisement & promotion costs too.

Landlords who advertise in the Straits Times or contact rental realtors persistently and are easily available to open their units for inspection anytime find their properties rented out quicker (within 3 months if not in good locations).

Competitive advantages of private owners over many Developers because the latter have the following disadvantages viz.,

• slower in response, having to refer to Management.
• overworked marketing staff with little motivation to close or stay back late or during weekends.

• wordy lease agreement that runs into twice as many pages as the private owners and have many conditions protecting the Developer's interest.
• lawyers or administrators taking a very long time (over weeks in one case) to finalise the lease agreement, giving prospects time to change their minds or find better deals.
• Inflexible rental targets and will not negotiate to close fast.
• higher rentals than small Owners but not true nowadays as some undercut the Owners to secure the lease.

Unfortunately for small Owners, many Developers are nimble as the pressure of high interest rates affect their bottom-line as well. They have higher advertisement budgets and some do post list of available properties to rental realtors occasionally (fortunately for small owners that it is not regularly as Developers have a good database of rental realtors who come to collect keys to view properties).

Know your immediate competition (Developer but usually neighbouring condos) and be pro-active yourself.

Be decisive and realistic knowing that there are many better and newer housing if you hesitate.

If you are a Realtor Owner, give full agency commission and forget about the little saving of co-broking fees as there are just too many Owner listings to make yours attractive to residential realtors with prospective Tenants.

Early occupancy is the key to the profitability in such over supply situations, not savings on agency commissions!