Covid-19 was ‘the mother of all challenges’ for real estate industry: CDL’s Chia Ngiang Hong

THE Covid-19 pandemic was “the mother of all challenges”, but it also transformed the way business is done in the real estate industry, said Chia Ngiang Hong, group general manager of City Developments Limited.

In an interview with The Business Times, he said: “The market was so chaotic. When Covid-19 set in, the whole market was in (a) panic.” 

Chia, who also served as president of the Real Estate Developers’ Association of Singapore (Redas) for the 2019-2020 and 2021-2022 terms, recalled how safe-distancing measures at construction sites were implemented to mitigate the spread of the coronavirus. However, they made it difficult for workers to work together.