CEO Justin Quek steers OrangeTee to real estate centered around customers

A step toward this commitment is the launch of the consumer-centric event ‘Property Festival’ in 3Q24.

When Justin Quek assumed the role of CEO at OrangeTee, one of his primary objectives was to make the once agent-centric business into a more “consumer-centric” one.

“A lot of agencies have focused very much on the agents for many years, but as you can see the consumers are being more empowered today. We would like to join in that ball game as well because if you don’t empower the consumer, the consumer has many alternatives,” Quek told the Singapore Business Review.

One of the ways Quek plans to deepen the agency’s focus on consumers is through a “Property Festival.”

Whilst Quek cannot divulge the details of the festival just yet, a whole lot of planning is put into staging this breakthrough event in the third quarter of the year.

What the festival promises attendees is that it will be a consumer-centric event reeling in real estate enterprise leaders for a learning engagement all about property and related topics.

“A lot of players in the industry like to do seminars  where they’ll have a big ballroom full of people learning how to invest in property. I think education is important and we will still continue to do that but that has become, I would say, a secondary piece today,” Quek said.

The festival will also be a gathering of OrangeTee’s strategic partners including mortgage and financial partners and property listing platforms, he said, adding that it will be an avenue for their agents to reach out to new prospects as well.

3 Ps

Partnerships, alongside improving presence and productivity, are also one of OrangeTee’s main focuses this year, said Quek.

“We’ve realised that OrangeTee actually has, even at our shareholder level, very interesting and formidable partners just right at our doorstep. So that’s something we intend to also play on,” he said. Partnerships are a way for the company to expand its income verticals, he added.

“A lot of businesses focus solely on selling local properties and just looking at ‘buy, sell and rent.’ We plan to actually look at expanding our overseas portfolio with a strong Singapore dollar in our favour. Singaporean buyers today are a lot more open-minded about investing overseas. So we want to make sure that we’re able to also cater to that preference,” Quek said.

To forge new partnerships and improve OrangeTee’s presence, the company will also undergo a brand refresh which will include a new logo for the brand to be launched in February.

“After over 20 years of being in the business, we’re spending quite a bit of effort to come into the industry, again, and come back with a vengeance and a big brand refresh this year,” Quek said.

Revamp

OrangeTee will not just go through a refresh on the outside, said Quek, adding that there will also be a revamp in the company internally.

“We realised also previously with the existing agency that a lot of the agent leaders were going about doing their own thing, which means you have one company, but not a collective because everybody's going about doing their own business. One way for us to really make an impact on the business this year is really to form a proper collective,” Quek said.

The CEO said OrangeTee now has an agency management committee to engage key leaders of the business, as well as the company’s younger leaders.

“We are likely the agency with probably one of the highest median ages today, because we do have some of the most senior agents with us, we are also intending to change that,” Quek said, emphasising that younger agents are also relevant to younger customers of today.

“If you read the most recent reports, most buyers in the market today or last year, in fact, were all under 50. We have to make sure that we also have that relevance in terms of our workforce, our human capital, in the way we brand the company and the way we do things in the company as well, to ensure that we represent ourselves well in catering to the emerging market segment.” he said.

Productivity

Quek believes all the changes he plans to introduce will eventually lead to better productivity of OrangeTee’s 2,833 agents.

“We want to drive productivity per capita or the amount of money per agent makes in this business. You can either do this by more quantity, or more quality. We intend to do both,” he said.

“The quality game is also very important because if deals have an average transaction value of, say, $15,000 per transaction, and you could up the average value of transaction to $20,000 per transaction, times the capital of 3,000 agents, that makes a lot of difference to your top line,” he added.

At present, the company operates with a much stronger position in the secondary market, with the majority of its revenue being contributed from the secondary sales business.

For 2024, Quek said OrangeTee plans to increase its top line by about 30%. To do so, OrangTee intends to “double up our new sales market,” he said.