Singapore agency accounts: where each commission dollar goes

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Kooky

Builder of Shaka, the payment router that pays every agent their commission on closing date.

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A client in Singapore pays commission to a property agency, not to the salesperson who did the work. The regulator, the Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), says on its consumer page about engaging an agent that commissions are not fixed and are open to negotiation. That page gives no typical rate, and it does not say how an agency divides a commission with the salesperson who earned it.

Two of the largest agencies are listed on the Singapore Exchange, however, and listed companies publish accounts. PropNex Limited and APAC Realty Limited, which operates the ERA brand, report every six months how much commission came in, how much went out again as the cost of earning it, and what was left. Those figures do not reveal any individual's earnings or any agency's commission scheme. They do show, in aggregate, how a commission dollar is divided.

This guide reads those numbers as they stood in October 2026: the annual report and shareholder presentation of PropNex for 2025, its presentation for the first half of 2026, the results releases of APAC Realty for 2025 and for the first half of 2025, reports by EdgeProp on both sets of results, and the Goods and Services Tax Act 1993. Every ratio that the companies do not state themselves is worked out here from their figures and labelled as arithmetic. Who pays commission, and the rule that an agent acts for one side only, are subjects of their own and are not repeated.

PropNex annual report and shareholder presentation for the 2025 financial year; the salesperson total is the CEA figure PropNex cites. The 89.7% is arithmetic from the company's revenue and cost of services.

Two listed agencies and what they publish

PropNex describes itself, in a release of 12 August 2025, as a provider of real estate brokerage, training and consultancy services, with operations in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, Cambodia and Australia as well as Singapore. APAC Realty said in its release of 23 February 2026 that it holds the ERA regional master franchise rights for 17 countries and territories in Asia Pacific, and that it has been listed on the Singapore Exchange mainboard since 2017. ERA Singapore is its agency in the city-state.

The two companies do not publish the same level of detail in the documents read for this guide. PropNex's annual report for 2025 gives revenue, cost of services rendered, gross profit and the gross margin, with revenue split by type and by property segment. APAC Realty's results release for 2025 gives revenue, revenue by segment and gross profit, but not the cost of services as a line; that figure can be reached only by subtraction. The difference matters for anyone comparing the two, and it is marked wherever it arises below.

Both companies also report their headcount of salespersons, and both tie it to the CEA register. That gives a second set of numbers, the number of people among whom the commission is shared, which is covered further down.

How commission appears as revenue

For an agency, commission is revenue. PropNex's annual report for 2025 puts group revenue at S$1,116.4 million, against S$783.0 million in 2024, a rise of 42.6 per cent. The report divides it into three lines. Agency services brought in S$675.9 million. Project marketing, the work done for developers on new launches, brought in S$434.0 million. A line called "Others", which the report says consists mainly of administrative support fee income and course fees from training, came to S$6.5 million. The three add up to the total.

As a share of revenue, by arithmetic from those figures, agency services were 60.5 per cent, project marketing 38.9 per cent and other income 0.6 per cent. In other words, more than 99 per cent of what PropNex reported as revenue in 2025 was commission of one kind or another.

APAC Realty reported revenue of S$675.6 million for 2025 in its release of 23 February 2026, up 20.4 per cent from S$561.0 million. It names its segments differently: new home sales, at S$230.2 million, and resale and rental, at S$437.8 million. EdgeProp, reporting the results on 24 February 2026, put revenue from brokerage and related fees at S$672.7 million. Set against the S$675.6 million total, that is 99.6 per cent, by arithmetic. The two named segments add up to S$668.0 million; the documents read do not itemise the rest.

One feature of both sets of accounts is easy to miss. The revenue figure is the whole commission billed by the agency, before anything is passed to the salesperson. A reader who sees S$1.1 billion of revenue is looking at the gross flow of commission through the agency's books, not at what the agency earns for itself.

