Why do I need to provide a local representative or contact person?

When we take a property into our listings, we don’t require exclusive access to it; we require exclusivity only in marketing. This means that the owner is free to allow his family, close relatives and sometimes friends, to still use the property while it is waiting to be sold.

We’ve had experiences before where the gates/doors were locked and we couldn’t access the property with the keys that were left with us, so we had issues in facilitating viewings.

There were times when we arrive at the property to conduct viewings with prospect buyers and some personal items like drying laundries are left in the property. Or the property is otherwise not in the same presentable state as when we left it after our general cleaning and staging.

These are just some situations where we might need to coordinate with the owner’s contact person or representative since we cannot just do what we think is right for personal property that’s not under our disposal.

Sometimes, we might also need to coordinate with the owner’s local representative for documentary matters like formal communication, or for presentation of the original title (and supporting docs) to the prospect buyers.

Holding the original Owner’s Duplicate of the Certificate of Title is not part of our requirements, so in the case of sellers who are based overseas, it would be more convenient if they have a close family member or other representative whom they can leave with the original documents. This also makes it easier to close a buyer.

For sellers who are locally based, this may not be necessary anymore.