Well, we certainly got the town talking and visitors flocking through our site to participate in this extremely hard to resist contest. So, if you are an Indonesian citizen, don’t be left out! Submit an entry NOW here! You could just be the lucky winner to move in to a brand new home!

In Malaysia, thousands of people are making their way to the iProperty.com Expo 2012 at the Mid Valley Exhibition Centre. Held from the 4^th – 6^th of May, the Expo features Malaysia’s Hottest Properties under one roof and it’s the only place for property buyers and investors to find irresistible deals on the latest developments in town. So, if you are on the hunt for that next investment or in the search for your dream home, then head down over today. The EXPO is opened from 11am – 8pm.

We look forward to seeing you there! There will even be lucky draw prizes worth over RM700,000 waiting to be won!

On a different note, we’re proud to have launched our newly revamped ThinkProperty.my website! You can now post your property for sale/rent for FREE and participate in our very popular property forums where you can ask and discuss your thoughts and opinions.

We are also the talk of the town in Hong Kong with the formation of strategic cooperation’s with key leading developers. The formation of these strategic partnerships with leading developers solidifies GoHome.com’s position as the clear market leader in Hong Kong.

Moving on to Singapore, the 5th International Property Expo which was held in the Marina Bay Sands from the 20^th – 22^nd of April was hugely successful. Consumers walked away with great deals and developers were extremely happy with the turnout and success of the event.

On a separate note, I was extremely happy to hear that Nayati Moodliar, the little boy who was abducted on the way to school last week, has been safely reunited with his parents. I can only imagine the anguish and trauma that the little child was put through. I was happy to read that he is well and high in spirits. You are brave boy and your courage is certainly to be admired!

Have a great weekend!

Amidst juggling a busy schedule, I am extremely excited to report that the iProperty Group had a stellar first quarter. The Group’s year-on-year growth comparison between Q1 2011 and Q1 2012 saw a 69.4% increase in unique visitors, a 58.5% increase in pageviews and a 59.6% increase in leads across our portals.

These results are a testament to our relentless focus in delivering more exposure and leads to our agent and developer advertisers while continually growing traffic by ensuring our consumers get the best possible experience when searching for property.

Below is a short summary on how each of the countries we operate in performed:

Malaysia

iProperty.com Malaysia further strengthened its leadership position as Malaysia’s portal of choice as it continues to deliver strong year-on-year growth. More than 1 million unique visitors visit the site monthly and despite the country’s maturing market, the gap continues to widen between iProperty.com Malaysia and its closest competitor by over 190%.

The portal saw a surge in consumer traffic and leads between January and February 2012 with unique visitors increasing by 12% and leads sent to advertisers rising by 45% to 291,334.

I am also pleased to announce that the team has successfully performed a hat-trick by snapping up the award of property magazine of the year for the third consecutive year.

Awarded by Advertising + Marketing magazine and based on Boardroom Research’s annual magazine rankings, it was revealed that iProperty.com Malaysia emerged the preferred property magazine of choice, placing the likes of Property Buyer and Home Finder in second and third place respectively. Kudos to the team and a big THANK YOU to our readers for making us your preferred property magazine!

Hong Kong

GoHome.com.hk experienced record high traffic in Q1 of 2012 as visitors continue to choose the website as the no.1 portal for Hong Kong, extending the gap between Gohome.com.hk and its competitors. Gohome.com.hk is now the dominant property portal in Hong Kong.

February 2012 was an outstanding month for the business with advertisers enjoying an increase in leads by 47.7%, a massive undertaking during the festive month. Underpinning this surge in traffic is its recent launch of the new products and services aimed at the enormous property developer market.

Indonesia

Since we acquired Rumah123.com, we have seen tremendous growth in all key metrics with an average month-on-month unique visitor growth of 14% and a tremendous 44% month-on-month growth in leads. The business continues to grow from strength to strength because of its focus on delivering innovative product offerings and value to its customers to drive growth.

Rumah123.com has since gained recognition and approval of the real estate industry as the business has grown its customer base by 75% since September 2011.

Rumah123.com also further cemented its relationship with local property developers with its recent MOU undertaking as exclusive online partner with DDP REI (Real Estate Indonesia), an association with over 2,500 property developer members.

Aside from that, Rumah123.com recently launched the biggest ever social media contest to be organized by a property portal in Indonesia.  With attractive prizes worth over 500 million rupiah, we urge you to log on wwwrumah123.com to obtain more information on the contest.

Who knows, you could just be that lucky winner!

