The headline: most registered agents barely transact
Singapore has 38,352 property salespersons on the public CEA register. Yet only 30,060 of them (about 78%) appear anywhere in the public CEA transaction record between January 2017 and August 2026. Just 22,410 (58% of the register) recorded a transaction in the 12 months to June 2026. The market runs on a small, active minority, and the headline agent count tells you almost nothing about who actually closes deals.
1. A small minority does most of the work
Among the 32,744 agents who do transact, activity is heavily concentrated. The busiest 20% of agents handle 67.9% of all recorded deals. The top 5% alone handle 31.7%, and the single busiest 1% handle 11.2%. The median active agent recorded 17 transactions across the whole January 2017 to August 2026 window, about 1.8 a year.
2. Most agent activity is renting, not selling
Of the 1,388,678 transactions in the record, 58% are rentals and only 42% are sales (577,393 sale transactions). That matters for a home seller: an agent with an impressive total deal count may be running a high-volume rental practice and rarely sell a home like yours. It is the reason our AgentScore weights sales more heavily than rentals rather than treating every transaction as equal.
3. Even among agents who sell, output is thin
26,963 agents, about 70% of the register, have recorded even a single property sale. Among those who do, the median agent recorded 7 sales over the period covered, about 0.7 a year. Home sales are concentrated even more tightly than rentals: the top 10% of selling agents account for 50.8% of all recorded sales, and the top 20% account for 69.6%.
What this means if you are selling
The takeaway is not that most agents are bad. It is that “registered agent” and “agent who regularly sells homes like yours” are very different things, and the gap is enormous. A referral or a glossy profile tells you nothing about an agent’s actual sales record.
The fix is to compare on the record, not the marketing. Look at how many sales (not rentals) an agent has closed, in your area, recently. That is exactly what our agent rankings are built on, and you can get a free shortlist of the agents who actually sell properties like yours.
Frequently asked questions
How many property agents are there in Singapore?
There are 38,352 property salespersons in our dataset, sourced from the public CEA register. However, only 30,060 of them (about 78%) appear in the public CEA transaction record between January 2017 and August 2026. The remaining 22% have no transaction on file for that period.
What percentage of property agents actually sell homes?
Two different questions live inside that one, so here are both, each with its window. In the 12 months to June 2026, 22,495 of 38,352 registered agents (59%) recorded no sale at all, and 15,857 recorded at least one. Over the entire January 2017 to August 2026 record, a far longer window, 26,963 agents (70%) have at least one sale to their name. The recent figure is the one that matters when you are choosing an agent this month. Among agents who do sell, the median is 7 sales across the whole period.
Do property agents in Singapore mostly sell or rent?
Most agent activity is rental, not sales. Of the 1,388,678 transactions analysed, 58% are rentals and only 42% are sales. A high transaction count therefore does not mean an agent regularly sells homes, which is why a count alone is a poor way to choose a selling agent.
How concentrated is the property agent market?
Very concentrated. Among agents who transact, the top 20% handle 67.9% of all deals and the top 5% handle 31.7%. For home sales specifically, the top 10% of selling agents account for 50.8% of all recorded sales.
See the agents who actually sell in your area
Every ranking below is built on real CEA sale transactions, recency-weighted, not on advertising.
Methodology and caveats
Figures are derived from 1,388,678 salesperson transaction records published by the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), covering January 2017 to August 2026, joined to the public CEA salesperson register (38,352salespersons in our dataset). “No transaction on file” means a registered salesperson does not appear in the published CEA transaction record for this window; it does not prove zero activity, since records are published with a lag and some arrangements may not surface in the per-salesperson record.
Rentals include both landlord-side and tenant-side representation; sales include HDB resale and private resale and new-sale transactions as classified in the source data. Concentration figures (top 1/5/10/20%) are calculated only across agents who recorded at least one transaction in the window, so they understate concentration relative to the full register. This is observational data, not a judgement of any individual agent. Agents can request corrections against the official record on their profile page.
Two limits shape how to read these figures. Agents often work in teams, and a deal can be logged under a team leader rather than the colleague who closed it, which concentrates recorded volume at the very top: the data here includes single agents with more resale deals in one month than any individual could close alone. Separately, some private sales are self-submitted to the register and a few are missing or delayed, and the raw counts can include commercial and new-launch activity. So the true number of active home-sellers may be modestly higher than the matched figure, while top-end concentration is, if anything, slightly overstated by team attribution. We set out every limitation, and how we handle each, on our trust and data page.
Source: CEA salesperson transaction records and public register. Analysis by FairComparisons.
Most agents barely sell. Find the ones who do.
Get a free shortlist of the agents who actually sell properties like yours, ranked on the same CEA transaction data behind this study.