8 questions with nomadic entrepreneur Andrew Henderson

<img alt="AI, one of the great disruptive forces in the real estate sector. Adam Vilimek/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_166675769-compressor.jpg/fd0709af-2559-42ad-9d07-0b541e8da06e?t=1543311897987" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />Jobs and machines have coexisted for millennia. But when the wheel and axle begin to behave more like their makers, perhaps it is time to bring out the ultimate contingency: playing up the quintessentially human ability to make decisions instead of doing repetitive tasks. Artificial intelligence is imperilling the livelihood of real estate agents. By 2020, <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/01/02/why-artificial-intelligence-will-eliminate-millions-of-sales-jobs/" target="_blank">a million B2B salespeople</a> will lose their jobs to AI, according to Forrester. It has been a source of trepidation for salespeople in Asia Pacific alone, where AI-powered services now constitute 10 percent of the real estate industry. Meanwhile, a survey by Hubspot showed that 47 percent of consumers are now open to buying items through chatbots, which have been deemed to be efficient at automating appointment bookings. Search engines are one area where real estate players have embraced the perks of machine learning, or the application of AI on systems so they can improve from experience as opposed to being programmed. Earlier this year, Singapore-based tech giant PropertyGuru underwent a successful brand refresh, launching websites and mobile apps with machine learning algorithms that recognise behavioural cues and thereby predict consumers’ preferred homes and even content. “The biggest challenge today in the property sector is the matching of supply and demand,” said Hari Krishnan, CEO of PropertyGuru, which mounted the 2018 <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com" target="_blank">Asia Real Estate Summit</a> in November. “When a developer builds real estate, how do they match it to a property seeker?   “Platforms like us, coupled with artificial intelligence, are going to help the efficiency of that matching. Artificial intelligence underpins PropertyGuru’s platform itself, so I’m a big fan of it.” But a full-on robot uprising, this is not. The disintermediation of real estate, or the reduction in the use of intermediaries between developers and consumers, should foreseeably transpire in ways that will not completely devalue human insight.  <a href="http://www.property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-proptech-right-now-with-jll-s-george-thom-9" target="_blank">More: 5 questions for JLL's George Thomas</a> “It is untrue that the property agents will be disintermediated completely. Our view is that the property agents will now play a slightly different role,” said George Thomas, chief information officer and head of technology, data and information management for Asia Pacific at JLL, on the sidelines of the PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit. “Given that the data collected within real estate is quite nuanced, it is going to require quite a bit of interpretation. Who better to interpret that than the subject matter experts in that space? At this point in the proptech evolution, technologies cannot stand independently of the business processes tied to them. “It is one thing for the technology to say, for example, that the bathroom needs cleaning. It is another for us to coordinate with a variety of different providers to make sure the bathrooms are cleaned periodically. Connecting the business process to the technology will remain important forever,” said Thomas. For agents raring for lead time in adapting to the times, machines are, fortunately, still not advanced enough to think for themselves. Real estate players today are more likely using augmented, rather than artificial, intelligence, synonymous with data-driven machine learning, said Thomas. Meanwhile, the construction sector, a crucial component of the real estate value chain, remains one of <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/digitalisation-of-construction-taking-building-productivity-into-the-fut-11" target="_blank">the least digitised sectors in the world</a>.  “It is quite important for agents to realise it is less about disintermediation and more about the job profile changing a bit,” said Thomas.

AI and machine learning: how property agents can survive the great job destroyers