Singapore

iProperty.com Singapore remains strong as equal market leader as it continues its push with the launch of its new consumer campaign, increasing engagement and arming property buyers with insights to help them make sound property purchase decisions.

iProperty.com Singapore experienced an increase in visitors to the website by 29% between February to March 2012. Advertisers also enjoyed a whopping 34% increase in total leads over the same period to an all-time high of 72,196.

CommercialAsia.com

The latest addition to the iProperty Group’s stable of property websites, commercialasia.com, which was launched in November 2011, continues to gain momentum month-on-month as interest in commercial property investment continues to grow and the brand gains traction in the market. This is evidenced by the website’s visitors from over 100 countries with 71% of these visits accounting as direct traffic.

In 5 short months, CommercialAsia has experienced a near 100% growth in unique visitors to 146,084 and pageviews by 55% to 271,412 since its launch.

Here’s looking forward to a fantastic Quarter 2!

Have a great weekend and Happy Labour Day!

Carso Leong:

A true techie - Carso Leong

Q: How long have you been with iProperty.com?
A: More than 4 years!

Q: On a scale of 1 – 5, how would you rate the experience of working in iProperty.com?
A: I would say it’s definitely the perfect score – 5. iProperty.com has been very supportive, our contributions are recognized and I have to say there are a lot of great people here working with iProperty.com.

Q: What inspired you to come up with the Property Friend Finder mobile app?
A: It is started with one question:  “What are the best places to stay, so that I can find all my friends easily?” Dandy and I made some jokes about it and we found that the idea was in fact very interesting and one thing led to another. Finally we brought this idea to Michael Ong for him to give us some feedback and see how to improve it. And here we are today!

Q: Do you have any advice for newbies in this line?
A: My advice is to be passionate about what you are doing. Your positive energy can keep you moving ahead and perhaps directly influence people around you to move with you.

Q: Be honest – Do you ever find your job boring?
A: Definitely not boring la, we have a lot of celebrations throughout the year and a lot of good food waiting for us. Seriously though, iProperty.com is a fast-growing company and there are a lot of things waiting for us to explore and improve, making our life very busy and making time pass without our knowledge!

Q: Choose: Xbox 360, Playstation 3 or Sony Wii?
A: Sony Wii, so that I can move around and do some exercise. Good for health, you know!

Q: If you could be granted ONE superpower, which would you choose, and why?
A: I would like to have a power to time travel. Haha! I can undo a mistake and attempt again!

Q: Tell us two things people don’t know about you.
A: First thing, I am trying to become a vegetarian. Second thing is I like buying books alone. Just don’t ask me why!

Q: Choose: PC or Mac?
A: I would choose PC because I think I like the open-source community.

Q: Which job would you give an arm and a leg for to experience for a day?
A: Maybe a Hack Day job

Dandy Masyaril Handoko:

Dandy takes a break from the PC!

Q: What do you do in iProperty.com?
A: I am a software engineer. Basically it’s all about maintenance, adding features and functionality, performance enhancement, and other geeky stuff that make our awesome iProperty.com site way more awesome!

Q: On a scale of 1 – 5, how would you rate the experience of working in iProperty.com?
A: I say 5, for sure! The working environment here is very positive, I see a lot of good work ethics and lots of new things can be learned here.

Q: What inspired you to come up with the Property Friend Finder mobile app?
A: It started with just small talk between my senior Carso and me to plan an app for the Facebook Hack Day, and we discussed the idea with Michael Ong. We were thinking of creating a simple Facebook app which is both useful and fun to use. One of the unique features that I like in this app is of course the main function, where you can find properties for rent nearby your friends, but here’s the interesting part:  you can filter out if you are only interested in female or male and single friends only…genius aye? Hohoho!

Q: Describe your work style in 3 words.
A: I would say creative, conscientious, and responsible.

Q: This is something we have to ask: your opinion on Google’s Project Glass?
A: I love it! It reminds me of the Dragonball glasses I had watched in the cartoon, and I’d really love to have one. It uses very advanced technology, and it seems both useful and futuristic. With the Artificial Intelligence system working behind the scenes, we can do almost everything just by wearing it. But I don’t think it will be released to public soon.

Q: Who are your major influences in life (famous or not), and why?
A: My mom.  I’m a momma’s boy, just like Johnny Bravo. From the techie side, I’d say Bill Gates, he is truly a genius of our times and, most importantly, he really cares for others and is very generous. A genius philanthropist…who wouldn’t like him??

Q: Facebook, Twitter, or Google+? Why?
A: I vote for Facebook, because we can share anything here and engage the use of a variety of interesting apps. Moreover, the timeline is awesome.

Q: If you could visit one place in the world, where would it be, and why?
A: Heaven. Hehe! Hmm but seriously, I want to go to the UK, and finally catch my favourite football team live there. (Editor’s note: Here’s hoping it’s not Manchester City!)

