Fake & Duplicated Property Listings: CEA’s new online platform will help consumers verify listings from 2027

Senior Minister of State for National Development and Transport Sun Xueling announced major property market reforms aimed at eliminating fake, misleading, and duplicated listings on 28 July 2026 (Tuesday) at the Singapore Estate Agents Conference 2026.

It is commonplace today that property agents post desirable, attractively priced units that do not exist (or are long sold or rented) to capture customer inquiries, only to tell them, “Sorry, that unit was just taken, but I have another unit nearby...”

Otherwise, you might find that they post the same unit multiple times using slightly altered photos or titles to dominate property portals’ pages.

It is also not uncommon to find that property agents have scraped (or stolen!) photos from other agents or owners without permission to advertise a fake listing.

Because of these tactics, in 2024, CEA received 13 per cent more complaints than that of 2023, reported The Straits Times.

For a genuine citizen trying to buy a house, these fake listings wastes time, creates an illusion of supply in the market, and distorts prices in competition. It creates a vulnerability gap for buyers and renters to fall into as well.

While these tactics are commonplace, apt penalty or punishment is not so. There are few cases of misleading property listings that were brought to judgement and made public in mainstream media.

One such unfortunate case was that of property agent Terrence Lin who was selling a $4.8million semi-detached unit at Whitley Residences in 2020. He created two of such listings - one genuine, and one fake (bearing a much lower price to bait consumers). Subsequently, Lin also found that another property agent had copied his fake listing - to which he lodged a complaint.

Lin was the first agent to be prosecuted for such a reason, and remains the deterrence for all other agents indulging in such practices.

Fake & Duplicated property listings is a problem

In her speech, Sun Xueling highlighted a common concern shared by property agents and consumers regarding the prevalence of inaccurate, fake, duplicate, and unauthorised property listings.

“A common concern raised by both property agents and consumers is the prevalence of inaccurate, fake, duplicated, as well as unauthorised property listings,” she shares.

“To address this, I am pleased to share that CEA has built on the work of the Alliance for Action on Accurate Property Listings and they will be launching a full-scale platform to verify the authenticity of online listings next year.”

The Council for Estate Agencies (CEA) is a statutory board under Singapore’s Ministry of National Development (MND). Formed in October 2010 under the Estate Agents Act, the CEA was created to clean up and govern Singapore’s property market, transforming it from a largely self-regulated industry into a strictly monitored, professional environment. The CEA’s primary objective is to protect consumer interests while raising the standards of the real estate industry

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Publish property agents’ ratings online

“CEA is studying whether to publish consumers’ ratings of their property agents on the CEA Public Register, while making it easier for consumers to access the register. We are also looking to require property agents and their clients to sign an Estate Agency Agreement and to disclose who the agents are collecting the commission from before commencing work,” she continues.

“A signed agreement will give greater clarity to all parties and precent downstream disputes.”

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HDB Resale Flat Listing Service

“We are looking at measures to empower consumers with more choice. And first, we will do so by strengthening HDB’s Resale Flat Listing service - it’s otherwise known as the ‘RFL service’. Since its launch in May 2024, more than 12,500 verified listings have been published - with over 60 per cent of the flats listed proceeding to complete the resale transaction,” says Sun.

“Currently, it is not mandatory for property agents and sellers to list HDB resale flats on the RFL service. To enhance transparency and help buyers and sellers make informed decisions, we are studying whether to make the RFL service the default listing platform for HDB resale flats. However, this is not intended to replace existing property portals and property agents and sellers will still be able to continue advertising on other platforms as well.”

Allow consumers to list their own properties online

Commercial real estate portals operate on pay-to-list or credit-based models. Property agents purchase credits (at times, in multiples of $10,000) to post listings and “re-list” or “turbo boost” them to keep them near the top of search results.

“We are also studying whether consumers can list their own properties directly on property portals. This would give consumers who wish to transact without engaging a property agent more visibility and options,” Sun explains.

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