The rise of technology which has revolutionised in the property sector!

Key Takeaways

we are the purposeful project we help entrepreneurs for free welcome to today's pep talk we will take just 20 minutes to interview leading experts from around the world who share actionable know-how insights and life lessons to hear these incredible insights follow us on spotify apple music or anywhere you listen to podcasts or you can simply visit theproposalproject.com sign up to our main list and get the podcast in your inbox every single week hi leo welcome to the podcast thank you so much for joining us today it's great to have you here for this special edition of start me up festival hong kong podcast i'd love to hear from you and maybe my audience to know a little bit about who you are and what you do thank you so much simon as my owner joined this podcast section my name is leo leolo founder of asia prop tech this year because it started me up festival i invited asia pop tech to be one of the main event organizers so it it's great that um invest hong kong the style festival hong kong has finally we have the proptech vertical within the festival so in our event um we will uh actually invite a lot of prop tech influencers around the world to share about their insights on what proptech is and what property is going on we have investors we have real estate companies we have startups we also have a half day program the target for the youth uh the the youngsters um because they are also interested in what pop techs are developing now so um maybe for the listeners that don't know what proc tech is can you give some examples or explain it a little bit you mean you mean part time right yes yep um actually you know proptech is kind of a to me i think it's a it's a buzzword we so very don't have a very uh solid definition but it involves any uh technologies or any business model innovations that can facilitate the real estate and construction industry so in our industry we actually we we're talking about a prop tech 3.0 so that means we basically we transform from proptech 1.0 2.0 and 3.0 so in the industry i think we we have already put this on the table for discussion over eight years it depends on which technologies you're using or which business model innovation you you adopt in the world and construction industry for example co-working would be a permanent example in proptech and talking about ai talking about data analytics um talking about blockchain i think there would be many different kinds of applications uh in the real estate and construction industry will it elongate into things like mortgages and how people buy property i mean is it all going on the blockchain is that is that is that the future yeah uh because you know brick and mortar business is kind of a very traditional business uh somehow uh this sector is lagging behind compared with finance industry so they have fintech for the health care industry they have health care health tech your example is one of the prop tech solutions that means uh if we can use a blockchain for example to record some property titles uh compound with the uh say uh cryptocurrency and then we can uh basically we can do real estate financing or mortgaging uh by the blockchain platform uh in a very seamless situation compared with the old times for example in sweden they have a complete a blockchain program that means um they they're now recording property titles on blockchain and they work with the local telecom telecommunication companies and also work with lawyers they shorten basically the time for transferring and property titles involving involving the uh buy and sell involving the mortgaging from traditionally we need maybe one month to complete a transaction but now they they just um maybe for two days three days they can complete a property title transfer so that's an example of top tech do you think prop tech's going to disrupt anyone in particular i mean i i feel like the model of buying a house and and buying a flat in hong kong for example or is is out of the reach for a lot of people but you know if you positioned it like a bitcoin you could buy a fraction of a house right or you can is is that the future you think within within the property world uh yeah i think we uh so far honestly i don't think we have seen any uh completed case on this uh what you mentioned about professionalized the property titles or investments but people are working hard to go for this direction so many people in prop tech industry talking about to democratize you know the prop the property investment so before any innovation you know uh taking hong kong as an example i'm based in hong kong you know hong kong's housing price is the number one in the world uh people are always you know think face the difficulties in buying homes but with proptech properly they can do the investments they can buy home in a more you know cost efficient way and in terms of the economics for example it can save a lot of transaction cost so that means um that would uh i i can say it enables uh the real estate transactions uh but so far uh it's still a journey to go to disrupt or totally disrupt the industry so i i i was saying that uh it enables the real estate transactions by proptech your day job um maybe tell the audience a little bit about what you do during the day but i know you you support and invest in pop tech ideas is there anything that pops out that you're involved in now that you think wow this is this is really exciting all right um actually you know i'm not coming from the tech background i'm a real estate background i'm i i were trained as a what we call chartered estate surveyor so suppose i work in a real estate investment the land administration sector we do a property consultancy for example so this is my very basic daily job but because of prop tax and because of my domain knowledge in this real estate industry so my company i'm running uh different arms uh one of the entities are focusing on the proptech investment and also the prop tech consultancy services so a lot of the people that listen to this podcast are young people thinking of starting a business or have a business and wondering how to grow it i mean i always like the story of like you know you could buy a tesla or you could buy tesla shares you know the tesla might have gone half down in value but the tesla shares have gone up 10 times right so do you think like property for example going forward it's always been so as you say the traditional model buy a property hold it but do you think that it's now going to be about investing in businesses that invest in property as opposed to buying property direct do you think that's the future yep i i do think that's the future because um compound i mean i mean in terms of proptech because i mentioned that no matter what technologies you're using um anything that can facilitate the worst day transactions that will be regarded as proptech and in the future i foresee that um not a single technology can really you know lead us to that direction but if we combine say ai blockchain with data analytics um even for um for for for the mixed reality for example i foresee that we can reach you know the destination we mentioned but of course i think for any tech or even fintech i think we need the government support very much because somehow property investment is a kind of the thing that would be regulated you know by by different governments just like um stock market so um any anything new uh any new