How rookie agent Jerome Yap sold a record $1.47 mil HDB resale flat in five weeks
(Left) The loft unit features a double-volume living area and designer fittings. (Right) Yap in his home; he believes his creative process and troubleshooting skills set him apart. (Photo: Jerome Yap; Samuel Isaac Chua / EdgeProp Singapore)
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When Jerome Yap received his real estate salesperson (RES) licence last October, he barely had a couple of days to settle in before a client reached out to him.
It was the owner of a HDB flat along Punggol Drive that had been sitting on the market for the better part of a year, listed at $1.5 million and with offers falling well short.
Five weeks after Yap took on the listing, a buyer agreed to fork out $1.47 million for the loft unit, including a cash-over-valuation (COV) amount of about $270,000.
The transaction marked a new price high for a five-room flat in Punggol, as EdgeProp Singapore reported — and it was Yap’s very first listing and deal closed as a property agent.
He had spent his earlier career in motion graphics, broadcast design, social media and content strategy before making the switch to real estate.
A rare find
Part of the Treelodge@Punggol project, with a long remaining lease of about 85 years, the five-room loft unit spans 1,582 sq ft and features a double-volume living area with a ceiling height of more than 5m, and an open terrace.
For the resale transaction, it came fully furnished with designer fittings, furniture and appliances including a 75-inch TV. Everything that was in the unit was included in the price tag. “Whatever you see is whatever you get,” Yap says.
The buyer of the Punggol flat appreciated the move-in condition and the existing interior design. (Photo: Jerome Yap)
Treelodge@Punggol, rolled out as a Build-To-Order (BTO) project in 2007, is HDB’s first eco-friendly public housing precinct that promotes sustainable green living and adopts green building technologies. The 712-unit project is mostly made up of four-room flats and a smaller portion of three-room flats. It has only 14 loft units.
Yap estimates that the unit had been listed for about eight to nine months by previous property agents before he took over in October 2025. The seller had been firm on his asking price of $1.5 million throughout that period, though no offers had come close.
The seller reached out to Yap through social media, after noticing his Instagram post in early October announcing that he had passed the RES examination and been licensed through PropNex.
“Initially, I thought, wow, $1.5 million! Who’s going to buy this unit? But I took on the challenge,” Yap recalls.
Applying a troubleshooting lens
From the outset, he was clear about what the assignment required. “If you want to break a record, you need record-breaking methods,” he told the seller at their first meeting. “You can’t just go in and tell buyers about the unit and that’s it.”
He spoke to the seller to better understand why he had that asking price in mind, and reviewed how the unit had been marketed previously.
As the seller was aiming for a record price and the listing had sat unsold for some time, Yap applied what he calls a “troubleshooting” method. This is centred around a structured framework and checklist he developed while studying for his RES exam, designed for situations where justifying the price and finding the right buyer would be key.
The approach consists of three tiers, with the first one based on data and the fundamentals. This may include assessing recent comparable transactions, the property’s remaining leasehold tenure, as well as the Ethnic Integration Policy and Singapore permanent resident quotas for the block and neighbourhood when it comes to HDB flats. Such information can support the asking price and better define the buyer pool from the start.
The second tier mainly comprises a unit-level assessment. Yap reviews factors such as the liveability of the layout, orientation, whether it’s a corridor unit, who the neighbours are, views from the unit, west sun exposure, condition of the property, and renovations.
In this case, the Punggol five-room loft unit was effectively in showroom condition and fully furnished. It would therefore suit a buyer who values a unit in move-in condition and also appreciates the existing interior design and styling.
“It’s like when you go to a showflat and everything is so nice, and you really don’t want the headache of shopping for furniture and appliances, or to go back and forth with an interior designer or contractors,” Yap says.
After going through his checklist, he realised that the flat could be marketed and positioned a certain way to fetch more than $1.4 million easily.
The stairs at the Treelodge@Punggol apartment. Two-storey HDB units are relatively scarce in the resale market. (Photo: Jerome Yap)
Lights, camera, listing
The third tier is marketing and presentation, where his background and previous work experience give him an edge.
He photographs all units himself with professional camera gear. For videos such as home tours, he plans, scripts, films and edits them, occasionally enlisting another cameraman’s help for videography when he needs to be in the shot. He also produces a brochure showcasing each property and its key details, and gives either a print or digital copy of the brochure to every potential buyer who visits for a viewing.
For the Punggol flat, he requested the seller be present during the video shoot and answer questions about the unit in a casual way.
“He didn’t want to show his face in the video, so I asked him to just stand behind the camera and then we just had a conversation. Just talking,” Yap says. That allowed for a natural, friendly and conversational feel.
“So in the video, I’m asking things like, ‘Hey, bro, so are we giving away this TV as well?’ And the seller answers [off-camera], ‘Yeah, if the price is right, go for it!’”
To be sure, the production of the video was not effortless. It required multiple takes, and Yap deliberately used videography techniques to present the unit as closely to its actual showroom-like condition as possible.
Behind the natural, off-the-cuff feel of the finished product also lay a considerable amount of creative post-production work, from pacing and sequencing to colour grading and sound.
As a seasoned videographer and photographer, Yap produces the virtual property tours and all other content himself. "Social media plays a very, very huge role in giving life to the unit," he says. (Photos: Jerome Yap)
Screening buyers after 500,000 views
The videos of the loft unit quickly accumulated over 500,000 combined organic views on Instagram and TikTok, without paid promotion. He received dozens of comments and direct messages from interested buyers.
