Largest Property Brand Worldwide Arrives to Lead Market
U.S.-based Century 21 enjoys a global reputation and, having realized the potential that the Cambodia property market represents, the world’s biggest global franchised real estate operation officially celebrated its inception in Cambodia as its 75th market on 4 September, 2014. The giant real estate brand was founded in 1971 and now has with some 7,100 affiliated offices in 75 countries and more than 100,000 sales agents.
Mr. Kevin Goos, CEO of Century 21 Cambodia, claims this global real estate brand will lead and restructure the local property market to a higher level. He gave an exclusive insight into the company’s vision and mission in Cambodia to Construction & Property Magazine.
1. What inspired Century 21’s entry to the Cambodian market?
Cambodia is currently the most attractive country in the region for real estate at the moment, and Century 21 entering the market is a sign that Cambodia is open for business. Based on our market research since the second half of 2013, we began seeing an upward curve in the real estate sector, and the first half of 2014 has been very exciting. We can realize the trend via various development projects, not only the large-scale projects, but also the medium-sized ones.
Now that the real estate market here is rebounding, many international real estate firms are coming to compete with local agencies, so those local ones need to increase their level of professionalism in order to compete in the market and work with international buyers; that’s what we do. What we are looking for are local real estate offices and agents that wish to take their businesses or skills to the next level so that they can be professional real estate agents that can work with the global real estate community. So we are looking for market leaders here to come and affiliate with Century 21 Cambodia and we want the best of the best.
2. What are your specialized services globally? What services do you provide in Cambodia?
Our main focus is property transactions, i.e. the buying/selling. However, we support our agents with some of the best technologies, training programs, a global network and, most importantly, we provide them with a brand. We also do other services such as property management, appraisal, and consultancies, but everything is to facilitate our main service which is the brokerage side, and we inspire our agents to do more transactions.
3. VTrust has quickly joined the brand as Century 21 VTrust, is this correct?
Yes, as I mentioned we are looking for transparent market leaders who are looking to increase their level of professionalism and take their business to the next level to work with the international community. Century 21 VTRUST is a great example of a market leader and has seen a lot of action as a result. Their agents can now connect with our global community and global markets. When a seller wants to sell a property, they want to speak to an agent, and they know that this company is part of the Century 21 team and has access to the largest global network and are some of the best trained agents in the Cambodian market. So customers trust them in doing property transactions through the professional services they offer.
4. What role do you expect to play in this thriving market?
When we come to the market, we come in as market leader. We want to make the market more competitive by bringing tools and systems that have never been seen before. We will bring real estate training programs which are some of the top training programs in the world. We take agents, and in fact, if they don’t have any real estate experience that’s the benefit for us because we take them and train them to be the professional real estate agent in the market. So, Century 21 focuses on the agents; we want to see our agents successful first and everything we do is to support our agents.
Purchasing property is probably one of the most important decisions a person can make in their life, and having a Century 21 Agent who you can trust is the most important, because we have trained them on every step of a real estate transaction.
We train our agents on transparency, trust, and to build a long term working partnership with all our buyers and sellers. So it’s not just one transaction that we focus on, but rather building a relationship over 25 years and helping our clients whenever they need us.
5. What kinds of companies are eligible to be your affiliates? How about individuals? What are the criteria for the selection?
Existing real estate offices who want to take their business to the next level to work with international buyers and larger companies are our target market.
For individuals, we welcome all who are ready to begin their professional career in real estate. Individuals can apply to an affiliated office in Cambodia.
For approval, we have a national selection committee that interviews all potential applicants, but the most important is the individuals’ interest to join the Century 21 brand. We are group of elite real estate professionals and we only want the best of the best to represent our brand here in Cambodia.
6. How many agents do you expect to have in the coming year?
In the next 18 months, we expect to have around 200 sales agents. And we also have other agents outside of Cambodia coming in and opening office in the country.
7. In Cambodia, who are your target customers?
We focus on residential customers, and people who are land owners and want to sell their land. We also target buyers, not only international buyers, but also local buyers. For local buyers, we are targeting the middle class families, which are on the rise. Couples earning a combined salary of US$1,000 per month now have the option to purchase their first home; that’s a great opportunity for Cambodia.
8. Before Century 21’s entry into the market, around 54 real estate agencies including several international agencies are already established. Are you confident there is space for you to grow here?
Well, we are working on a different level; currently we have no competition because we don’t compete with local real estate companies but rather support them. Our business model is different than other international real estate firms; we view local real estate companies as our friends and we want the best in Cambodia to become a part of the Century 21 brand.
Besides the existing 54 licensed real estate agencies, based on our market research over 100 other real estate offices are operating nationwide, while many development companies also have a real estate brokerage wing. But compared to Taiwan, that has 60,000 agents, I don’t think 54 offices here with less than 10 agents each is a competitive market. What we do is we come in, and we focus back on the basics. We want the best of the best of those offices to join Century 21, but we only want offices that want to take their business to the next level.
We also work heavily with all new developments, both housing and condominium projects. Through our investment conferences in the Asia Pacific region, we are the Ambassadors to Cambodia representing the country as an attractive market and new opportunity for buyers looking to purchase a condominium as an investment.
We are the first company in Cambodia to target retail investors to purchase condominium units in the country, and we have been hugely successful so far and will continue to expand our investment conferences to China and Japan in the next 6 months.
9. What is your expansion strategy in this limited market?
At this point in time, we are working with 10 real estate offices. When they become our affiliates, we want each office to have about 10 to 15 agents. But most importantly we are training these 10 local offices to work with 38,000 Century 21 real estate agents in Asia. We are the largest brand in Asia in real estate and our local offices are extremely excited about this.
What we are looking for is to train the agents of those 10 offices so that they are able to walk and talk like Century 21 agents. That is what we want in the first 18 months. While we also get lots of office and agent applications from Siem Reap and Sihanouk Ville, we want to focus on Phnom Penh market first.
We are going to open our Century 21 University here soon that focuses specifically on real estate training programs. We want the best sales people in Cambodia to be a real estate agents. We are not planning for the next five years here, but my game is planning for the next 25 years in Cambodia.
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