Special Feature

Huttons Asia: Navigating real estate’s future with vision and purpose

October 13, 2023 5:15 PM SGT

Mark Yip, CEO of Huttons Asia (first row, centre), together with corporate heads of departments at Huttons Asia. (Picture: Samuel Isaac Chua/The Edge Singapore)

As Singapore’s largest private real estate agency, Huttons Asia maintains an agile and inclusive company culture. The agency celebrated its 20th anniversary last year and CEO Mark Yip is focused on boosting productivity, expanding revenue streams, and increasing corporate leadership responsibility. Since leading the agency in November 2020, Yip has fostered a more accessible workplace culture at Huttons Asia, enabling agents to contact department heads and senior managers for assistance. “The real estate agency business thrives when agents on the ground receive timely support,” says Yip.

He says this means breaking down communication barriers and fostering a more collaborative and conducive environment. Yip terms it as “reachable help” for each agent in the Huttons family, adding: “It is through our communication channels and training that we get them the support they need”.

Boosting productivity

Huttons Asia oversees nearly 5,400 professional salespersons, including veterans, seniors, and rookies. About 30% of its agents are young, dynamic, and tech-savvy rookies. The agency fields several teams of seniors and segment-focused agents who comprise about 60% of its workforce. Meanwhile, the remaining agents are experienced veterans with decades of experience in the industry.

As CEO, Yip promotes a diverse mix of young, senior, and veteran agents to leadership roles, enabling the company to adapt to market changes and embrace emerging technologies. “By the end of 2024, my vision is to grow our force of agents from about 5,400 today to 6,000. This will help us command a greater market share and open opportunities for the company. We are also taking a strategic approach towards raising the overall productivity of each agent to reduce the number of relatively low-income producing agents among our ranks by the end of next year. An agency may be big, but productivity counts,” he says.

He has rolled out the following key thrusts to meet this objective: Equipping each agent with the necessary knowledge to thrive, a more robust induction programme, widening its customer base, enhancing project marketing training, and increasing management engagement.

“We must continue to equip our agents with the necessary knowledge to succeed in whichever market segment they engage clients in. This will enable us to remain nimble and react quickly to changing market conditions,” says Yip.

Continuous efforts in upskilling agents as well as empowering them with the latest tech tools — which enable them to go the extra mile to deliver a high level of client satisfaction — brought the agency to rank first place in the real estate agencies category under The Straits Times “Singapore’s Best Customer Service 2023/24”.

Growing revenue

In 2020, Huttons Asia merged with Savills Residential, combining their residential project sales businesses.

At that time, Huttons Asia commanded about 3,000 agents and onboarded more than 400 agents from Savills Residential due to the merger. “Our agents have benefitted from the wealth of knowledge and access to consultancy services and capital markets that Savills Singapore focuses on,” says Yip.

The company’s strength lies in its commanding presence in the resale market, contributing to a large portion of its annual revenue. The remaining revenue streams include contributions from auction sales, capital markets and collective sales, and local and international project sales. It also set its sights on growing its local market share in commercial real estate, shophouse, and landed home segments.

According to Yip, the agency is working towards growing its new project market share to at least 25% by 2024. “We believe we can significantly grow our market share in the HDB and private resale market where we are already entrenched,” he adds.

Part of the family

After three years leading the way at Huttons Asia, Yip reflects on the scope of his responsibility and the importance of corporate leadership responsibility. “This job is all about getting in touch with various stakeholders, especially the agents on the ground who are the bedrock of our industry,” he says.

He adds: “It is a job that requires an energetic individual who can inspire and motivate the people around you. This energy must be authentic and well-meaning. At Huttons, we are all one team, especially the various agency leaders and corporate heads of departments”.

Many team leaders and department heads at the company are relatively young. For example, senior executive officer Ngiam Juyong, 33, assists the CEO in project development and advancing property technology (proptech) investments. He is also involved in various equity deals and engages in corporate and financial due diligence for such investments.

Another rising star within the management team is Jerome Loh. At 33 years old, he holds the head of operations and administration position, synchronising operations and compliance while enhancing the agents’ professional competence and service quality.

Huttons is the first local real estate agency to engage the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL) to review the agency’s skills framework and internal training programmes for associates and staff.

This new training roadmap will be re-modelled to parallel the recently announced enhancement of the Council for Estate Agencies’s (CEA) Continung Professional Development ecosystem in May 2023.

“Being a part of the Huttons family is not all work; there are plenty of corporate welfare collaborations with other brands, sports activities, and community engagement events are planned throughout the year,” says Shermaine Tay, 32, an assistant director and head of marketing communications at Huttons Asia. She spearheads the agency’s marketing strategies, brand positioning, environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) and customer engagement initiatives.

Being a part of the Huttons family is a mix of work and play, with various sports groups organising regular events. (Picture: Huttons Asia)

Recent examples include Huttons being the first real estate agency to collaborate with IMDA Open Innovation Platform to launch its Innovation Challenge for 2023. Last April’s inaugural event was an industry-first initiative that saw enthusiastic participation and quality submissions from youth participants who tackled topics such as the metaverse, algorithm-based artificial intelligence technology, and the effect of hybrid working arrangements on demand in commercial and residential real estate.

Huttons Asia raised nearly $120,000 for the Children’s Cancer Foundation during the charity drive in 2021. The agency supports initiatives such as Singapore’s OneMillionTrees movement, the National Kidney Foundation (NKF) Race Inspired, the Roxy Foundation Charity Car Wash and various charity golf events.

“We strive to be the best in the industry. As a real estate agency, this is supported by having a large professional force of agents backing us up. However, our agents must continue to be productive and keep pace with consumer expectations and technology. Our key strategic focuses will help propel Huttons Asia into the future while attracting and nurturing a new generation of leaders here,” says Yip.

For more information,

Contact Huttons Asia | 62530030

HUTTONS ASIA PTE LTD (L3008899K)