What I Think of My Job

Dear Diary,

I cannot wait for Syawal to be over so I can focus my time more on work than having to divide my time for hosting and visiting. I have so many outstanding issues with work and I am so behind my schedule. I received a call from my client yesterday. She was a referral to my other client who has a common room to let. I have been having a hard time finding tenants for her as she has so many restrictions on the type of tenants she prefers. It is kind of difficult to match her requirements with the profiles of tenants.

Many people think that being an agent is such an easy job. They have this impression that an agent only has to close deals and make big money out of it. They do not know our predicaments. They do not know what we have to go through to make the deals happen. The competitions among ourselves and the pressures we have.

Some landlords blame agents for all their dissatisfactions with their tenants. How can an agent know the living habits of the tenants? How can everybody know? You can only know a person’s living habit when you live with him. How does an agent supposed to know that he always forgets to switch off the lights when he goes to sleep and that he always leaves the window open when he leaves for work? Our job scope is only so much but landlords expect us to be answerable to everything.

It is funny how some people really want to make every penny of their money worth. For new agent like me, room rental is the one that keeps us going. The commission is small compared to other types of transactions but it is what we have left to do since the mega transactions have all been taken up by the senior agents who have been in the market long enough. Doing room rental is more difficult since owners of the house usually lives together with the would-be tenants thus these owners have really specific restrictions on tenants from their race to religion to gender to profession. I know I must not be afraid to give my best to what seemingly are small jobs. I keep telling myself that every time I conquer one it makes me that much stronger because if I do the little jobs well, the big ones will tend to take care of themselves.

However, honestly I have felt a tremendous amount of pressures mixing and matching owner’s requirements with the profiles of available tenants. It seems easy but no it is not because not only do owners have their own requirements but tenants have their own set of requirements as well. Believe me Diary, to match both the requirements of tenants and owners can be such a mind boggling thing and a tall order to do. It makes me so miserable sometimes to get an almost perfect match.

I am feeling the pressures from almost everything I do now. I have not got anymore offers for my house and it is starting to worry me. I am not sure if our move to reject the last offer was a bad thing to do. I have a time frame to follow and it is worrying me that I may not be able to achieve the sale of my house before the time frame expires. I am not sure if I have not done enough marketing for my house or perhaps it is the Aidilfitri period that I haven’t got any Malay viewers. I have only got Indians, Chinese and Filipinos viewers and I have not got any Malay viewers yet. It is probably the period I am marketing my house. I am sure of that.

I have learnt a lot from all the work I have done. I am pretty sure I am ready to sell any HDB flat in the near future. I have grown quite familiar with the financial calculation formula and presentations. I hope to do project marketing soon. It is sure going to be exciting and lucrative. I don’t know. I hope I can be there someday. What do you think Diary?

I need to be more disciplined and focus. I have to do more to be there, he conquers who endures. I have to go already. Catch you later Diary.