Cost of services: the share that goes back out

The line that follows revenue in PropNex's accounts is cost of services rendered. For 2025 it was S$1,001.4 million, up 40.6 per cent from S$712.0 million. The annual report explains the rise in one phrase: it primarily reflects higher commission payouts to salespersons, in line with the growth in revenue.

Dividing one figure by the other gives the central ratio of this guide. In 2025, cost of services was 89.7 per cent of PropNex's revenue. In 2024 it was 90.9 per cent. The company does not publish this percentage; it is the complement of the gross margin it does publish, 10.3 per cent for 2025 and 9.1 per cent for 2024.

APAC Realty reported gross profit of S$70.0 million for 2025, up 39.6 per cent from S$50.1 million. On revenue of S$675.6 million that is a gross margin of 10.4 per cent, and an implied cost of services of S$605.6 million, or 89.6 per cent of revenue. The same arithmetic for 2024 gives a margin of 8.9 per cent.

Two cautions belong with these ratios. First, PropNex says its cost of services "primarily" reflects commission payouts; the word leaves room for other direct costs, so 89.7 per cent is the most that can have gone to salespersons, not a measured payout. Second, both companies report as groups. PropNex has operations in five other countries and APAC Realty franchises ERA across the region, and the documents read do not separate the Singapore agency's cost of services from the group's.

What the gross margin says about the agency's cut

Read the other way round, the gross margin is the nearest thing in the public record to an agency's cut. A worked example, using PropNex's reported 2025 ratios and nothing else: of every S$100 of commission and fees the group billed, S$89.70 was cost of services and S$10.30 was gross profit.

Gross profit is not what the agency keeps as profit. Staff costs, the group's other expenses and tax come out of it. PropNex's annual report says staff costs rose 13.1 per cent to S$22.1 million in 2025. Its presentation to shareholders gives profit for the year of S$74.7 million and a net profit margin of 6.7 per cent, against 5.3 per cent in 2024. On the same S$100, then, about S$6.70 was left as profit after every cost.

APAC Realty's release gives profit after tax of S$20.5 million for 2025, against S$6.5 million in 2024. By arithmetic that is 3.0 per cent of its revenue.

The margin also moved. PropNex's gross margin rose from 9.1 per cent to 10.3 per cent between 2024 and 2025, and APAC Realty's, computed as above, from 8.9 per cent to 10.4 per cent. A movement of one percentage point looks small, but on revenue of more than S$1 billion it is more than S$10 million of gross profit. The section on new launches returns to what changed between the two years.

None of this is a commission scheme. A group-wide ratio of roughly 90 to 10 is an average across every salesperson and every kind of deal. It does not say what any one salesperson receives from any one commission.

Headcount: the register figures the companies cite

Both companies count their salespersons from the CEA register. PropNex's annual report for 2025 says it had 13,945 salespersons at 1 January 2026, which it gives as 37.9 per cent of the 36,816 registered salespersons in Singapore on that date, and 12,636 a year earlier. APAC Realty's release of 23 February 2026 gives 8,427 for ERA Singapore at 1 January 2026.

Together the two had 22,372 salespersons, which is 60.8 per cent of the 36,816 on the register, by arithmetic. ERA Singapore's share on the same basis is 22.9 per cent. The remaining 14,444 salespersons were spread across every other agency.

PropNex's presentation for its annual general meeting, dated 23 April 2026, also charts the four largest agencies side by side, citing CEA. In that chart the agencies are identified only by a colour legend, and no bar carries a name. The PropNex series matches the figures in its annual report, and the second series, at 8,427 for 1 January 2026, matches APAC Realty's own figure for ERA Singapore. The figures for the two other agencies in the chart could not be confirmed against a second document and are not reproduced here.

The second series gives 8,648 for 1 January 2025. On that reading, ERA Singapore's count fell from 8,648 to 8,427 over 2025, while PropNex's rose from 12,636 to 13,945.

By the middle of 2026 the register had grown. PropNex's presentation for the first half of 2026 cites a CEA total of 38,162 salespersons at 1 July 2026, of whom 14,555, or 38.1 per cent, were with PropNex. Against the January total that is 1,346 more people in six months, a rise of 3.7 per cent.

