The CEA has made it easier to check whether your property agent has a disciplinary record. As of 10 June 2026, enforcement actions against agents and agencies are more visible on the CEA's public register, and the latest data shows the offences that matter most are exactly the ones that can sink a purchase.
This is a five-minute step worth taking before you sign anything.
What changed
The register itself is not new. What changed is access: disciplinary records of individual agents and the agencies they work for are now easier to view on the CEA website, and enforcement actions have risen in the latest figures (CEA, June 2026). You can search by an agent's name or registration number and see whether they have been the subject of a completed disciplinary action.
That matters because the agent relationship is built on trust, and until now most buyers had no practical way to check it.
The offences that should worry a buyer
The most common agent offences fall into three categories, and each one maps directly onto something that can derail your transaction or your financing.
Due diligence failures. An agent is meant to verify the basics: who owns the property, whether there are outstanding charges, whether the unit is what it claims to be. When this slips, you can find yourself committed to a purchase on faulty assumptions. That has knock-on effects for your loan, because a bank values and lends against what is actually there, not what was described.
Misleading advertising. Inflated floor area, photos that flatter, claims about tenure or rental yield that do not hold up. If you make an offer based on an advertisement that turns out to be wrong, you may find the valuation comes in below the asking price, which directly affects how much the bank will lend and how much cash you need to top up.
HDB eligibility failures. This is the one with the hardest edges. HDB rules on who can buy, when, and under what scheme are unforgiving. An agent who fails to check eligibility properly can put you in a position where you have committed to a flat you are not entitled to buy, or where the timing breaks a minimum occupation period or an ownership restriction. The consequences land on you, not the agent.
These are not exotic edge cases. They are the everyday mechanics of a transaction, and they are precisely where agents most often fall short.
How to use the register
Before you engage an agent, or before you let an agent's advice shape a binding decision, do two things.
First, confirm the agent is currently registered with the CEA. An unregistered person cannot legally carry out estate agency work. Second, check the disciplinary record. A clean record is not a guarantee of competence, but a pattern of completed enforcement actions is a clear signal to ask harder questions or to look elsewhere.
The register tells you about completed disciplinary actions. It will not show complaints that are unresolved or matters that never reached a finding, so treat a clean record as one input rather than a full character reference.
Where this fits in your buying journey
Vetting your agent is one layer of due diligence. It does not replace the others.
Verify HDB eligibility against the official rules yourself, or with HDB directly, rather than relying solely on what an agent tells you. Confirm the property details that affect value: tenure, floor area, any encumbrances. And separate the financing question from the agent entirely, because your loan eligibility rests on TDSR (Total Debt Servicing Ratio), MSR (Mortgage Servicing Ratio, for HDB and EC purchases), and LTV (loan-to-value) limits that no agent controls.
An agent's record tells you whether the person guiding the transaction has a history of getting these basics wrong. That is useful to know before, not after, you commit.
Sarah Chen