<img alt="'Smart city' has been a subjective concept for many countries. Elnur/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_1235599819-compressor.jpg/3ad9b24a-a2bd-4219-ad8e-777ddf879f5e?t=1542946052016" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />In the current hubbub around urban planning, two words occupy prime real estate: smart cities.  <div> Every city aspires to be called one. From India to <a href="http://www.property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/songdo-trailblazer-or-cautionary-tal-6" target="_blank">South Korea</a>, property developments and government missions have either attempted building smart cities from the ground up or groomed existing urban hubs to be billed as such, often with mixed results.   </div> <div> Policymakers and urban planners have struggled to come up with a unified definition for a smart city, with variable parametres on what makes a city intelligent. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi made a lot of fanfare in 2015 when he announced his Smart Cities Mission, before admitting that he did not know what the term exactly meant.   </div> <div> Having analysed more than 100 definitions related to smart cities, the International Telecommunication Union in 2014 arrived at this definition: “A smart sustainable city is an innovative city that uses ICTs and other means to improve quality of life, efficiency of urban operation and services and competitiveness, while ensuring that it meets the needs of present and future generations with respect to economic, social and environmental aspects.” </div> <div> “‘Smart city’ is just a buzzword. All we’re using is technology to improve a situation which is what we’ve always done for a long time,” said Charles Reed Anderson, founder of Charles Reed Anderson & Associates, in a panel discussion on smart cities around Asia Pacific at the <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com" target="_blank">PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit</a> in November. </div> <div> “In reality, this is no different than the other things we experienced in the past. We’re just using it now for a city. As of right now, I don’t think there are already smart cities. I think there are cities that are good at marketing themselves as smart cities.”  </div> <div> As a qualifier, “smart” is even more relative in Asia Pacific where cities either display extreme wealth or crippling poverty. One’s idea of a smart urban development in an obscure Indian town may be basic in Dubai, for example.   <img alt="The panel discussion on smart cities from around Asia Pacific consisted of (from left to right) Charles Reed Anderson, Founder, Charles Reed Anderson & Associates; Joelle Chen, Regional Head, Asia Pacific, World Green Building Council, Singapore; Dr. Okan Geray, Strategic Planning Advisor, Smart Dubai; Adam Beck, Executive Director, Smart Cities Council, Australia & New Zealand; Terry Blackburn, Founder & Managing Director, Asia Property Awards, Property Report, Asia Real Estate Summit, PropertyGuru Group" src="/documents/10204/0/44973478375_b63eca3b3e_b-compressor.jpg/f0644759-8e19-4473-9e56-3bdd8d990cc7?t=1542946828806" /> </div> <div> “We talk about smart cities as if it’s a zero or one thing: you’re either a smart city or not a smart city. But everywhere I go, the context is so different; aspects of cities are so incredibly different from each other,” said Dr. Okan Geray, strategic planning advisor for Smart Dubai, an initiative which aims to make Dubai the world's smartest city.    </div> <div> “I really believe the challenges faced by each and every city is very different. We try to put them in all in the same basket, but it is very difficult. The issues [other cities] face in terms of housing, mobility—some have no roads, no transportation—these are not really the same issues that we face in Dubai." “What is a ‘good city’? What is a ‘smart city’? A lot of the emerging economies are still at the level of defining what is a good city,” said Singapore-based Joelle Chen, regional head, Asia Pacific for the World Green Building Council.   </div> <div class="pull-quotes-container">A smart city has got to be productive, got to be healthy, got to be efficient. When you start looking at the health and wellbeing metric in a building, you start thinking about how productive you are in a space</div> <div> Perhaps a smart city is really the sum of its parts, in that it would be remiss of urban planners to not think of it as an amalgam of sustainable, intelligent buildings.   </div> <div> “If you think about it, the buildings themselves are almost the micro-version of the cities. Anything that we think about in terms of the city itself, whether it’s mobility, food issues, energy, healthcare, or education to a certain extent—all of them are manifesting themselves in the micro-environment of buildings,” said Geray.   </div> <div> <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/digitalisation-of-construction-taking-building-productivity-into-the-fut-11" target="_blank">More: How digitalisation of construction will take builder productivity into the future</a> One major metric the World Green Building Council has used to determine the intelligence of a city is citizen wellbeing by way of indoor air quality. The quality of air within buildings has had an underrated impact on cognitive function, seeing as humans breathe 15,000 litres of air every day as opposed to drinking about three litres of water.   </div> <div> "For me, a smart city has got to be productive, got to be healthy, got to be efficient. When you start looking at the health and wellbeing metric in a building, you start thinking about how productive you are in a space,” Chen said, exhorting developers to create more carbon-neutral portfolios in time for 2030, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) deadline for preventing climate change catastrophe.  </div> <div> “Buildings are meant for people. Otherwise, buildings will be weapons of mass destruction."  </div> <div> The Smart Cities Council - Australia & New Zealand, in partnership with the Green Building Council of Australia, released last month the Code for Smart Communities, which parses smart urban developments for property developers and technologists. The code attempts to encapsulate smart communities in a range of principles: strategic, connected, aware, responsive, and innovative.  <div class="pull-quotes-container">The green building movement is one of the most transformational movements in history</div> “The hard work that nobody has never done yet is put metrics around those,” said Adam Beck, the council's executive director. “We really started giving the development industry and the property sector some tangible metrics to define those ideas.”  In Australia, developers may not build premium-grade commercial buildings in a major city unless it is rated by Green Star, the national and voluntary rating system for buildings and communities.  “The green building movement is one of the most transformational movements in history,” said Beck. "It took a little while to get going because of the pushback. There was no demand for it. Twenty-three years later, we’ve seen a global movement. It’s been absolutely phenomenal.”  <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/state-of-the-economy-a-conversation-with-the-economist-s-andrew-stapl-5" target="_blank">More: A conversation with The Economist's Andrew Staples</a> <div> Use cases are often overlooked in the thrust toward becoming a smart city, an omission Taipei is ameliorating in its own urban development project. The city’s Smart City Project Management Office (PMO) has interviewed 30,000 citizens to understand their desires for the city and talked to around 400 different ICT vendors to deliver those solutions. Such synergies between public servants and IT players have resulted in around 135 proofs-of-concept, ranging from smart streetlights to autonomous vehicles, with Taipei as their test bed.   </div> <div> “Don’t get me wrong; a lot of them will fail but at least they’re experimenting and trying to identify these new use cases,” Anderson said.   </div> <div> “What we’re lacking in smart cities is the experimentation because we don’t know the use cases. We know we can do infrastructure-centric solutions but not citizen-centric ones.”  <img alt="Panel discussion on smart cities from around Asia Pacific was staged on the second and final day of the PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit 2018" src="/documents/10204/0/45886676671_898043490e_b-compressor.jpg/ce4a827a-2800-44d6-a4a4-beb2d44627d4?t=1542947265346" /> </div> <div> Dubai has been similarly people-oriented, having regularly put out questionnaires that ask its cosmopolitan, expatriate-dominated populace: what makes them happy? In its quest to become “the happiest city on earth”, Smart Dubai has identified and sought to digitise roughly 75 “customer journeys” or experiences crucial to the daily lives of residents, from education and health to so much as taking the taxi.    </div> <div> “What we see in smart city projects today, you have almost standard, cookie-cutter solutions being applied across the board to any city. I don’t think that’s a very scaleable approach,” Geray said.   </div> <div> The emirate’s interrogatory efforts managed to wrest a common thread from those experiences: the need to truncate paper-based processes in the government. The Dubai Paperless Strategy was launched last year as a result, aiming to make procedures in the emirati government paper-free by December 2021.   </div> <div> In a way, developing smart cities rely on counterintuition, having technology take a backseat to the people. Urban planners need to reverse-engineer a community’s vision of utopia, strip them to a set of desired outcomes, and define key performance indicators of initiatives working toward them.    </div> <div> “It’s like working backwards from the concept of happiness and then coming up with solutions, not starting with asking: ‘How can I apply technology on the city?’ It should be the other way around. The needs of the city’s inhabitants are very important,” Geray said.    </div> <div> “After all, ‘what is the city but the people?’”  </div> </div>

