Tell me about yourself
PRESENT:
- Core focus on expansion throughout Asia Pacific
- Source RE & building financial models
- Then present recommendations to board: Proceed?
- Lease negotiation rental. DD and closing on acquisition
- Full spectrum
PREVIOUSLY: (Reason Here)
- Developer in AZ, farmland into shovel ready industrial sites
- Bring in longterm user / tenant
- Sell stabilised asset back to AZ gov. or fund.
WHY CO-LIV? LAST YEAR, WHILST AT ES:
- Completed MSc Real Estate Investment Finance
- Thesis focus on co-living and its viability in Singapore.
- Became apparent that shared living is the asset focus. (Building space for peoples items vs
FUTURE:
- For ES I have facilitated opening of 21 facilities: SG, HK, TW, MY & KR
- I am confident I can facilitate similar growth at COVE.
Why are you a good fit for the role?
QUALIFICATIONS:
- Proven track record to grow business across multiple regions, the primary goal of job desc.
- Familiarity with co-living, passionate about the product.
TRANSFERABLE SKILLS:
- Negotiation: Well versed. Renegotiated terms of renewal, resulting in savings of 830K across 7 year term.
- Proposing JV & MA to counter parties (transferable)
- Working cross-department: Fit-out project management (AutoCad)
WHAT MAKES ME DIFFERENT:
- Career goals aligned with Cove.
- Eventually want to start a co-living fund. UK capital access to Asia.
- Can’t think of a better platform to shoot for that target.
Why COVE?
- Recent funding your goal is to expand reach: Vietnam and the Philippines (4.6 m)
- My background makes well placed to help COVE achieve this.
- Love the idea of being able to work closely with co-founders and who I can learn from.
- Clearly extremely capable with the speed of expansion 2 years.
- Plus opportunity to take full ownership of my work and results. This is a fantastic environment for growth.
Modelling / Underwriting
- DCF modelling: Macro enabled, streamline the process.
- Cash Flow Basis
- Assumptions, Opex, and capex
- Profitability is a function of lease-up rate and rental rates.
- Return Requirements: Payback of 4 year, IRR over 10%+
How would you go about sourcing real estate?
- Take the time to truly understand what our target properties look like. Give clear criteria for others.
- Developing strong partnerships with agents & real estate owners. Who really understand our needs as an operator.
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What do you know about co-living?
- Smaller rooms more community space. Country and region-specific.
- Affordability, Delayed Life Events, Sharing economy, Work mobility, Immigration (SG context)
- Value Proposition: achieve higher margins or better monetize real estate assets that are less attractive otherwise.
- Target demo is econ. active millennial. Largest group in the world today. Essentially tailoring RE to this group.
Weakness
- Earlier this year, pulled into a lot of projects and responsibilities. Not related to my role / expansion.
- As part of company, had hard time saying no and removing myself
- Delegate, learnt to say no and trusting that other departments to complete.
- EXAMPLE: Rental Increment.
- Did for one facility
Time Management
S
T
A
R
Adapt / Failure
- Speedy deal. Big pressure to close quickly.
- Failure: Extent of some costs where overlooked, because we were working in silos
- Action:
- The big lesson was that: Must be collaborative.
FOR THE FUTURE: Time is
Process in place and checklists
Biggest Accomplishments
WORK (Lease Extension & IMM)
S * Flagship facility lease expiry 2032. Highest earning by some margin
T * Convince the JTC to grant lease extension for maximum term.
A * Created a in-depth business plan for the facility: current performance, future outlook (new business model). Presented to JTC committee as supplement to documentation.
R* Resulted in max 8 year extension. Projected value-add of $25m
