One month deposit, no agent fee, and why we keep saying it
What it costs to move into one of our rooms, stated in full before anyone books a viewing. One month of rent as a deposit, the first month up front, and nothing else. There is no commission because there is nobody in the middle.
The full cost of moving into a Lazybee room is the first month's rent and one month of rent held as a deposit. That is the list. There is no agent commission, no administration fee, no key deposit, no cleaning fee at the front, and no charge for the agreement.
We say it on the listing, we say it again at the viewing, and we are writing it down here so it is somewhere permanent.
Why there is no agent fee
Not generosity. Structure. There is no agent fee because there is no agent. We lease the whole unit from the owner, we furnish it, we photograph it, we list it, we run the viewings ourselves and we sign the tenant directly. Nobody stands between the room and the person renting it, so there is no third party to pay.
That is worth being precise about, because "no agent fee" is a line a lot of people use while quietly charging something that is an agent fee wearing a hat. If you find a charge on our side that behaves like commission, tell us, because it should not exist.
What the deposit is and is not
One month, held, returned at the end less anything genuinely owed. Damage beyond fair wear, unpaid rent, an unpaid bill that was in the tenant's name.
It is not a penalty fund. It is not a retention we go looking for reasons to keep. And it is not a source of working capital, which is the part that matters most and gets said least: a deposit that has been spent is not a deposit, it is a loan the tenant did not agree to make.
What is included in the rent
Rent covers the room, the furniture in it, utilities, WiFi, and the weekly clean of the common areas. What it does not cover is your own room being tidied, your own laundry, or anything you break.
There is no separate bill at the end of a hot month. That is the point of an inclusive rent, and it is one of the two or three things people tell us actually made the decision, well ahead of anything we would have guessed.
Why we are so boring about this
Because the alternative is the standard Singapore room rental experience, where the number quoted on the listing is not the number you pay, and you find out the difference on the day you are supposed to be excited about moving.
We would rather lose the enquiry at the listing than lose the tenant at the signing. Publishing the whole cost is the cheapest possible way to make sure the only people who come to a viewing are people the price already works for. It saves them an evening and it saves us one.
Every one of our nineteen rooms works the same way, from the smallest standard room at S$600 to the master rooms at S$2,200. Same deposit, same absence of fees, same three month minimum.
