8 real estate jobs in Singapore you never knew about

Fact: When people say that they work in the real estate industry, you automatically assume they’re a property agent. We’re betting you didn’t know this, but there are actually a plethora of real estate jobs that have nothing to do with the buying or selling of houses, such as…

Building Manager

Building managers essentially ensure that their condominiums are well-maintained. They have the pleasure (or chore?) of liaising with contractors, vendors, and the relevant authorities with regards to matters such as repairs, installations, maintenance and more. They also supervise the work of contractors and technical staff, and ensure that health and safety regulations are being adhered to.

Tenant Manager

Ever wondered who deals with all the tenants in the malls that you hang out at? The tenant manager does! This person, who is typically employed by developers such as Capitaland, UOL Group and Wheelock Properties, carries out all negotiations about lease renewal and structuring. This person’s KPI is the target occupancy within a mall, and he or she also typically works with a marketing team to handle promotional programmes for the retail tenants.

Building Technician

Armed with a Nitec qualification in relevant fields such as building services or electrical engineering, these are the guys who work behind the scenes and make sure that everything’s flowing smoothly. Other than conducting routine building inspections and monitoring the performance of mechanical and electrical systems, they’re also required to carry out maintenance works in the event of a breakdown.

Estate Executive

This person, who’s working under HDB, is somewhat like a repo man. He or she works with internal and external parties to manage and monitor the clearance and demolition of sites earmarked under SERS. This includes hands-on work where inspecting, taking possession, vesting and clearing of properties in concerned.

Urban Planning

HDB puts a lot of effort into planning and designing towns or projects before they’re implemented – and it’s the Urban Planning Technical Executive’s role to assist in this. This person works on plans for preliminary studies of land-use proposal and is also tasked to update plans and land records periodically. They will also have to compile and measure land use area for statistical planning purposes.

Executive Planner

This job position at URA might sound slightly similar to the Urban Planning role, but the scope of work is actually pretty different. The Executive Planner scopes, investigates and collaborates with researchers on R&D projects with a strong focus on application. This means that, planning aside, they also get to lead and oversee pilots and test-bedding of new innovations and solutions.

Property Market Analyst

This member of the URA team works together with the rest of the organization to attain the goal of maintaining a stable and sustainable property market. How do they do this? By conducting in-depth analysis of property market trends, as well as developing and maintaining projection models. This will help to forecast demand, and guide policy decision-making.

This role is also available in the private sector – more specifically, at research agencies and property consultancy firms such as Cushman & Wakefield and JLL.

Jobs In Property Portals

…such as 99.co! A common misconception with real estate jobs is that the people who update and run property portals are agents – but this couldn’t be further from the truth. Property portals are supported by a dedicated team of staff who work in various roles ranging from IT (the people who work on the backend and ensure that the site functions well), editorial (those who produce articles such as this!) and marketing (those who promote the site through advertisements, partnerships and tie-ups, and events).

We hope you’ve gotten a bit of insight into the different facets of the property industry and the different real estate jobs that are available – and that you now know that there’s tons more to it than just selling houses!