@yunsyn i've faced this as a landlord myself 4 years ago when dealing with agents. I asked my friends around me, and they experienced the same. In Nov 2014, I SMS 50 agents who advertise in Bandar Utama to help me lease my property in Kayu Ara (one street away), only 4 bothered to reply my SMS, and 2 came over to take photos. As a landlord, I was lost... why so few people wanna help me?! That was when I started to think of building Speedrent.
I always say that there are good agents, but there are also many lousy agents. My experience has always been dealing with not so good agents (maybe I'm not a property tycoon). Except one I dealt recently, Hugo Lim from Tech Real Estate, he has been very professional).
Please allow me to state the truth. Agents = human, and human is not scaleable. The moment a human deal with 15-20 customers, the person is maxed out. The quality of service will drop if there is attempt to take in more. There are good agents who are smart to focus on a handful of good customers and keep focusing on that. That result in great repeating customers, and also great service.
But many agents just do the transaction, and then see you next year or next time. No service at all. 2 months ago, I dealt with a horrible, unethical agent, whose name is Adrian Gan from Wise Man Realty. I've filed a complain to MIEA about this ~1 month ago and to date, not a single reply. To put on record, I actually use an agent too, along with Speedrent - and I also recommend all landlords to use both, why go exclusive with just one? After all, as a landlord, I just want a tenant. Fee - is secondary.
My vision for Speedrent is simple, landlord and tenant go direct because this is more scalable. And Speedrent offers all the tools and automation to make it simple for both parties to rent in a safe, easy and transparent manner.
For those landlords who have found a good agent, keep it because I believe they do add value. But if you wish to try out what Speedrent is all about, no qualm about it.