Smart cities in Asia Pacific: lessons, challenges, opportunities

<img alt="Monito/Flickr" src="/documents/10204/0/fintech-lead-compressor.jpg/34074e7f-7de5-44d4-b474-e37736baf4d5?t=1542713761735" style="width: 1128px; height: 667px;" /> Capital raising has become one of the more exciting spaces in the real estate industry as the phenomenon of sophisticated fintech or financial technologies muscles into the picture.  The intricacies of fintech have had significant corollaries on the very manner in which property is owned and transacted. "The catchphrase for real estate is no longer 'location, location, location.' It’s now 'technology, technology, technology,'" said Benedict Andrew Lim, managing director for Southeast Asian real estate at Ernst & Young, who moderated the panel discussion on fintech at the <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com" target="_blank">PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit</a> earlier this month. But it bears reminding that fintech, for all the innovations it brings to real estate, is nothing new. “Fintech or financial technology has been around for a long time,” said Dr. Florian M. Spiegl, co-founder and COO of the Hong Kong-based company FinFabrik.  “In fact, if you go all the way back to the 1880s, we moved from sending money cross-country on horse carriages to actually wiring money. That was fintech.”   Contemporary fintech, however, is an entirely different ballgame—a movement that hatched concurrently with the arrival of the iPhone, and mobility, for that matter, in the late 2000s, Spiegl noted.   “We’re moving from going to the banks and falling in line to making payments on your mobile,” fintech advisor and panellist Phonpimol Pathomsak said. “People who in the past never had access to loans and financial services could now get them more easily. Everything is in a mobile phone.” What follows are some of the more salient points we gleaned from the panel: 1. Rising digitisation of property ownership                                                                           With the world's real estate valued at USD280.6 trillion as of last year, a significant portion of that is going to be up for tokenisation or the process of representing the ownership of real world assets digitally on a blockchain, according to Christopher J. Marriott, CEO for Southeast Asia at Savills. Tokenisation makes the selling of property more fluid, rendering obsolete those days when a physical deed or certificate is the only thing that can pass for proof of ownership. Tokenisation plays out like "writing the content of those certificates into the smart contract of the token, plus digitising the actual document,” Spiegl explained. “Imagine the token not just representing ownership of that asset but the entire legal history that can be disclosed of that asset. Once you have a dual structure — the physical-world representation of ownership and the digital-world representation — you can’t detach the two. You can add liquidity to the digital element, very easily transact it.” <h4>2. Nascent regulatory frameworks</h4> Regulatory and legal frameworks still hamper fintech from flourishing more than it already has. For now, fintech sits firmly within the sphere of financial services capital markets; existing rules apply. For example, Hong Kong’s SFC recently issued a statement requiring a type 149 licence of asset managers dabbling in cryptocurrencies, at par with other securities, noted Spiegl.   Singapore is also working on the regulatory framework for asset backed-securities, which represent the tokenisation of a real estate asset over equity and debt, said Marriott.  "Within that there’s a real need to look at the token structure and the smart contract that effectively is what gets you listed for sale. All of the regulation around that is in a very primitive stage," Marriott stated. "Both the manufacturers, those people trying to create the token, and the regulators are debating how that can be done." "Regulators are still getting into this space," Spiegl noted. "They're still aiming to understand they dynamics of it. And their job is to protect the end consumers. The whole industry is looking forward to how regulators can give us the rules so we know what to comply with and build businesses that are robust and put end consumers first." <a href="http://www.property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/5-things-you-need-to-know-about-proptech-right-now-with-jll-s-george-thom-9" target="_blank">More: 5 questions for JLL's George Thomas</a> 3. Asset-backed securities vs. cryptocurrencies Enthusiasts in the fintech space are getting excited over asset-backed securities and the fact that they can create representation of ownership of an asset on a blockchain protocol. "Asset-backed security is not a cryptocurrency. Effectively you can buy a token or a fraction of interest in this building and it may contain both equity and debt," Marriott said.  However, there is yet to be "strength of interest" from institutional investors to move into the asset-backed security marketplace, he said. "There are two reasons for that. First, it’s their market. If you start fractionalised ownership, you open up that market to everybody; they cannibalise their own marketplace. "Second there is no regulatory framework, there is no access to the market for this to occur," he added. <img alt="Moderated by Benedict Andrew Lim, managing director, Southeast Asian real estate at Ernst & Young, the panel on fintech at the PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit consisted of Christopher J. Marriott, CEO, Southeast Asia, Savills; Dr Florian M. Spiegl, co-founder and COO, FinFabrik; and Phonpimol Pathomsak, fintech advisor" src="/documents/10204/0/A_0648-compressor.jpg/55de8f37-b159-4bb2-b5b1-0e69dee2c815?t=1542714936655" /> <h4>4. Easier access to credit</h4> Fintech has been a boon to financial inclusion in many developing countries, especially in Thailand where around 80 percent of people still need to take out loans to be able to acquire property, said Phonpimol. The fintech expert was the former CEO of Refinn, an online mortgage platform that assists customers in the loan application process and improves their chances of an approval. It does so by matching them with the right short-term and long-term offers by lenders. “There are a lot of people that would get rejected and never ever get the loan. Rejection basically because the customer is not qualified," she said. "It’s not their fault entirely; sometimes it’s because of the inefficiency of the bank, and also because the operation is taking too much time to verify the person.” <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/state-of-the-economy-a-conversation-with-the-economist-s-andrew-stapl-5" target="_blank">More: A conversation with The Economist's Andrew Staples</a> <h4>5. REIT vs tokens</h4> Tokens are far more affordable than REIT structures, which has “fees on fees on fees,” noted Marriott. “A token has everything included. The ownership would be included in a smart contract that can move from one person to another very efficiently.” In comparing tokens to REITs, Florian brings up the emotional factor that the former bring to investors, especially younger ones. “Strangely enough we tend to forget investment into real estate has an emotional component. Is there a less sexy product than a REIT? “Think about how we enable fractional ownership. People can walk up to a shopping mall, residential property, and say, 'This is my building.' We’re bringing back that emotional attachment. Now that sounds soft, but I think it’s very important for the next generation of investors to have a tangible element to their investment.”

Fintech in real estate: 5 takeaways from the PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit 2018

<img alt="Pedestrians along Orchard Road, Singapore. Suchart Boonyavech/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_1045118092-compressor.jpg/4fcdc332-2bc8-4fe3-95e3-b1daa351748f?t=1542344288615" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />Cradling 8.5 percent of the world’s population, Southeast Asia is brimming with overly populous cities. The convergence of humanity in this part of the world presents a motherlode of challenges to urban planners. The population boom is also a catalyst for urban sprawl and, along with it, demand for greenhouse-gas-guzzling private vehicles. To counter the colossal pressures besetting the region’s urban hubs, "behavioral change” is in order, particularly in outmoded attitudes toward walkability, according to Chintan Raveshia, Cities lead of the Cities and Planning team at Arup Singapore. Success is subjective, and for many Asians, it is predicated on car ownership. “There’s a lot of people in this part of the world where people think buying a car is the future. That doesn’t need to be,” Raveshia said on the sidelines of the <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com" target="_blank">PropertyGuru Real Estate Summit</a>, where he delivered a keynote speech. As a consequence of these social mores, pedestrian spaces often take a backseat to high-stakes road projects. Only two million Filipinos own private vehicles, for example, but in Metro Manila, an urban agglomeration of more than 12 million, sidewalks have no proper setback rules, forcing pedestrians to squeeze into dangerous one-lane walks. <img alt="Chintan Raveshia, Cities lead of the Cities and Planning team at Arup Singapore, delivering his keynote speech at the PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit 2018" src="/documents/10204/0/A_0855-compressor.jpg/70d442ee-fa45-4d19-827d-83a6c02c31d5?t=1542345191355" /> Worse yet, uninterruptible urban sprawl has trebled the rise of low-density developments that can only be reached by cars, compounding the problem of carbon emissions from the city. “We want people’s idea of growth and progress to change … to make people accept that walking is cool and it’s okay. To make that people think that walking is not pulling them down in their class structure." There is still much to learn from Southeast Asia though. Raveshia, a Singapore resident, cited a recent survey in his city that suggested buying cars is falling out of favour with young demographic cohorts even as government regulations continue to impinge on car ownership. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/connecting-the-dots-the-rise-of-the-megacity-archipelag-5" target="_blank">More: Building a 'megacity archipelago' is the future, says Parag Khanna</a> “The next generation does not aim at buying a car anymore. They want to use that money for experience,” he said. Raveshia, who has lent his expertise to modern transport projects in the UK, Sydney, and Kocaeli in Turkey, has reason to be optimistic about Southeast Asian cities. Most might as well be cities in Europe of 100 years ago — they were able to transcend such pressures to arrive at where they are now. “I see that progress is going to be much quicker for us here in Asia because we already know the mistakes of the past to be able to reform those and move around very quickly to where we need to be,” he said.

