SINGAPORE – William Tan can stage any property appealingly for sale, but the star realtor does not know how to stage his emotions.
A muscled Hyrox competitor, the 51-year-old Singaporean exudes poise under pressure. That composure recently helped him win the third season of PropertyGuru’s local reality show Home Run, where 12 ambitious property agents competed to ace challenges, from video marketing to pitching a good class bungalow.
Yet, Tan was momentarily misty-eyed on national television in Episode 5, and again in an interview with The Straits Times, while remembering a 94-year-old client whose family felt she should transition to a nursing home.
Mentally sharp though frail, the senior lived with a domestic helper and rejected every previous agent’s pitch to sell her Marine Parade Housing Board flat. She had spent half a century there, surrounded by memories and photographs dating back to the 1930s.
“I decided that, no, I’m not going to pitch anything,” he recalls. “I just wanted to have a chat.”
Slowly, she opened up, allowing him to prepare the property for the market. Tan helped her declutter, all the while honouring her deep attachment to her “forever home”. Two months later, the flat was sold to a very happy family.
His epiphany arrived during the completion process at HDB. Sitting in her wheelchair, the Eurasian auntie, who rarely spoke, reached out her hand and thanked him.
“I’ll remember this for the rest of my career,” says Tan of that encounter 4½ years ago. “It was beyond just working on a transaction. You have an impact on somebody’s life.”
That day, Tan realised afresh that real estate is less about moving brick and mortar than stewarding real people through life transitions.
Today, he leads a 15-man team at home-grown agency SRI. He navigates residential segments, dealing in resale HDB flats, condominium units, new launches and landed homes. He also brokers commercial real estate.
How a mid-life leap paid off
He approaches these spaces not through sales talk, but with the eye of a seasoned marketeer – a skill forged long before his mid-life career pivot.
“I don’t think I’m a great salesperson,” he reveals. “I’m a marketeer in training. The way I try to sell a property is through understanding people and what their needs are. It’s just like taking a brief.”
This audience-first ethos was built over 20 years in marketing, branding and communications.
His corporate pedigree includes leadership stints as senior marketing manager/team head at SPH Magazines and marketing head at Esquire Singapore. He later advanced to oversee digital platforms and operations as head of digital marketing for international media house Burda, managing high-end luxury portfolios like Prestige and Augustman.
But as the media landscape began to contract, scaling the corporate ladder lost its lustre. At the same time, he was investing in property and enjoying home decorating.
At 45, he took a leap of faith, plunging into the real estate arena as a newbie agent. To project professionalism, Tan leaned into a hyper-focused, meticulous, serious corporate role.
In 2026, he took an equally daunting leap of faith: stepping in front of reality television cameras for Home Run 3. The five-episode weekly contest culminated in the Nov 5 finale, streaming across mewatch and the YouTube channels of Mediacorp and PropertyGuru.
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