ADDITIONAL MUSINGS
These are just random tips I’d like to expand upon based on my personal experience living for years in Singapore. Again, up to you if you’d want to heed some 😉
- One thing that I’ve learned living with other people is that everyone has a quirk or two. Some people prefer certain things to keep their daily life in order – some prefer the smell of pine-scented floor cleaners, some like to keep to a certain shelf of the fridge, some always do their laundry on Wednesdays, some prefer the kitchen windows wide open at all times.
But in a flat with 2-4 tenants, it’s an implicit understanding that we’re all equals here and if someone makes a mistake or tries to overreach, no biggie, rectify it and move on. Worst thing to happen is that the erring tenant just goes away, by coercion or by force. However, your situation as a tenant will dictate how you go forward with a bad co-tenant:
If you’re just a co-tenant, I suggest talking with the rest of the other tenants including the main tenant while the problematic one’s out – either verbally or via a private WhatsApp group – and hash this among yourselves. You don’t have much power anyway, so unless the problem tenant has done something illegal by law, best way to deal is by numbers. However, if it happens that the other tenants are in disagreement… best get the agent’s advice first. However, if you’re just a co-tenant with a live-in landlord, you can get the landlord to intervene on your behalf and deal with the problem co-tenant.
If you’re the main tenant, it’s your responsibility. It’s your name on the contract as the main tenant, so dealing with internal affairs is your job too. So, best get the other tenants on your side and try to settle things with the problem tenant quickly. But if it’s just a flat of two people, I suggest deal with the problem directly. No numbers game backing you up, unless the agent wants to join the ring.
But if it’s the landlord who’s the problem… no choice, you have to talk long and hard with the agent. Worst case scenario, you have to swallow a loss and just move to another place quickly. - If you live with a live-in landlord, best if you can quickly come to terms with this singular fact: the landlord will often get their way. Power hierarchy is tilted towards them. They fucking own the place, for god’s sake. If someone is watching on the common-use living room TV and it’s the landlord, you have no chance. If landlord is hogging the WiFi with either a bitcoin mining setup or a long-running torrent downloading terabytes of data, you fucked. If you did your laundry right after the landlord does and god forbid you also did your duvets, good luck where you hang that. Landlord put some stinky food in the fridge, best you have your own ziploc bag.
What I’m saying is with a live-in landlord, you are forced to adjust to their situation, and rarely on yours. Now, again, I’m not saying all landlords are like bad university dorm mates – some I assume are good and hospitable people. But it’s a dice game, and up to you if you want to check if you can get lucky. If you get a kind non-elderly landlord and a beautiful room at a decent price, go to church and thank the lord because in this country, that is very very rare.
Another thing to keep an eye on are the listings that are priced under SGD 1000 that has “Live-in landlord” specified, and the listing’s picture/s look slightly not “up to standard”. That has a likelihood of two things – 1) the landlord is an elderly person/couple and they just need a live-in patsy to do things for them (e.g. helping them to the toilet, cleaning the kitchen), or 2) the landlord isn’t elderly but needs a soundboard/helper around. I’ve heard some stories from my countrymen who had the misfortune to rent from unscrupulous people, and those were enough to convince me to insist on renting a place with no live-in landlords. - For units with shared amenities like kitchens and bathrooms/toilets, assess the sharing situation first. Is there a place for your bottles of shampoo, body wash and conditioner inside the bathroom? What time in the morning do the other tenants use the bath? Do the other tenants cook a lot, and at what times? What shelves in the fridge are empty? For the laundry area, how often do the other tenants do their laundry, and at what times?
Knowledge of those things will be essential for your first six months. Try to insert your needs in the margins first – then you can start being more flexible after maybe half a year and the other tenants (or the landlord) are used to you and they have also adjusted to your times as well. You’re the one coming in anyway. - One of the unfortunate things about being a co-tenant is sometimes you might be on the hook for expenses you have no control of, or pay for utilities you barely use, or share the bill for things that doesn’t age well. For example, if the kitchen’s LED lighting installed at the ceiling go pfft – you’re sharing the bill for that with the other tenants. No use pointing fingers or laying the blame on another tenant. Your name is on the contract, you share the good and the bad. God forbid the landlord installed some fancy old-model Philips LED circular lighting. Either you all pay for a repairman to come over and install it safely, or go DIY and see how.
For me, one recent bout with this was when in a previously rented flat, the gas stove malfunctioned. The big-flame section couldn’t produce a proper flame anymore as the main metal part that acted as the distributor warped due to intense heat. Should’ve been easy, however the landlord had an old-model SMEG stovetop – so old, our main tenant had to do deep-dive Google research to find the exact model with the same metal parts (model has been discontinued for at least a decade), find a way to buy it online (which inflated the price) and we three tenants had to split the SGD 300+ price for that singular part. I was really this close to pointing finger at one of my co-tenants as he was a frequent user of the kitchen and the stove – whereas me and the main tenant rarely cooked anything (and even if we cooked, it’ll be a quick stir-fried meal), he on the other hand cooked a LOT and cooked them long and slow, like stews. We strongly suspected he cooked something for so long that the old stove’s original metal part finally broke, but in the end we just held it in due to pity as he was earning way lower salaries than both of us (me and the main tenant were IT professionals, he was in healthcare), we didn’t have solid evidence (he just reported it to us one day like it was some sort of “it just happened” accident), and we’ll be rid of him in months anyway (tenancy was up by November). Just one small annoyance to swallow on the way out. - Another piece of advice: DO NOT GO TO MONEY-LENDING COMPANIES FOR MONEY. Stressing this in all-caps. Just get a credit card or something. They are vicious here in Singapore. You can read online the various horror stories of debt collectors doing horrendous shit just to force people to pay – from harassing them on Facebook, sending random Foodpanda deliveries to them with a note to “pay up”, to spraying paint outside their flat door. Better get your money elsewhere, spare yourself the psychological torture.
- If you decide to rent in an HDB place, there will always be a “chute” where you can dump your refuse in. But there are limits to what you can throw in and how to dispose them in there. If you have soft items like discarded/rotten food, put it inside a plastic bag first, tie the bag and you can throw it in. Plastic bottles are OK to dispose there, however metal and glass bottles are a no-no. Dispose them by going down the HDB elevator and putting it in a proper disposal bin. Metal and glass bottles might damage the chute pathways and if you’re unlucky, the repairs might trace it to you and you’d end up paying out your ass. Heavy things are also a no-go – anything beyond 3 kilos, better dispose downstairs.
Again, I emphasize these are my personal tips and suggestions based on my experiences. Use my advice to whatever suits your needs. Hopefully this blog post can help anyone renting a unit in Singapore 🙂
AI prompt for the header image: “Illustrate a slightly-brown Asian man in his 20’s looking for a rental place in Singapore. Exclude any imagery of the Marina Bay Sands, the Merlion, or even obvious Singapore signage. Do not depict any wall-posted advertisements. Use the style of 1980’s Malay street painting art, but make the depiction look like it fits someone living in the 2020’s.”
Briathrail // Albert 2MNG 
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