What makes a successful Asian city? The answer is in walkability

<img alt="The US-China trade dispute represents a key risk to global economic outlook. ittoilmatar/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_1185877720-compressor.jpg/0deb5792-ba14-40a3-a872-b0ee704db97e?t=1542285024861" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />The US-China trade war will accelerate shifts in the global economic supply chain and Chinese outbound investment markets, according to thought leaders gathered at the <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com/" target="_blank">PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit</a>.  While the dispute has bruised consumer confidence in China, its upshot will not be a reduction in the US trade deficit as President Donald Trump had hoped, according to Andrew Staples, editorial director and chief economist at The Economist Corporate Network (ECN). “It won't get the deficit down. It will simply mean that supply chains move to other countries, whether it be soya beans in Brazil or automative exports from Thailand,” Staples told attendees at the summit where he delivered the first keynote address.  "We don't think the trade war is justified action," he added.  Similarly, the trade war will see Chinese buying inquiries riven into two trends, one being plunging demand for stateside residential products, according to Carrie Law, CEO of Juwai.com.   “One is wait-and-see, do nothing. The other is a shift in demand into regional targets, into Southeast Asian countries,” she said on the sidelines of the summit. “We can see that [buying] inquiries for the US, as well as Australia, dropped by double digits. The growth in North Asian countries are also up. “Obviously the demand is still there. It’s just not the same locations.” <img alt="Andrew Staples, editorial director at the Economist Corporate Network (ECN)" src="/documents/10204/0/A_0332-compressor.jpg/dc2ecc13-96a5-4e44-bc16-7480bdc06316?t=1542285526656" /> The trade dispute morphing into a full-blown global trade war will be the number one risk and bring "colder" headwinds to the global economy into the next year, predicted Staples. Presenting his 2019 forecast for the region, Staples warned that the tit-for-tat tariffs between the states and China constitute the topmost risk to their economic outlook for next year. “Their relations are very poor. We don’t think this is good for global growth, we don’t think this is good for global security,” Staples said.   “This is something we’re very, very worried about.” <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/state-of-the-economy-a-conversation-with-the-economist-s-andrew-stapl-5" target="_blank">More: A conversation with The Economist's Andrew Staples</a> Already, the trade dispute has riven Asian economies into distinct winners and losers, according to a new report released earlier this month by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), an ECN company. Japan, the Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, and Taiwan are projected to lose in the ICT sector, for example, in contrast to winners like Vietnam, Malaysia, India, Indonesia and Thailand. Bangladesh, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Vietnam are poised to be the trade war’s winning economies in terms of ready-made garment manufacturing, while Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam are set to excel in automotive production. China’s losing luster as a manufacturing destination reflects its growing affluence and transformation into a consumption-driven market. “If you went to China 25 years ago, it has lots of low-cost labour to make t-shirts and shoes. That’s all gone now to places like Vietnam, Bangladesh, and elsewhere — which is a more positive story. [The Chinese] have more money to spend.”

How the trade war will alter the global economy and Chinese property market

8 questions with nomadic entrepreneur Andrew Henderson

Henderson has fused his thirst for travel and his entrepreneurial skills to become an expert on obscure markets around the globe The opportunities that our globalised world presents have long been apparent to intrepid coves such as Andrew Henderson, the founder of Nomad Capitalist, a firm which advises entrepreneurs on how to enter emerging markets.

The son of a flight attendant, Henderson inherited wanderlust from an early age, and his thirst for travel as well as business openings and financial returns has seen him become an expert on how to squeeze the most juice from new horizons.

Over the last 10 years he has travelled to between 15-20 countries a year, seeking out safe havens for investors and helping them to make their cash go further. In the process, he has managed to legally slash his global tax rate from 43 percent to 1 percent – not a bad life for a man in his 30s from the midwest US city of Cleveland.

1. Tell us a little about how Nomad Capitalist operates

We assist fluent entrepreneurs in optimising their financial situation and help them build their freedom so they can create wealth and enjoy their life.

I’m pretty much a general contractor for coordinating someone’s offshore plans. If someone needs to move their company or personal banking overseas; deal with their home country tax situation to get that cleaned up; or if they need a second passport or want to buy property: we coordinate the financial, citizenship, residency and investment stuff all into one.

More: Why American real estate is still a star attraction for Asian investors

2. How did you get into the business?

I was very internationally minded and I was encouraged to be so from an early age. When I was 19, I left university and started a business, which did pretty well so I leveraged that and started some other businesses. Eventually, I just said ‘hold on, I was the guy who said he was going to live overseas’, so I sold everything, upped sticks and started writing about the stuff that we are talking about here and it just turned into something. Now we have about 4 million people coming to our site to watch the videos and read the blog.

3. How can Nomad Capitalist help property investors and businesses?

I’ve travelled around and I’ve figured out a few areas where I like to invest for investment purposes. I also have some experience from buying properties around the world and have trustworthy contacts in other countries where perhaps I haven’t done business who I can refer [clients to].

Transparency is an important thing, especially in the offshore world where people are using fake names and hiding under their desks

Property is a very human thing but you can at least connect [your client] with people and, most importantly, make sure that works with the rest of their plan. There are also occasionally times where someone can become a resident or a citizen of a country for tax or freedom reasons by buying a property, in which case we rope that in. It’s trying to get it to all work together whilst minimising the steps.

4. Which emerging markets would you highlight as places to watch for property investment?

For property investors, and from purely returns point of view, Cambodia is a great place. It stands out to me as the least correlated market in that part of the world. It’s had no recession for more than 20 years and there’s a lot of growth. I also go there all the time and I see what’s happening and it’s very positive. Plus, the people are easy to deal with in a part of the world that is increasingly difficult for property investment (even compared with Singapore). Prices are also cheap so everyone can get in: there’s a lot of potential in the yield and growth.

After packing his bags to earn his fortune, Henderson is helping others do the same

5. What’s your take on investing in real estate elsewhere in Southeast Asia?

Vietnam’s a bit more difficult - even just to own an apartment - and I like ease of operation. Laos has a lot of potential but it’s extremely difficult and opaque. Thailand on the other hand is too developed and not my cup of tea. Myanmar is overrated, if you’re not Coca Cola. And I was in Mongolia recently too and was underwhelmed.

6. Any other countries on your radar?

Eastern Europe is also interesting although at a slower pace. I’m a big fan of Georgia where it is easy to transfer a title for around USD17 in about one day. That doesn’t mean the market’s as liquid or that it’s going to grow as fast but they are eager to help people.

More: A Singaporean president's son comes into his own

7. How important is it to understand the culture when entering an emerging market?

It’s very important. I have always been very well served by looking at these cultural indicators. If you’re a real estate investor on anything but an institutional level, it’s important to have a good fit. If you go to a country, [which has an attitude of] ‘everything is not my problem’, that’s a culture that stems from the government. So that’s how the government is going to act when it comes to dealing with you and property.

8. Any other tips on living the ‘nomad’ lifestyle?

Transparency is an important thing, especially in the offshore world where people are using fake names and hiding under their desks. And if you’re looking to live this lifestyle then make sure you see how everything fits together. For example, if you want to get a Mexican residence permit and you want to buy a house in Mexico, maybe save yourself time by getting the real estate residence permit. Why create more work for yourself?

