“Trust, Transparency, Truth, Technology and Talent”, it has been more than a year ago when, listening to an interview with a Singaporean academician, I have heard for the first time the “5Ts strategy” towards the development of a sustainable future. I was driving and, can remember clearly, I parked at the roadside to listen carefully as these “5Ts thingy” explanation really pushed a number of buttons in my mind!
I have been in the property industry for more than 3 decades and I’ve always tried, unconsciously, to advocate these 5 pillars. Hearing someone spelling out so clearly the importance of being truthful and transparent if you want to build trust and adding in that, leveraging on the “Tech-age” stage, we are all living in, talent and technology can definitely help in building a future-proof, fair and equitable world to come blowed up my mind. Sometimes it is true that important things are so clear in front of us and yet we cannot see or understand!
TRUST
Short and yet so powerful word!
How often it is misused or, unfortunately, misplaced? When you trust something or someone, it means you are ready to follow and do accordingly, 100%. Kids with parents, wives and husbands, friends, leaders, politicians and head of states and the list could go on for long. There is no future without trust and, somehow, in these modern yet trying times, the technological advancement has and is helping in building mutual trust. Artificial Intelligence does not know how to lie and software, by definition, cannot cheat you.
When you apply the above to an important decision making process as the purchase of a property is, then you realise how trust is important as the decision to proceed is probably going to be the most important, from a financial point of view, of your life. ConsTech, PropTech and FinTech have enhanced the property purchasing journey making it trustable and seamless.
Comfortably seated on your sofa you check a project, do some compare contrast analysis and then you’re ready to go for a virtual walkthrough of the chosen unit. Selecting the unit, paying the booking fee and applying for a loan all happens on line and trust is again the fuel that moves the whole process forward. “TrusTech” is the backend pillar helping the property industry moving from good to great!
TRANSPARENCY
Trust comes in when the “ecosystem” is transparent, no lies or hidden tricks! Millennials and GenZ are known as champions of transparency. Transparency means making available all information, good and bad, about something to enable people to make unbiased and totally free decisions. Transparency start from the top of a pyramid and moves down to its roots. Governments, from all around the world, are discussing and testing e-government procedures and few countries have already started enabling this ultra-modern way of governance.
Transparency means making all data (big data) available for people to analyse them and making, in the process, wiser decisions. Related to the property ecosystem, transparency comes into play under the form of reliable data being released for public use, developers giving complete information on their project, authorities publishing master-planning information on infrastructures, public transportation and public services. Again technology has been helping the transparency implementation process to take place at faster pace.
The trick here is to understand that to obtain the trust of the market you have to be transparent and, fortunately, most developers are walking the talk. PropTech solutions at this regard have became more popular allowing people to check on line status of a project, surfing through public service providers to confirm the future highways or MRT lines stations and so on.
An important aspect of this “building-trust-through-transparency” process comes in when property buyers are receiving the key of their dwellings. In the past initiating a defect claim for a purchaser was like entering in the hell’s lobby.
Nowadays, Proptech provides solutions allowing online communication and defect liability management in a transparent, trustable and seamless way!
TRUTH
Lies have short legs, devil makes woks without covers, Pinocchio growing nose and more!
How many times have we heard these popular mantras cursing lies? And, how often have we been witnessing how lies can get people to lose their face, status and wealth? Countless!
The wheel keeps on revolving as being truthful means being transparent and consequently trustworthy! As said above, artificial intelligence does not know how to lie, which is a great thing, and lies are crushing over technology. I’m sure you all realise how much these 5Ts are meaningful on individual basis and, when linked to each other, extremely powerful; a bit like the 5 stones in the latest Marvel movie, “Avengers’ End Game”!
Let’s embrace more the Proptech implementation journey making sure of not being left behind!
TECHNOLOGY & TALENT
The last two Ts mentioned by the interviewed during the radio broadcast, can easily be incorporated as one. There cannot be technological advancement without talents who are developed only through the contribution of technology.
In other words, there cannot be a sustainable future without technology which is, we like it or not, the bonding agent of the other 4 Ts. Technology, or Tech, is everywhere in our daily lives. From private to public side as smart homes, smart office, smart transportation, smart eating, smart studying and many more smart are regulating and helping our daily lives.
It becomes even more strategic and functional to think about tech when starting a journey to buy a property then! Isn’t it?
We would like to hear your comments on the above topic and open a discussion on the importance of the 5Ts for a sustainable future in property and more, leave a note below and we will follow up!
About the author
The opinions expressed in this article are solely of the author, Dr Daniele Gambero.
Dr Gambero has been an expatriate to Malaysia from Italy, since 1998 and has more than 35 years of real estate experience. He is the co-founder and group CEO of REI Group of Companies, the Co-founder of Propenomy.com and the deputy president of the Malaysia Proptech Association.
In the past 10 years Daniele, as international and TEDX speaker, has engaged several hundreds thousand people talking about Property, Economy, Propenomy, Digital Marketing and Motivation. He is also a bestselling author and columnist on several magazines and main stream media.
