Curated property reports and expert analyses: How to find your dream home faster

THE home-hunting landscape in Singapore is shifting.

Today's homebuyers are not just in the market for a new dwelling. Armed with a wealth of data and insights at their fingertips, many are discerning and well-informed of market trends and property valuation even before setting foot into a viewing appointment.

This shift has inadvertently changed the way homes are sold. OrangeTee & Tie's newly appointed chief executive officer Justin Quek points out that the transaction-driven "hunting" mentality that has traditionally driven real estate sales is losing relevance.

"The traditional model has always had agents try and push products to as many clients as possible, to try and get people to close deals," says Mr Quek. "But frankly, nobody likes having products shoved in their faces."

To meet the needs of a new generation of homebuyers, Mr Quek is leading OrangeTee & Tie towards a business that goes beyond a capitalistic model of simply buying and selling, and one that is ultimately more consumer-centric.

A consumer-centric platform

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Under Mr Quek's vision, OrangeTee will be not just an agency, but a consumer-centric platform: advancing from a means through which consumers simply execute the final transaction, to a reliable source of information and support for customers in every step of their consumer journey.

"Customers today currently don't have a very interactive platform in which to do their research," he says. "We have some functions already set up, but we need to start building up more capabilities to empower the consumer."

Mr Quek is looking at making more data available to the consumer - not just by releasing huge amounts of data for them to sift through, but being the industry insider to help distil and interpret the information correctly.

Under the new approach, customers will have a wide array of tools at their disposal, including reports and analyses from OrangeTee's own industry experts.

"It's part of our new vision to make real estate easy, accessible and understandable for all," says Mr Quek.

The human touch

But potentially the most crucial step towards improving the customer experience is the paradigm shift towards the traditional role of the "agent" at OrangeTee.

OrangeTee agents long-term plan is to nurture advisors, not agents, shares Mr Quek.

A traditional real estate agent's role is, first and foremost, to close a sale. But at OrangeTee, advisors must go far beyond that: With the objective of reaching the customer as early as possible in their consumer journey, they must also be present to guide the customer through their entire exploratory process, from start to finish.

Naturally, this means that there must also be a shift in the way advisors are trained. "To be an advisor, you need to be very passionate about this space, and have a very good grasp of the market," says Mr Quek.

"You need to get rid of the mindset that you're just here to pitch a property; you need to see the journey from the customer's perspective and educate yourself to help your client make the right decisions."

And this education involves being up to date on OrangeTee's diversified income verticals - such as overseas real estate, among others, that the company will reveal in due course - which will allow consumers greater freedom of choice in their investments.

Mr Quek hopes that this will shift the perception of OrangeTree advisors - benefiting not just the customers, but also the advisors themselves.

"If we are just seen as people who are there to help pull the trigger on a sale, well-informed consumers are going to question the value of the commission fees."

A personal responsibility

For such a small country, Singapore has about 35,000 registered property agents, resulting in a highly competitive and cut-throat industry that is heavily focused on performance and numbers.

To Mr Quek, continuing to play this numbers game is simply unsustainable for both the company and the agent, especially in an industry as cyclical as real estate, where transaction volume varies wildly with the season.

Instead, OrangeTee is focusing on boosting productivity per capita - helping OrangeTee advisors diversify their revenue streams through a greater variety of income verticals, as well as helping them find their "stickiness", as Mr Quek puts it.

"Everybody has their place with us," he promises. "It doesn't matter in what space. Maybe you want to specialise in industrial properties, or maybe you want to focus only on rentals.

"So long as you are helping provide a holistic service to our end consumer, we will help you find your space."

It's why he feels so strongly about the company's new tagline, Find Your Place. Taken literally, it summarises OrangeTee's commitment to helping buyers find the right properties for them.

But on another level, it also demonstrates the company's commitment to helping its advisors find their place in the company.

"It's a corporate responsibility for us, to ensure the livelihoods of the people who have chose us as their partners in business," he says.

"To weather the storm, we have to look beyond the short term, beyond just buying and selling, to create sustainable business built on consumer connections and long-term relationships."