This article originally appeared in Issue No. 146 of PropertyGuru Property Report Magazine

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<img alt="The Chao Phraya River in Bangkok, Thailand. love love/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_1190024380-compressor.jpg/bd593465-1f56-4852-b645-f7d987ec5b71?t=1544591897303" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />Rising land prices in Bangkok have caused property developers to reevaluate the feasibility of their projects, according to a new report by CBRE Thailand. While demand holds steady for prime freehold sites, developers are growing “more selective” and reluctant at accepting higher asking prices bandied by vendors, reported Kulwadee Sawangsri, the consultancy’s head of capital markets for investment and land. “Some developers are shifting their focus towards leasehold lands, but they are only going to agree to 30-year or 50-year leases in a handful of locations where they think they can make a sufficient return during the lease term,” she said. In response to rising land prices, property developers are increasingly diversifying their portfolios away from built-to-sell residential projects. Some firms are gravitating to built-to-hold, income-producing assets such as serviced apartments, offices and hotels, CBRE Thailand noted. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/thailand-s-hi-so-crowd-keeps-paying-for-ultra-luxury-hom-7" target="_blank">More: Thailand’s 'hi-so' crowd keeps paying for ultra-luxury homes</a> Land prices in central Bangkok have risen by 1,000 percent since 1988, the consultancy reported in July. “There is always high demand for land in prime areas of CBD Bangkok. Whenever there is a prime piece of CBD land plots available, property developers and investors are often interested in acquiring it as that land has high potential for both residential and commercial developments,” Kulwadee said. In addition to cost-prohibitive land prices, developers face tightening lending policies from Thai banks, compelling them to source their funds from joint ventures with overseas companies. More than 15 major joint ventures have been established between Thai and foreign companies since the beginning of 2018. At least 75 percent of the joint ventures included Japanese developers.

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<img alt="Santorini, Greece. Maridav/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_1064319371-compressor.jpg/388daa13-352f-412e-b54d-241b24f84e77?t=1540814749951" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />With its attractive citizenship-for-investment scheme and appealing Mediterranean climate, Greece continues to be one of the most favourite destinations for Chinese capital flight. Real estate prices have been on the rebound in the once-ailing economy this year, rising 0.8 percent year-on-year in the second quarter and 0.1 percent in the previous, Reuters reported, citing Bank of Greece data. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in Greek property had surged 91 percent to EUR287 million (USD327 million) last year from 2016, while taxes from property sales hit EUR204.7 million, up 41 percent in the seven months to July, according to state revenue authority AADE. “We are getting much more phone calls,” Lefteris Potamianos, head of the Real Estate Association of Athens, told Reuters. “The overwhelming majority is foreigners and there are yet some Greeks. Certainly, Chinese are by far ahead of the game.” <a href="http://www.property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/the-mediterranean-is-still-the-dream-second-home-for-wealthy-asia-7" target="_blank">More: The Mediterranean is still the dream second-home destination for wealthy Asians</a> Home prices are set to rise by five to seven percent annually on average in the Greater Athens area this year and the next as more Chinese ferret out Greece's famed golden visas, he predicted.   Almost 1,700 residency permits have been issued to Chinese nationals as part of the programme, begun in 2013 to help the country in the wake of the sovereign debt crisis, according to data from investment agency Enterprise Greece. Meanwhile, inquiries for Greek property from mainland Chinese doubled in Q1 2018 and jumped thrice in the succeeding quarter — a “dramatic growth” according to Carrie Law, CEO of Juwai.com which supplied the data. Chinese interest in Greek property has only gained a boost since the US, Canada and Australia, three of the traditional western destinations for outbound investment, unveiled tighter migration measures over the last year, noted Alice Ma, sales manager at Beijing-based Bloom Consulting.

Chinese lead resurgent foreign demand for Greek homes

<img alt="Aerial view of downtown Vancouver on a summer evening. EB Adventure Photography/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_498860062-compressor.jpg/57d167e0-e145-4c4b-9d4a-d9df20f6ab36?t=1540469920227" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />Following several quarters of lull, the Chinese seem to be back in one of their favourite Canadian markets. Inquiries by mainland Chinese property seekers on the property portal Juwai.com skyrocketed 130.8 percent in the third quarter from a trough in the second quarter, the <a href="https://www.vancourier.com/real-estate/exclusive-chinese-buyer-interest-in-metro-vancouver-real-estate-soars-again-1.23473185" target="_blank">Vancouver Courier</a> reported. “This is an upswelling of demand that we frankly didn’t expect,” Juwai.com CEO Carrie Law exclusively told the Courier. The report is a complete turnaround for Metro Vancouver, which slipped from second most-searched Canadian city on the site in 2016 to fifth this year, trailing Greater Toronto, Montréal, Calgary and Ottawa. “While more expensive than alternatives like Montreal, Vancouver still offers Chinese the prospect of homes or apartments at a relatively low price compared to similar property in China,” Law explained. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/stop-laundering-money-in-our-real-estate-british-colum-10" target="_blank">More: British Columbia government to probe money laundering in real estate</a> The apartment price per square metre in downtown Vancouver is 37 percent lower than Shanghai, she added, citing Numbeo. Chinese buyers have been on the lookout for safe harbour in Canada as the mainland government continues to regulate speculation in residential markets. Jitters brought on by the trade war and a depreciating yuan have also contributed to a resurgence in Chinese buying inquiries for Vancouver property. “Most middle-class and upper-middle-class Chinese owe much of their financial security to their homes and investment properties in China, which have appreciated massively over the past two decades. But determined government policy seems to be bringing an end to price appreciation and could even cause prices to fall for the first time,” Law said. Between April and June, the number of inquiries for Vancouver real estate on Juwai.com hit its lowest level since early 2015, Law pointed out. “It’s like a sinkhole opened up and swallowed all the buyers. That was the result of several quarters of plunging demand.”