A count can also depend on the day and the wording. APAC Realty's release of 8 August 2025 gave ERA Singapore 8,882 "trusted advisors" at 30 June 2025, a figure higher than the January counts either side of it.

Revenue per salesperson, as arithmetic

Neither company publishes revenue per salesperson. It can be worked out, with stated assumptions, and the result needs careful handling.

The assumption used here is the average of the headcount at the start and at the end of the year. For PropNex that is 12,636 and 13,945, an average of 13,290.5. For ERA Singapore it is 8,648, the figure read from the second series of PropNex's chart for 1 January 2025 and not confirmed in an APAC Realty document, and 8,427, an average of 8,537.5.

The PropNex line reads as follows. Revenue of S$1,116.4 million over 13,290.5 salespersons is about S$84,000 each. Cost of services of S$1,001.4 million is about S$75,300 each. Gross profit of S$115.0 million is about S$8,700 each.

The APAC Realty line is rougher, for a reason already given: the numerator is the whole group's revenue, including operations outside Singapore, while the denominator counts ERA Singapore's salespersons only. The S$79,100 is therefore a ceiling for the Singapore agency, not an estimate of it.

Two further limits apply. The cost of services is "primarily" commission, not wholly. And headcount changed during the year, so a different averaging method would give a slightly different answer.

New launches against resale and rental

Both companies report new-launch work apart from everything else, and the split explains most of the movement in their 2025 results.

PropNex calls the two streams commission income from agency services and commission income from project marketing services; the wording is from its release of 12 August 2025. Project marketing is work for developers. APAC Realty's release says ERA Singapore was marketing agent for 27 new residential developments comprising 12,773 units in 2025. Resale and rental commission, by contrast, comes from individual sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants, one transaction at a time.

The developer stream is the volatile one. At PropNex, project marketing revenue rose 133.9 per cent in 2025, from S$185.6 million to S$434.0 million, while agency revenue rose 14.3 per cent, from S$591.6 million to S$675.9 million. At APAC Realty, revenue from new home sales rose 113.3 per cent, from S$107.9 million to S$230.2 million, while resale and rental revenue fell 1.6 per cent, from S$445.1 million to S$437.8 million.

The cause the companies point to is the number of homes developers sold. APAC Realty's release puts new private residential units sold in 2025 at 12,445, up 61.7 per cent, a figure EdgeProp describes as including executive condominiums. Over the same year, the release says, private resale transactions rose 1.3 per cent to 15,677 and HDB resale transactions fell 9.7 per cent to 26,169.

The mix shifted accordingly. By arithmetic, project marketing was 23.7 per cent of PropNex's revenue in 2024 and 38.9 per cent in 2025. New home sales were 19.2 per cent of APAC Realty's revenue in 2024 and 34.1 per cent in 2025. These are the same two years in which both gross margins rose by more than a percentage point. APAC Realty's release makes the link itself, attributing the rise in gross profit to a significant increase in brokerage income associated with new home sales.

PropNex's annual report breaks agency work down further. In 2025, private resale brought in S$234.2 million, rental S$191.2 million, HDB resale S$153.5 million, landed resale S$61.7 million and commercial and industrial property S$33.8 million. Rental, in other words, was a larger line than HDB resale.

What the companies do not describe, in the documents read, is the commission rate a developer pays, how it compares with the rate on a resale, or when commission on a new-launch sale is booked as revenue. PropNex's presentations and APAC Realty's releases give totals by segment and no rates. Any statement about a "usual" developer commission would have to come from somewhere other than these filings.

The first half of 2026

The half-year figures show the same structure with a different mix. PropNex's presentation for the six months to 30 June 2026 gives revenue of S$603.0 million, up 0.7 per cent from S$598.9 million a year earlier, and cost of services rendered of S$539.1 million, up 1.2 per cent. Gross profit fell 3.5 per cent to S$63.9 million, and the gross margin the company reports slipped from 11.0 per cent to 10.6 per cent. By arithmetic, cost of services was 89.4 per cent of revenue.