technologies the government would normally take a comparatively speaking conservative approach but i appreciate that some governments in the world they would provide a sandbox for fintech for proptech and taking real estate financing by technology as an example it involves a collective investment scheme so in hong kong for example if the operator for real estate financing platform they may probably need a license uh that that is regulated by the security and futures commission um so what i want to say is i definitely i see the future like what you mentioned but we need all the support not only from the tech sector only from the real estate sector but also from the government interesting now you are based in hong kong and as i think you just mentioned it's one of the most expensive real estate markets in the world but it's also in my view one of the most innovative markets in the world i think it's got some really interesting uh opportunities to to lead the charge on property technology but is there any hong kong startups that stand out to you as like doing really interesting things is there any one you want to highlight and i'm really interested to you know hear your view on who you think will be the next hong kong unicorn honestly speaking uh proptech is just getting started in hong kong so um i i think i can't name any potential unicorn so far but i i really hope to see seeing some unicorns happened here in hong kong for the interesting uh proptech companies i would say some some of them like one is working in energy monitoring for buildings i think that would be quite uh promising because you know many uh real estate companies in hong kong are listed companies and you know we we have the esg you know initiative especially is compulsory for all listed companies that means they need to focus on how are using more technology or innovation for making themselves green so anything like uh energy monitoring or any technology or protect that can help for the energy saving for buildings that would be great and maybe a potential unicorn for the real estate investment side i understand that some companies are working hard on what we call automated valuation models um that that that's actually dealing with the property evaluation plus site analysis by using data by using ai i can say it's just getting started but i foresee that that would be quite promising as well because many institutional investors many real estate developers or companies they need some non-bias analysis on the property or development sites so ai can definitely help i think that uh some of the most prominent startup ecosystems in the world like san francisco for example has the most expensive property right it's some they're actually a correlation between opportunity and property prices right so so i think hong kong is an amazing market to go and start a business because it's got a valuable property market there's a lot of people with money to invest in your business yeah i actually i want to at one point because um uh regarding proptech i think there are two hubs in the world so far one is in london okay and that is uh the hub of top tech in europe and the other one people would say new york in north america in the u.s and but back to asia i think so far we don't have a particular hub for proptech but i i can say as a homecomer or as a guy based in hong kong i think hong kong would be quite potentially being would be the hub of proptech in asia given what we mentioned uh the property transactions is very vibrant here are very frequent and the amount i mean sector is also huge so that would be i think hong kong plus uh what we say greater bay area that is the southern side of china uh i think would be potentially the hub of prop 10 in asia that would be a great market yeah yeah so i know i know i'm sorry to go back to the same question but you know is there any prop tech company that stands out that you think wow this one's really interesting yeah i think i want to mention uh one company called n-track they are doing what i just mentioned about the energy monitoring things for buildings and also the avm company called chft chft they do uh they do great in avm yeah yeah it's um it's definitely i i i'm seeing so many companies come out of hong kong now i guess do you think that the next step for the hong kong market is to uh get get more people come in more talent to come into the market or do you think it's about nurturing the existing talent uh i think hong kong uh is a very interesting market that uh is also acts like a platform so answering a question i would say as i know for example in in my connections because we we often do uh some collaboration with the european proptech uh circles um many european prop tech companies they also want to expand themselves and they would choose asia and after they chose asia they would like to come to hong kong because they would think hong kong is a kind of stepping board for them to do business in china or even southeast asia so i i would like to say is um definitely there will be more talent coming to hong kong to develop a prop tag um that's happening actually some years ago one to two years ago i met people in russia uh in finland uh in in sweden i think i met them again in hong kong after after one to two years because they they decided to move to hong kong already so um definitely i think thailand are coming um we should grab the chance uh to making hot rice hub i i agree well i want to thank you leah for coming on and sharing your knowledge and just before we close any words of wisdom for aspiring entrepreneurs all right um i think um to share a kind of a wisdom um that because of my identity as a hong konger i think in in cantonese you know we speak at cantonese uh one thing uh for entrepreneur i would say uh we need to uh seek that means uh literally means uh you need to know how to behave as a man or as a as a woman of course it's not uh just it just doesn't mean i just only literally mean this service meaning but it implies that as an entrepreneur i think we need to handle many many other things not only your solution not only your business model but also you need to work with different people including your staff so i would say soft skills or how to behave yourself that would be the very important thing to to be a successful entrepreneur is all directions not only your business model yeah i am i've you know having lived in hong kong for 20 years myself i was i always loved these insights where whether way language the nuance of language and what it means but my my i guess my translation is um do the right thing be a decent person you know uh treat treat people well all you've really got is your legacy right yeah try to manage uh the people around you are smart yeah yeah yeah wise words leo and it was a pleasure to chat to you today thank you for what you're doing to support hong kong and no and i love property tech so keep us informed as uh the technology advances and what's going on and we'll put your links down below anyone that's listening to leo wants to know more about what he's doing we'll put leo's links down below but leo thank you so much for coming on the podcast today and sharing your your knowledge thank you so much thank you for listening to pep talk today powered by the purposeful project if you found it interesting please give us a review and follow us in addition you can sign up to our website and get loads more free entrepreneur 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