Why Chinese buyers are returning to Vancouver

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<img alt="Ong Tze Boon" src="/documents/10204/0/Boon-Interview-Bw-for-upload-compressor.jpg/6a012d50-31e8-4b5f-b8f5-f7c4fdec5c47?t=1543494404104" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />Bounding up to the bustling Chinatown café where we’ve arranged to meet, grinning broadly and greeting the owners, Ong Tze Boon evinces the kind of verve you’d expect in a man half his age. He’s about as far removed from stereotypical images of middle-aged CEOs as you could imagine. Sporting a salt-and-pepper goatee, turquoise T-shirt and light casual jacket, he epitomises a bohemian chic that reflects his exuberant yet intimate conversational manner, body language – he’s frequently tactile – and business ethos. His transatlantic tone stems from a decade in California and New York that he describes as having “changed [his] mind-set, perspective and reflectiveness”. Though very much his own creation, it’s impossible to discuss Boon’s career without mentioning his late father, Ong Teng Cheong – and not only because it was he who set up Ong&Ong, the practice Boon now helms. Not only was the elder Ong a leading architectural figure himself, he also happened to be the fifth president of Singapore, serving between 1993 and 1999. Upon his father’s death in 2002, Boon, recently returned from the States, found himself between a rock and a hard place. As the shockwaves of the Asian financial crisis reverberated, work was drying up for upscale building companies. Boon’s strategy was to radically expand both the company’s remit and its international reach. <a href="http://www.property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/smarter-and-niche-developments-impress-at-annual-propertyguru-asia-property-awards-singapore-20-8" target="_blank">More: Smarter and niche developments impress at 2018 PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards (Singapore)</a> “I got creative and started thinking: If someone’s building, he’s got to build the interior, the landscape,” he recalls. “What if, instead of only doing architecture, I offer the client the interior as well? That was our foray into integrated disciplinary practice. Once we started, the clients liked it – particularly in surrounding countries. That was the precursor to our ‘360-integrated solution’, and on that platform we grew.” Fifteen years later, Ong&Ong operates in 10 countries, and undertakes projects right across Asia, as well as Australia, America and Cyprus. “We’ve done every kind of project except two types: airports and prisons,” Boon says. The firm is perhaps best known in its native Singapore for its involvement in countless high-end residential projects from the recently completed Spottiswoode Suites to executive condos including Blossom Residences, as well as embassies, schools and religious buildings. Overseas, Ong&Ong has, among other things, built up a reputation for its five-star resort properties like Layan Beach Resort on Phuket, Marriott Bintan in Indonesia and Alma Resort in Vietnam’s up-and-coming Cam Ranh Baya area. <div class="pull-quotes-container">Design is not about how it looks, but how it works. If you know how it works, you can get on with designing it. If you don’t, you’re just shooting in the dark</div> A key factor in the company’s success is its emphasis on human-centred design – re-imagining the building process such that end users, whether they are condo residents, shoppers or hotel guests, benefit most. “What we sell to clients is, ‘Let’s try and understand the end experience’, then work it backwards to determine what we must do,” explains Boon. “You talk to the end user first,” he continues, emphasising the noun. “Most of the time, the clients don’t know what they want. So we hear the feedback, formulate an answer, then start crafting the design – not just the building but the lighting, the branding, the touchpoints. Design is not about how it looks, but how it works. If you know how it works, you can get on with designing it. If you don’t, you’re just shooting in the dark.” An unorthodox MO perhaps, but one that’s indisputably paid dividends. Once almost exclusively tasked with residential projects, Ong&Ong has since been commissioned to design banks, malls, a mosque and, recently, two of the Malaysian stations that will form part of the imminent high-speed rail (HSR) link between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. The latter would have been of great interest to Boon’s father, one of the foremost proponents of the Lion City’s now-extensive MRT system. I put it to him that where Singapore – with its well-constructed pavements and abundant walking routes – once had too few stations, now it feels almost like it has too many. It’s a proposition he counters in typically mind-bending fashion. <img alt="The practice's work around Asia has seen it assert its presence in hot destinations like Phuket, where it designed the Layan Beach Resort" src="/documents/10204/0/Layan-for-upload-compressor.jpg/74a17d39-08e1-46d9-8557-29c625dc8f95?t=1543495624450" /> “Transit work is based on an understanding that it cannot be a congregation of everything in one place, because when that happens the system around it won’t work,” Boon expounds. “So, you create a hierarchical segregation of the hip and not-so-hip place, suburbia. But if you exercise public transport right, you start to decentralise some of this. Like in Malaysia: Putrajaya, Cyberjaya. It creates a concentration in different ways, but within each of those pockets it can still be pedestrian-friendly. If you don’t recognise that you need mass transit, you’re in trouble in the long run. Meanwhile, don’t ignore, neglect or forget people.” It’s clear that while his cultural and professional outlook is truly global, Boon remains deeply proud of his home nation’s breakneck-speed development. “In Singapore, they’ve come to terms with [the idea that] separating the commercial and residential completely is not the way. With transit development, where you mix commercial and residential, you get a third level, which is community, zoning and use – activating the community to work and play. Not to ‘live here, work there and play there’. And I think it’s lovely; you don’t have all these abandoned ghost towns.” Seemingly a humanist as much as an architect, the interaction of people with buildings is his life’s fascination and life’s work. As he waxes lyrical about his experiences across Asia, he delves deep into considerations most travellers would barely contemplate. “Anthropological cultures are different,” he explains. “In India for example, the maid’s room is a big thing, because there are so many domestic helpers. The yard is crucial; whereas in Singapore’s modern apartments, there’s not much yard left. Aside from all the feng shui and vastu [Indian architectural science], cultural inputs are different, sensitivities are different, conducts are different. In Singapore, you would not be surprised to see the kitchen as the centrepiece. That opens an opportunity to activate the backyard; the yard can become a garden, because the dining room becomes an extension of that garden.” <img alt="Ong&Ong's portfolio includes numerous spectacular resorts around Southeast Asia, including the Marriot on the Indonesian island of Bintan" src="/documents/10204/0/Mariott-Bintan-for-upload-compressor.jpg/11f1a00f-726f-4558-84f6-bfe424fe9264?t=1543495712682" /> While masterminding an ever-expanding business should be more than enough to occupy any architect, Boon’s unquenchable curiosity has led him to unusual quarters of late. In 2015, he learnt of his compatriot David Lim’s pioneering mountain climbs in 2005, immortalised in the book Against Giants, which details the ascent of a Central Asian summit Lim named after Boon’s father. Himself a veteran of such mighty peaks as Kilimanjaro, Rinjani and Kota Kinabalu, Boon decided to investigate further. “I Googled ‘Ong Teng Cheong peak’, and found nothing,” recalls Boon. “I realised that all David had done was to climb the mountain, chose to call it that, and published that book. I keyed in the co-ordinates on Google, but they led to the valley. So, in 2016 I climbed the one he pointed out, documented it with modern technology – and with all the video evidence, I approached the government of Kazakhstan and said, ‘I’m just remaking the journey of another man who did this years ago.’ “I filed it with the Kazakh government, and they said, ‘Who is Ong Teng Cheong?! Ah, the first elected president! Okay, can consider!’ On 28 June 2017 they officially adopted the name.” While clearly not short of extracurricular interests, it seems unlikely that Boon will follow in his father’s political footsteps. “I think there may not be enough of a place for me there,” he ponders, seemingly amused by the prospect. “Would I rule out contributing to the community? Of course not. But I think it’s well under control.” This article originally appeared in <a href="https://www.magzter.com/TH/PropertyGuru-International-(Thailand)-Co.,Ltd/Property-Report/Business/266502" target="_blank">Issue No. 146</a> of PropertyGuru Property Report Magazine

