Hardworking, driven, and entrepreneurial.
Unfortunately for one student from China who came to Singapore to study, his antics ran afoul of the law.
From January to July last year, 22-year-old Zhang made S$10,100 just by helping people find places to rent.
He would trawl forums to find out who needed a place where, and would further scour the web to check if these places were available for rent.
Then, he would connect landlord and client, and from that earn a commission – half of the first month’s rental fee per deal.
One client said that Zhang contacted him onling, offering a place to rent in an area which he was looking at.
He said that Zhang didn’t arouse suspicion as he had even gave him a name card later on.
He subsequently rented the apartment for S$2650 a month, and paid Zhang a commission of S$1200.
The entreprenueurial teenager’s money-making ways were over though, when he was outed by the Council for Estate Agents.
For posing as a real estate agent, he was fined S$40,000 by the courts in Singapore.
So it appears that the problem wasn’t that Zhang did his job well, but rather, he did it without a proper licence.