Q: Choose: PC or Mac?
A: Since I like gaming, I would any day choose the PC over the Mac. Hey, the Mac is cool too but to be honest, I think it’s overpriced.

Q: If computers and mobile devices did not exist, what do you think you would have ended up doing?
A: Can I choose househusband? I really do want to enjoy life and relax at home…hehe. Hmm, who knows, I might have ended up as an engineer, because that was my ambition as a child.

Deal-based websites like Groupon Malaysia, Dealmates, and Living Social are fast becoming a growing trend, especially catching on with young urban professionals based around the Klang Valley urban strip.

Click open any of the above websites, and there is bound to be a couple of deals which will seem irresistible to you – with up to 95% discounts for food, jewellery, bargain vacations and right up to baby bottles.

The best part about these deals is that what you see is what you get – there are no hidden charges (unless stated, which makes them “unhidden”) and the quality is never compromised.

Here’s the tricky part – can the property market and its developers play a role in this new business model?

Paragon @ Pangaea, OSK's Groupon pioneer

Last week, OSK Property Holdings Berhad and Groupon Malaysia collaborated on an exclusive one-of-a-kind discount deal, where buyers pay RM500 for an RM8000 cash voucher, which can be redeemed for the developer’s latest premium property, Paragon @ Pangaea, a SOFO Suites development in Cyberjaya.

The developers have made it even more attractive, by making the cash voucher valid for the property’s downpayment, and providing refunds for buyers who are unable to purchase the unit of their choice or whose bank loans have been rejected.

Now, isn’t this a good way to spend RM500?

As of now, 14 people have bought the deal on Groupon’s website, and it can be considered quite a healthy number, judging from the fact that buying a property is not like buying a t-shirt – it’s a lifetime investment, and requires long-term commitment.

Discounts are always appreciated, and developers can really benefit from marketing their properties on such deal-based websites instead of only relying on mass media, as they tend to reach out to the right crowd and word-of-mouth will definitely spread the word through.

Social media will always remain relevant to today’s youth community and are recommended for every property developer, but deal-based websites provide a direct platform for them to actually see and purchase cash vouchers or coupons to buy their own piece of property – the kind of purchasing power any consumer will feel good about.

We think OSK’s plunge into the discount market will definitely stir some competition and inspire other developers to walk a similar path by making use of the myriad of deal-based websites frequented by Klang Valley’s yuppies.

It would be interesting to see if this latest trend manages to make a lasting mark on the online business-property relationship, like how the Internet became a platform to look for property years ago.

We held our very first EXPO in Penang last weekend and what a tremendous success it was. Organised on behalf of the Real Estate and Housing Developers Association (REHDA) Penang, MAPEX Penang 2012, with the theme The Most Lau Juak Property Show, was certainly well received by Penangnites and foreigners alike.

The three day expo, launched by YB Chow Kon Yeow, State EXCO for Local Government and Traffic Control, who represented YAB Lim Guan Eng, Chief Minister of Penang, attracted over thousands of people from all walks of life who made their way to the Straits Quay Convention Centre to grab the best deals in town.

Here are some snap shots of the event:

YB Chow Kon Yeow Officially Launching MAPEX Penang 2012

Folks visiting the booths at the MAPEX PENANG 2012

After such an astounding success in Penang, all focus is now on delivering an equally successful iProperty.com International EXPO in Singapore, which will be held from the 20^th – 22^nd of April 2012 at the iconic Marina Bay Sands from 11am – 8pm.

Also present at the EXPO will be Howard, our friendly mascot in Singapore who is keen on letting people to be in the know not just about the latest in the property market, but to also provide them with the opportunity to discover the best deals in town.

From the peaks to the valleys, Howard is on ground to promote the EXPO.

So, do lock in the dates and we hope to see you there.

On a separate note, we are keeping to our promise to only deliver the best, fastest and easiest search experience for our consumers. We have recently made some changes to our website – iproperty.com.my, making download of information of property news and search faster. We are pleased to say that these changes will be implemented across our other three portals in Hong Kong, Indonesia and Singapore.

So, brace yourself to have all the information you need to make an informed decision downloaded in a blink of an eye.

Another significant accomplishment on the innovation front is the Malaysian team winning at the recent Facebook Mobile Hack Day in Singapore. With a total of eight submission and only four winners to be selected, we are proud to win the Best Overall App for use of Facebook.

The team developed an app called the Property Friend Finder, which will enable users to find properties that are near their friends and family.

These are only some of the innovative things that we at the iProperty Group are working on. We assure you, there are more interesting things in store. So, do stay tuned!

Enjoy the week!