A Singaporean president's son comes into his own

<img alt="Total value of investable global commercial real estate will skyrocket by 2020, a wellspring of opportunity for proptech startups. Denphumi/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_256272442-compressor.jpg/a52e9c29-234e-4df5-b1ee-9c4d94033b95?t=1541578706752" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />The influence of proptech, colossal as it already is, could only grow. Since 2013, over USD7.8 billion has been invested in startups in proptech, according to the latest edition of JLL’s Clicks and Mortar report. Around 60 percent of this capital has been poured into proptech startups in Asia-Pacific alone. The region will also account for over 30 percent of the USD65 trillion in investable commercial real estate around the world by 2020. List and search portals, such as PropertyGuru, remain the most common types of proptech start-ups, JLL noted. JLL Asia Pacific CIO George Thomas will be on hand at the <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com" target="_blank">PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit</a> to chart the astounding trajectory of proptech, its exciting present, and equally impressive future prospects. Property Report was able to catch up with Thomas a day before his much-awaited appearance:   <h4>1. If you could narrow it down to one or two things, what are the most crucial innovations in property technology to have taken place in the past five years?</h4> Technology-wise, computing is now faster and cheaper; one can easily access information easily. Big data analytics and machine learning (ML) advancements have led to more automation, while cloud computing and service-based vendors have created more scalable and modular services allowing players of all shapes and sizes to innovate with little investment and grow rapidly. Most successful technology-enabled solutions and trends are combinations of many proptech “categories” like AR/VR, machine learning, AI, drones, etc.  This is because when we go back and look at the history of technology and its impact on our industry, we’ve found that it’s really the last bit—power of combination, where we can mix and match and connect things together—that really accelerated the evolution of proptech, allowing us to leverage the existing technology to provide customised solutions that used to be very expensive to achieve. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/state-of-the-economy-a-conversation-with-the-economist-s-andrew-stapl-5" target="_blank">More: A conversation with The Economist's Andrew Staples</a> <h4>2. The growth of proptech has caused people to pay more attention to issues of data security and privacy than ever before. What have been the most impressive innovations in this space this year?</h4> As we are real estate specialists, we keep a close eye on the development of data security and privacy, particularly in the IoT space.  Many of the billions of connected devices expected to join the IoT over the next few years will be associated with systems like traffic or industrial controls, smart-grid management, building energy and security management, etc.  IoT devices are designed to operate autonomously.  IoT endpoints are often required to be simple, low-cost, low-power devices, designed to accomplish their intended task using minimal resources. As such, the processing power and energy needed to implement sophisticated security is not available. In 2018, we are starting to see some promising solutions emerging from the tech Industry.  We are starting to see production of new special-purpose chips that will reduce power consumption of analytics, and therefore can either process algorithms more quickly and/or have the energy to implement more sophisticated security. These new areas such as chip-level security features or blockchain for IoT (authentication) are still at their very nascent stage at this time. <img alt="George Thomas, CIO, JLL Asia Pacific" src="/documents/10204/0/George-Thomas-compressor.jpg/5181d9bf-5aed-46e4-84ec-d3437d64fc77?t=1541579533150" style="display:block;margin:0px auto;" /> <h4>3. With all the rich data and automated process flows made possible by AI and machine learning, how can human insights and expertise still maintain relevance during disruption? </h4> Artificial intelligence (AI) is definitely one of the most popular buzzwords of this year, but we are far from getting towards true AI where machines are advanced enough to think for themselves.  Today’s technology, is really what we would consider augmented intelligence — buzzword for 2019 maybe?—a.k.a. data-driven machine learning.  And it is important to note that ML relies on data, historical data, and hopefully good-quality data, to model its prediction to inform humans to make better decisions. In our industry, while we are exerting more and more effort capturing and managing our data, there is still so much insight that is left undigitalised.  So we are still a ways from AI replacing human ... Furthermore, the day-to-day interactions in our industry (real estate professional services) is so nuanced where I believe human insights and experience would be very hard to replace by AI or ML alone. Lastly, the workforce does need to become more aware and better trained to ready themselves for forthcoming data and digital disruptions, because the nature of their jobs will change, and more of their time will gear towards decision-making rather than repetitive tasks. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/man-who-designed-the-future-of-smart-buildings-reveals-his-e-10" target="_blank">More: Man who designed the future of smart buildings reveals his edge</a> <h4>4. At this stage, what is the cost of late adoption of proptech for developers and investors? Property seekers?</h4> Most of the developers and investors only began to invest in earnest in proptech within the last three years, so it is actually not too late to play catch up.  There will be a lot of proptech companies–established or start-ups knocking down their doors; we would recommend that they partner with a trusted advisor and understand what technology is worth adopting at their stage, given their existing or near-term circumstances with respect to their IT infrastructure, human resources, and aspirations. <h4>5. What are you most excited for in the next five to 10 years of proptech?</h4> We love this space because proptech is so adept on repurposing existing and new technological advancements to solve real estate pain points.  This goes back to my earlier point, where is it really the power of combination that drives the rapid growth in interest and product development in this space. For us, we are particularly excited about products that marry digital with physical space. Thomas will join more than 30 global experts on proptech, fintech, smart cities and digital innovation at the two-day <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com/" target="_blank">2018 PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit</a> at The Athenee Hotel, a Luxury Collection Hotel, Bangkok in Thailand. Book now at <a href="https://www.eventbrite.com/e/propertyguru-asia-real-estate-summit-2018-tickets-44014137470" target="_blank">eventbrite.com</a> or directly via ares@propertyguru.com.

The past, present and future of proptech: 5 questions for JLL's chief information officer

<img alt="Analysing and retrieving actionable insights from big data can help decision makers in the property sectors. whiteMocca/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_1024337068-compressor.jpg/34fb5780-602a-4228-86f1-1c22605afbcc?t=1542280768664" style="width: 917px; height: 667px;" />We live in a post-Cambridge-Analytica world. In an era when people surrender vast dumps of personal information in exchange for the thrills of social media and home automation, big data presents both opportunity and opprobrium. On one hand, property companies can parlay rich datasets, culled from increasingly intelligent commercial and residential buildings, into better-informed construction practices, facilities management, building design, and community planning. On the other hand, more companies now live in waking fear of compromising all the sensitive data at their behest. In 2017, a data breach in Jigsaw Holdings, one of South Africa’s top real estate companies, exposed 31.6 million records, including the addresses and cellphone numbers of the president and top-ranking ministers. There has been no dearth of warnings against what hackers can do with the rich compendium of datasets property companies have under their ward. Fraudulent real estate transactions due to cybercrime hit USD969 million in 2017, up from USD19 million in 2016, according to the FBI. The agency also received 480 percent more inbound complaints related to cyberattacks against real estate companies in 2017 than the previous year. “We were in a meeting in Brussels early this year and we were discussing online consumer data being used by all these organisations and [consumers] not knowing how it’s used,” recounted Dr. Okan Geray, strategic planning advisor for Smart Dubai, at the <a href="http://asiarealestatesummit.com" target="_blank">PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit</a>. “They all made the comment: 'This is almost like a time bomb. It can happen anytime.' Almost a month later, the Cambridge Analytica issue came.”  <img alt="Moderated by BDO Thailand co-managing partner Paul Ashburn, the panel discussion on big data at the PropertyGuru Asia Real Estate Summit 2018 included Dr Okan Geray, strategic planning advisor, Smart Dubai; Anthony Arundell, director, smart cities and sustainability, One Bangkok; and Vikram Kohli, regional managing director, Southeast Asia, CBRE" src="/documents/10204/0/A_0909-compressor.jpg/fe41bd24-ece0-4040-8f61-60e66ec804ee?t=1542268767634" /> Cybersecurity fortunately now underpins digital strategies of an increasing number of property managers and brokerages worldwide. Such foresight has become the new imperative as smart buildings and the Internet of Things (IoT) enter the mainstream, endowing them with ever-higher volumes of regulated personal data from individuals. “We manage close to a billion square feet across the world. We also understand that, as buildings become more data-enabled, there is also a great risk of cyberattacks, great risk of issues around hacker taking control of systems in a building,” said Vikram Kohli, regional managing director for Southeast Asia at CBRE. The regulatory environment across the world is swiftly moving toward a climate that, cyber-balkanisation risks notwithstanding, accommodates data protection. The European Union (EU) has consolidated 28 national directives into one General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR). The regulation, which took effect this year, fines companies held liable for loss of data by up to five percent of global annual turnover capped at EUR100 million, among other provisions. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/5-key-things-to-learn-about-smart-city-cybersecurity-following-singapore-s-data-bre-16" target="_blank">More: 5 key things to learn about smart city cybersecurity following Singapore's data breach</a> “If you think about it, if we have different legislations at the city or national level, there’s no boundary for data today. As we cross these boundaries, if we don’t address these issues, regulatory compliance will be a major challenge,” said Geray. Data protection will be something that every building tenant will be thinking about more intensively in light of the GDPR, according to Anthony Arundell, director for smart cities and sustainability in One Bangkok. "They’re going to be wary about their own data information and how to protect it." The mixed-use project, one of the biggest in the Thai capital, will pioneer ways of democratising data and providing complete transparency of information to real estate consumers. “We’re considering how we open up our data that we collect from buildings and share that back with tenants so they get core value and know how the buildings perform,” Arundell said.  As buildings collect more and more information from their owners and occupants, it behooves property companies to make investments in the field of securing critical digital infrastructure. Information may as well be an unlit powder keg; whether it’s by utilising software that automatically wipes info from hard drives or hiring knowledgeable data scientists, companies need to know beforehand how to defuse the next big explosion.

