Sammi Lim, shape-shifter

/ EdgeProp Singapore |

December 4, 2020 8:00 AM SGT

SINGAPORE (EDGEPROP) - Sammi Lim eats like a bird. She apparently does not need much sleep either. She is in bed by 1am and in her office by 7am. “I love my work, and I’m married to my job,” professes the 36-year-old. “Work” for Lim has certainly undergone a radical shift since 2019.

Lim: Singapore’s real estate market always recovers faster than expected (Photo: Sammi Lim)

She had spent nine years at CBRE, one of the world’s largest commercial real estate and investment services firm, where she catapulted to stardom and was last director of capital markets. “I was happy in CBRE,” confesses Lim. “But I had always been an agent, the middleman; I wanted to know more about the buy-side of the business, and what it’s like to be in the developer’s shoes.”

In March last year, Lim left CBRE to assume the role of CEO of JK Global Capital, the family office of hotelier and property tycoon, James Koh. The founder and executive chairman of Singapore-listed Fragrance Group, Koh is also the controlling shareholder of listed property company, Global Dragon.

However, even while she was at JK Global Capital, some of her former clients continued to contact her, asking if she could help them either sell or buy a property.

Entrepreneur, agent, dealmaker

That was when she decided to venture out on her own. In June this year, she launched Brilliance Capital. She even took a lease on a 600 sq ft office space at CES Centre on Chin Swee Road, with a view of the Pearl’s Hill City Park from her 10th-floor window. She moved in on Nov 1.

She named her company “Brilliance” as the Chinese translation is hui huang which means splendid, glorious. “I need a Chinese name for my company as I’ve a lot of clients from Hong Kong and China,” she explains.

The second part of the name “Capital” was chosen as Lim’s ambition is that the firm handles “big deals”, and not necessarily just direct real estate transactions.

Careful thought has been given not just to the name of the firm, but even logo on her business card. “The arrangement of the three triangles of my logo resembles a chair, where my clients can sit comfortably,” explains Lim. “And it also means that while there are many choices, there is only one good choice.”

Lim has styled herself foremost as an entrepreneur, not just a realtor. “Some fellow entrepreneurs have asked me if I was scared when I first stepped out on my own,” she says. “But I told them that I took a calculated risk, and I’m confident in my abilities.”

After all, the Singapore Management University (SMU) graduate in business happened to enter the real estate sector by chance. In the final year of her programme at SMU, it was mandatory for all students to do an internship. “One of my professors thought I was suited for sales-oriented jobs, and he introduced me to Colliers International,” Lim recollects.

She joined the investment sales team at Colliers, which was headed then by its executive director, Ho Eng Joo. Colliers even offered her a job before the end of her internship. As she had to complete one last semester at SMU before she graduated, she went back to school, but continued to work part-time at Colliers. Once she graduated, she joined the firm’s investment sales team full-time. And she was there for five years.

Steep learning curve, specialisation

“I’m always looking for a job with a steep learning curve,” says Lim. “I’m really grateful for all the opportunities that I was given at Colliers. But after five years there, I felt I needed another platform to grow.” That led her to the capital markets and investment sales team at CBRE, headed by Jeremy Lake then, and she stayed for close to a decade.

According to Lim, it was at CBRE that her interest in the strata commercial and shophouse segment was stirred. “Ten years ago, it was a segment of the market that no one really focused on,” she recalls. “People used to associate investment sales or capital markets with the big-ticket deals — the sale of an office tower or mall, collective sales or land sales — and the smaller strata commercial deals and shophouses were overlooked.”

Unlike institutional investors who are experienced investors, the strata commercial property or shophouse property buyer may be a novice who needs handholding. “It requires a lot of work and time commitment,” adds Lim. Hence, even while she focused on institutional deals at CBRE, she decided to carve a niche for herself in the strata commercial and shophouse segment.

In the past, after she brokered the sale of a property, she moved on to the next deal. This time around, in her own firm, she wants to provide value-add services, from design to renovation ideas and leasing.

Hence, she wants to be very selective in her hiring of agents. She has since taken onboard three real estate agents from various firms, with two more joining her by end of the year.

While these agents were from “elite teams” in their respective real estate agencies and have some experience in capital market deals, they also have different skill sets. “On my own, I could only do institutional deals — land sales, strata commercial deals or shophouse deals,” says Lim. “I rarely did condo sales in the past, residential or commercial leasing. But now, if a client tells me something, I have the person with the relevant skillset to do it.”

She loves a crisis

Since the lifting of the “circuit breaker” towards the end of June, Lim and her team of associates have closed about 40 deals, which she says is a mix of large and small deals, ranging from sales to leasing in both residential and commercial fronts. “I believe it’s a good sign,” she says. “During a crisis, good agents are flexible enough to manoeuvre around in order to make deals happen. So ironically, I love a crisis.”

This year, despite Covid and the two-month circuit breaker, the residential market has been active and that is expected to continue into the new year. The recovery is fuelled mainly by upgrader demand, reckons Lim.

Where the office sector is concerned, Lim sees early next year as a period of “experimentation” for many business occupiers. “It’s not that office rents are going to plunge,” she says. “But in the past, perhaps your office space was able to house 10 people. Now, because of safe distancing, you can only have five people in the office. So you can’t reduce your office space. But you don’t want to increase your footprint too, in this period of economic uncertainty. So most occupiers prefer to have flexibility at the moment.”

The sector that has suffered the most is retail, where Covid has sped up the demise of retailers that did not, or could not have an e-commerce platform. “However, not everything can be purchased online, hence there is still a need for physical stores,” says Lim.

F&B concepts that are new to the market are also looking at taking up physical space, adds Lim. Other F&B outlets have found that while safe distancing has meant that their in-dining revenue is still 20% less compared to the peak, but supplemented by their food delivery business, some have seen their revenue exceed even the pre-Covid era. Hence, they are also selectively taking up more space, she reckons.

Lim believes the Singapore property market is poised for a recovery in 2021. “Singapore’s real estate market always recovers faster than expected,” says Lim. “Just look at the way the property market recovered in 2009 after the Global Financial Crisis. A lot of people said they wished they had purchased a property then.”

Indeed, Lim wants to make sure that Brilliance Capital is there to capture some of these deals.

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