Undergrad real estate agent now CEO of largest co-living firm here

He saw room for opportunity after noting mismatch of landlord-tenant expectations

- Sue-Ann

Property executive Eugene Lim was only in his second year of university when he started a career in real estate in a bid to pay his university fees and then land a civil service post upon graduation.

Like many best-laid plans, this one went astray.

Mr Lim, who was studying business administration and management at the Singapore campus of the University of London, ended up staying in the property game, clocking up 18 years so far.

He worked his way up to head of project marketing at Knight Frank, before being propelled to the post of director when he was just 29. He also worked for six years at Oxley Holdings, overseeing the marketing and sales of local and overseas projects for the group.

Mr Lim, now 40, is the founder and chief executive of The Assembly Place, the largest co-living operator in Singapore. It now has more than 1,800 rooms in over 130 locations, but its total number of rooms will exceed 3,000 in the coming months.

It is also the first co-living operator here to offer the full spectrum of accommodation purpose-built co-living spaces, co-living units, landed houses.

shophouses, hotels, hostels and serviced apartments.

Mr Lim became interested in the co-living sector in 2019 after seeing clear gaps in the industry.

"When I was working at Oxley Holdings, one of my clients told me he had bought a landed property but found it hard to rent it out, and the yield was low," Mr Lim said.

"On the other hand, I also had a Malaysian former colleague who was renting rooms to work in Singapore. He used to pay $500 a month just to rent a bomb shelter in an HDB flat." Mr Lim said this mismatch of expectations between landlords who found it hard to lease out large properties and and tenants who wanted to rent just enough space affordably for themselves kick-started the idea of co-living.