Big data: opportunities and challenges for cybersecurity in real estate

<img alt="Is your house scaring off buyers? Mimadeo/Shutterstock" src="/documents/10204/0/shutterstock_794084761-compressor.jpg/68d20aad-1d38-42b1-b4ef-7ba1a7abedf3?t=1540988957869" style="width: 1000px; height: 667px;" />It is one thing to see them in movies, another to actually live in them. Stigmatised properties are some of the most fascinating, albeit terrifying, types of real estate you’ll ever come across. These are usually homes with a track record of sinister events tainting its reputation indefinitely, be it your garden-variety murder, a history of cult-like residents, or so much as loan shark vandalism. According to the 2018 Haunted Real Estate Report by Realtor.com, nothing on earth would make 49 percent of people buy a haunted home.  So how do you pass on a nightmare house to braver souls who can spend night after night in it? Read on. <h4>1. A night to dismember</h4> While some countries and US states legally bind you to tell buyers that something wicked your way came, sometimes you don’t have to let those skeletons out of the closet. Singapore, for instance, does not have stigma laws that require you to disclose weird trivia about your house. This may soon change, however, as more consumers demand disclosure laws that add a little thought, if not a bit more fear factor, to their buying decisions. A Singaporean woman who had more than her fair share of unearthly goings-on in her Little India apartment should know. “What they don’t know won’t kill them, but buying a home is a very big financial decision and I think buyers would appreciate having all the information,” she told <a href="https://www.propertyguru.com.sg/property-management-news/2016/10/138610/someone-died-in-this-house-any-takers" target="_blank">PropertyGuru</a> anonymously. <h4>2. Are you afraid of the dark?</h4> Thought you heard eerie moans? Must be your pipes in need of fixing. Did your door just slam shut by itself? Maybe it’s the hinges. Flickering lights? It’s your bulb, bub. Investigate and exhaust all possible explanations to debunk supposed ghostly happenings in your house. Once you find them, it’s only a matter of calling the plumber, repairman, or carpenter. <h4>3. Agent provocat-horror</h4> Sometimes you can’t sweet-talk your way into selling a haunted residence, especially one extensively covered by media. Marketing a stigmatised property is a matter that may be entirely out of your hands; a property agent is in order. “It involves a considerable amount of time and effort to market and eventually close the deal,” said Marcus Sim, an agent with PropNex Realty. <h4>4. Hack down…those prices</h4> Only 18 percent of home buyers would buy a property at full price if they knew it to be haunted, according to the Realtor.com report. With a stigmatised home, Sim would explain to clients that such units need a significant markdown, a trade-off to assuage buyers’ apprehensions. “[Negative] events don’t usually affect just one unit, but rather an entire cluster of surrounding units. And in most cases, sellers that are affected will have more room for negotiation in order to offload these properties,” he said. <a href="http://property-report.com/detail/-/blogs/the-battle-to-preserve-asia-s-urban-herit-13" target="_blank">More: The battle to preserve Asia’s urban heritage</a> <h4>5. Sweeten the (witch’s) pot</h4> A third of respondents on Realtor.com's National Haunted House Survey said they would willingly buy a haunted home not only if meant a lower price but also if it had a large kitchen and was situated in a good neighbourhood, suggesting that the age-old rule of “location, location, location” also applies to haunted houses. Play up these enticements enough, and you may have a courageous buyer in your hands. <h4>6. Give them the horror story of their dreams</h4> <img alt="The LaLaurie Mansion in New Orleans is one of the most haunted houses in America. Reading Tom/Wikimedia Commons" src="/documents/10204/0/The_LaLaurie_Mansion-compressor.jpg/3fd790ee-8cb5-4bdb-b761-0902c6f58196?t=1540989208208" /> Maybe you’re pitching your house to the wrong prospects. There are buyers who not only tolerate haunted homes; they go out on a limb looking for them. In 2007, Nicolas Cage bought the notorious New Orleans home of Madame Delphine LaLaurie, the sadistic socialite who murdered and subjected slaves to unspeakable tortures. The Oscar-winning actor knew fully well what he was getting into. "You know, other people have beachfront property; I have ghost front property. That's what I always say. I have not experienced anything, but I like a bit of mystery, and the house has such a mystery to it. Some of the stories about it are pretty horrific," Cage said. "One of the greatest memories would be the haunted mansion at [Disneyland] Anaheim, in New Orleans Square, no less. So for me to have the actual thing was the childhood fantasy come true." <h4>7. Reclaim the spooky narrative</h4> Knowing that such home buyers are out there, might as well embrace your unit’s bad reputation. A simple lookup of local paranormal groups online may just point you to seekers of spiritually infested dwellings.   Anne Ewasko, a specialist with Rubloff Residential Properties in Chicago, was <a href="https://www.hgtv.com/design/real-estate/how-to-sell-a-haunted-house" target="_blank">able to sell</a> last year the supposedly haunted 19th-century Goldblatt Mansion for USD2.46 million. Her trick and treat? Holding open houses and broker parties as well as putting a light spin on the topic whenever it is raised. <h4>8. Rest in peace</h4> Ghostbusters exist IRL — only without the bulky plasma guns and proton packs. If simple sage-burning doesn’t cut it, it may be time to bring in the big guns. Mediums, psychics, exorcists, or your local spiritual leader may be in good position to vanquish clingy energies from your home. Whether or not you believe in limbo everlasting, the good vibes allegedly produced by such activities affords peace of mind for you and your future buyer.

How to sell your haunted house

8 questions with nomadic entrepreneur Andrew Henderson

1. Tell us a little about how Nomad Capitalist operates

2. How did you get into the business?

3. How can Nomad Capitalist help property investors and businesses?

4. Which emerging markets would you highlight as places to watch for property investment?

5. What’s your take on investing in real estate elsewhere in Southeast Asia?

6. Any other countries on your radar?

7. How important is it to understand the culture when entering an emerging market?

8. Any other tips on living the ‘nomad’ lifestyle?

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