However, the spokesperson says the report “does not reflect the scope of the restructuring exercise” as PLB shifts “towards a leaner, technology-enabled operating model”.
In an April 15 email, a PLB spokesperson sidestepped further questions about the number of affected staff, adding that the company “will not be providing detailed headcount breakdowns at this point in time”.
City & Country understands one affected employee was told to either voluntarily resign or be retrenched, and was given two days to decide. This employee tells City & Country that the retrenchment package offered a week’s salary for each year they had worked at PLB.
Another affected employee says staff who resigned were also offered the retrenchment package. In addition, they will be allowed to keep their company-provided devices and will receive a recommendation letter for their job search.
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PLB declined to confirm specifics of the retrenchment package.
The firm had 79 registered agents on Feb 5. City & Country understands realtors have left PLB for other agencies in recent months. PLB’s 50:50 realtor commission sharing scheme is higher compared to other agencies, and PLB likely faced a drop in revenue as a result.
In response, the spokesperson says its realtor team “continues to operate actively”.
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The perks of being a wallflower
The saga began in late January after PLB co-founder Melvin Lim and then-vice-president of strategy Grayce Tan — both high-profile individuals online and offline — stepped down after an extramarital affair.
The latest developments have drawn further attention to the case, highlighting the real estate industry’s susceptibility to key-man risk.
There are 36,816 property agents in Singapore registered with the Council for Estate Agencies, distributed across 997 property agencies. Only five firms have more than 500 agents each; 924 of these firms have not more than 10 realtors under each of them.
Faced with a competitive landscape, property agents have used various means to stand out from the crowd, from creating professionally shot videos of properties for sale to becoming social media influencers themselves.
Tan, for one, resumed posting to her 216,000 Instagram followers in March. Lim, who previously ran a public Instagram page with more than 8,300 followers, has since turned his account private.
Lim, featured in many media interviews, was the “face” of PLB. That the company has been forced to slash its back-office team within a matter of months is a testament to the dangers of personality-led businesses.
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Individual realtors may benefit from seeking fame among specific audiences; many a local television actor or radio DJ has turned to selling homes. A former teacher-turned-realtor, for example, may find it easy to connect with educators seeking homes. A single mother who has built a career brokering real estate deals may empathise with others in similar circumstances.
More risk than reward
Property agencies today are becoming increasingly stratified, with top-performing agents creating specialised teams and divisions to serve different sectors and homebuyers; these agents then take on titles like division director or team leader.
Title inflation notwithstanding, the complex organisational nature of property agencies today spotlights high-performers. In some cases, the large commissions they receive and lavish lifestyles they lead are used as marketing material to attract the envious to their trade, swelling the ranks of the teams, divisions and agencies handling Singapore’s property transactions.
This formula carries more risk than reward as a realtor rises in the ranks. As attention grows, a realtor’s newfound renown is accompanied by greater responsibility.
It may be rewarding to conflate career success with personal life online, but few followers will have the good grace to separate the two. As the saga shows, a key man or woman can bring many others down with them.
A now-deleted section of PLB’s website depicting its former media team sums up the upstart firm’s now-apparent weakness: “Why settle for a ONE MAN SHOW?”