“In terms of selling homes today, I think social media plays a very, very huge role in giving life to the unit,” Yap says.
He screens every enquiry before scheduling a viewing. For example, for HDB flats, he makes sure the buyer has their HDB Flat Eligibility letter ready. Also, as the Punggol loft unit had a potential COV of $270,000, anyone for whom the COV was a deal-breaker was filtered out early.
“I call every single one of them and understand their situation and concerns. Because, even if we have 100 viewers, it’s just going to be a waste of time if the unit is not suitable for them,” he says.
Of the roughly 60 or more buyers who expressed interest, about 25 to 30 made it through the screening as qualified buyers and visited the unit over the course of a month.
The eventual buyer, an upgrader, was mainly motivated by liveability. For example, the kitchen is relatively small, which suits her lifestyle as she seldom cooks. The rest of the flat is spacious, which allows her to make it a comfortable home to rest and relax in after a long day’s work.
Sealing the deal
While there was no bidding war for the unit, several offers came in within a month. The first offer was $1.41 million, received just two weeks after Yap listed the flat. Other buyers gradually put in slightly higher offers of around $1.42 million to $1.43 million.
The eventual buyer’s initial offer was also within that range. “But I managed to pull it up all the way to $1.47 million because I answered all her questions every step of the way,” Yap says.
“I think that helped build her confidence. And with the extensive, well-done renovation and branded goods in the apartment, she saw the price as quite a steal,” he adds.
The kitchen at the five-room loft apartment that fetched $1.47 million. (Photo: Jerome Yap)
Among the qualified buyers, most preferred an HDB flat instead of a similarly priced private condo due to space and liveability. Many were families with children and live-in helpers, for whom a two- or three-bedroom condo would simply not be large enough. The priority was having a comfortable home rather than maximising capital appreciation.
Homebuyers in this bracket were therefore weighing their options among five-room or larger flats, including executive maisonettes (EMs) and loft units, Yap notes. With HDB loft units being significantly newer than EMs, they tend to have an edge when it comes to the remaining lease.
The relative scarcity of HDB high-ceiling loft units in the resale market also means that well-presented flats in good condition can usually command a meaningful premium.
For example, Punggol Sapphire, a BTO project launched in 2008, has just 23 loft units. SkyTerrace @ Dawson in Queenstown, launched as a BTO project in 2009, features 26 loft units.
At Treelodge@Punggol, another loft unit in a block next to the $1.47 million flat fetched nearly $1.22 million, just one day before the higher-priced transaction that was brokered by Yap.
What shaped him
Before entering the real estate industry, Yap was running his own business in content strategy and development. That included photography and videography work for corporates, as well as producing videos for property agents, which gave him a first-hand look at the industry.
In his personal property journey, Yap and his wife had a poor experience buying a resale flat a few years ago. The agents across all of their 10 viewings offered little beyond introducing the units in broad strokes, such as square footage, which room was which, and other basic details. After moving in, the couple also discovered concealed defects that were costly to fix.
“While I was going through that whole experience as a homebuyer, I thought, ‘You know what? If one day I become an agent, I will definitely do better than them’,” Yap says.
Additionally, growing up, he did not have a stable home and often had to move from place to place due to family circumstances. “I feel like I bring that whole emotion and empathy in helping my sellers and buyers push for each deal,” he adds.
Coupled with his familiarity with pitches, presentations, negotiations and sales while in the creative field, the experiences prompted Yap to join the real estate industry.
Yap in his home. Before entering the real estate industry, he produced videos and content strategy for property agents and corporates. (Samuel Isaac Chua / EdgeProp Singapore)
Not just a one-off
Since the Punggol $1.47 million sale, Yap has applied his troubleshooting approach to other listings.
One was a condo penthouse in District 15, which had similarly been unsold for a long time. Once he took over the listing, he overhauled the presentation, redoing the photography — replacing the blurry, low-resolution photos that were taken with a phone — as well as creating a video and a customised e-brochure.
The penthouse’s aesthetic also posed a challenge, as it was decorated in an older style with floral wallpaper and ornate motifs, unlike the modern luxurious look that many buyers gravitate towards today. Rather than treating this as a liability, Yap leaned into it. He told the story of the seller, a grandmother whose home reflected a lifetime of memories, and found a buyer who was charmed enough to keep the decor largely intact.
“Usually, you’d expect the buyer to want to renovate the whole place. But this one matched what the buyer wanted, as they loved the storytelling,” he shares. That unit likewise sold within five weeks.
The secret sauce
Six months into his career as a real estate agent, Yap’s current portfolio is roughly 80% HDB properties — including flats and HDB shophouses — and 20% private residential. He plans to eventually shift his focus towards condo new launches.
In a market where agents are competing for attention through everything from dance or rapping videos to AI-generated content, Yap is doubling down on the troubleshooting method and his creative process, which he believes set him apart.
“I look through all the noise and think about how I can add value by really bringing out the distinctive character and the flavour of each unit, to push that through to the buyers,” he says.
His social media platform’s name, Sauce for Listings, neatly captures this — the idea of bringing a generous helping of extra ingredients to turn a stale listing into a transaction.
Yap says his Harley-Davidson bike allows him to blend his creative spirit with practical efficiency: “While others are stuck in traffic, I can navigate quickly to my clients.” (Photo: Samuel Isaac Chua / EdgeProp Singapore)
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