Ismail said PropNex Malaysia would be looking at expanding into key cities in the future *Picture taken from PropNex

PETALING JAYA: Malaysia is seen as an attractive business opportunity for Singapore-based real estate agency PropNex as the company aims to grow and establish themselves in the local property market.

PropNex chief executive officer Ismail Gafoor said that the move was to capitalise on the investments made by both countries in each other with Malaysians heavily investing in the city-state and vice versa.

“I see a couple of opportunities, to start with, Malaysia is the closest neighbour, and there are a number of Singaporeans who invest in properties here and Malaysians are the second highest investors and buyers of Singapore property for the past two years.

“Because of the roots, the relatives, the opportunities, the entry level price point, so there are a lot of benefits, Singaporeans are interested in investing in the country and Malaysians who are buying in Singapore,” he said.

He added that given the limitations set in terms of agents for every license holder, which Ismail said in the past one negotiator license would be able to recruit only 50, it limits growth for local companies which is in contrast in Singapore which doesn’t impose such restrictions.

“In Singapore, since there is no cap, I can have around 7,535 sales persons for my one license.

“We realised because of the limit, a lot of Malaysian real estate businesses do not have economies of scale such as they cannot invest huge in a company, for example, if a negotiator can only recruit 30-50 people, it is difficult to invest on his own training room, the software and platform to support,” he said.

Ismail further explained that by leveraging on platforms and apps developed in Singapore, can be utilised by partners in Malaysia, “without impairing any huge costs, because it’ll take millions of dollars to invest into IT systems, virtual offices,” he said.

When asked about future expansion into Malaysia, Ismail mentioned a few key areas which PropNex targets to go into, namely key cities in the country.

“At the moment, we would focus on Kuala Lumpur but the desire is to expand into key cities, Penang, Johor is in our radar, but getting the right people, systems and partners are of equal concerns as well,” he said.

Since it was established recently, Ismail said that PropNex Malaysia aims to growth in terms of number of agents which is currently at 300.

“We don’t want to grow for the sake of numbers, but having said that, it is our desire to become a market player maybe it doesn’t stop us with our desire to have 1,000 sales people, but we would grow at a pace that adds value for the people,” he said.

Where it all started

PropNex was the brainchild of husband and wife, Ismail Gafoor along with his wife Nooraini, originally known as Nooris Consultants, the company has grown from its humble beginnings twenty years ago.

“Initially I was in the army together with my wife, we first started our first company in 1996 in Singapore which is coming to 23 years with the name Nooris consultants - a combination of my wife’s name Nooraini and my name Ismail,” he said.

Within two years, Ismail said PropNex became the biggest Malay Muslim real estate company in Singapore by 1998 with more than 250 malay agents before expanding their business to more market segments.

“Then we felt that we wanted to go beyond the Malay market, today PropNex has 7500 over agents from various backgrounds.

“It is to reach to the different segments that we can serve and that’s where we change our name to PropNex in the early 2000s,” he said.