Inside that total, project marketing revenue fell 7.8 per cent to S$238.4 million. Rental rose 9.0 per cent to S$95.3 million, HDB resale 7.3 per cent to S$78.4 million and landed resale 25.4 per cent to S$42.1 million, while private resale was almost flat at S$125.4 million. The presentation counts 10 projects with 4,874 units launched in the half.

The balance sheet in the same document shows how much money is in transit at any moment. At 30 June 2026 PropNex had trade and other receivables of S$204.3 million and trade and other payables of S$222.3 million. The presentation does not say how much of either is commission owed by clients and developers or commission owed to salespersons.

For APAC Realty, the most recent half-year release read for this guide is the one of 8 August 2025, for the first half of 2025: revenue of S$341.5 million, of which new home sales were S$131.2 million and resale and rental S$206.7 million, and gross profit of S$35.8 million. That is a gross margin of 10.5 per cent, by arithmetic. Its figures for the first half of 2026 were not among the documents read.

Tiered schemes: what the filings leave out

A tiered scheme is one in which the salesperson's share of each commission changes with the amount that person bills. Whether the two listed agencies run such schemes, and on what terms, is a question the filings read for this guide do not answer.

PropNex's annual report for 2025 mentions commission schemes twice, and only in passing. Its list of milestones records a commission scheme model, called the Dual Career Path, introduced in 2008. Elsewhere it says salespersons can voluntarily pledge a portion of their commission to a programme the report calls SHARE. The report gives no tiers, no percentages and no share retained by the company. APAC Realty's results releases do not describe a scheme at all.

That leaves the aggregate as the only published evidence. A group whose cost of services is about 90 per cent of revenue is paying out, on average, about nine-tenths of what it bills. Whether an individual sits above or below that average, and at what level of billing the split changes, is in the agreement between the salesperson and the agency, not in the accounts. No tier table is reproduced here because none was found in a filing or on an official page.

GST: the S$1 million line

Goods and services tax (GST) enters commission in two places. For the client, CEA's consumer guidance, on a page last updated on 13 May 2026, says to clarify whether GST is included in or excluded from the commission, and that only GST-registered property agencies can charge GST.

For the person or business earning the commission, the test is in the First Schedule to the Goods and Services Tax Act 1993. Under paragraph 1(1)(a), a person becomes liable to be registered at the end of a calendar year if the total value of taxable supplies made in that year exceeded S$1 million. Under paragraph 1(1)(b), liability also arises at any time there are reasonable grounds to believe that taxable supplies in the following 12 months will exceed S$1 million. Paragraph 1(3) removes the first liability where the Comptroller is satisfied that supplies in the following period will not exceed S$1 million. Supplies of capital assets of the business are disregarded under paragraph 1C(2).

Set beside the accounts, the threshold sorts the two levels clearly. An agency group with revenue of S$675.6 million or S$1,116.4 million is far above the line. The per-head average for PropNex worked out earlier, about S$84,000, is less than a tenth of it: S$1 million is roughly 11.9 times that average.

A worked example, with invented figures: a person whose taxable supplies total S$1.2 million in a calendar year has passed the test in paragraph 1(1)(a) at the end of that year, while one whose supplies total S$900,000 has not, unless the forward-looking test applies.

How the tax authority treats the commission an individual salesperson receives through an agency, and what a salesperson who crosses the line has to do and by when, are set out in the tax authority's own guidance, which could not be read for this guide. The Act gives the threshold; its application to a particular salesperson depends on that person's arrangements.

The accounts show an average split of about ninety to ten. They do not show any one salesperson's agreement.

Kooky, from Shaka

Kooky edits Agents Estate and builds Shaka, the payment router he made for real estate professionals. One payment comes in, and every agent, agency and party in the deal receives their signed share on closing date.

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