Selling Real Estate, Selling Happiness by Fu Ceyi and Kenneth Tan

The law case studies are the best part of this book -- approximately 50 pages of good highly relevant discussions.

The open question is how good the coverage of principles is ... time to dig deeper into Real Estate Law.

When reports came in of such transactions being completed over the Web, Bill Gates published Business @ the Speed of Thought in 1999 and predicted the Internet would "disintermediate" real estate professionals by bringing buyers and sellers together directly ... thus eliminating the middleperson. At about the same time in Singapore, the HDB (Housing and Development Board) started a web portal listing buyers and sellers of HDB apartments with a designated real estate company providing documentation services for a flat fee of $500. This was subsequently aborted.

As the agent is legally, in some respects, and extension of the principal, she is considered the eyes and ears of the principal in his absence. As such, the agent must notify the principal of all relevant information that is or may be useful to the principal to enable him to prudently evaluate the matter at hand, examine the various optios available to further his interests and give the agent proper instruction.

The appellants, Mr Yuen and Madam Wong were first alerted that something was not right when they received a query from teh Central Provident Fund board asking them why they had sold their flat below valuation price. On further investigation, the discovered that Natassha was Mike's wife and that their agent Jeremy Ang had sold their apartment to Natassha Sadiq for $688,000, who had almost immediately resold it to one Teo Su Kee for $945,000.

Yuen Chow Hin vs ERA Realty Network PTE LTD case (2009 2 SLR(R) 786)