Monk Realty Show

I asked my ex-client, "Why don't you rent the house to me, because I want to run a social experiment.”

He rented the house to me at SGD 5,000...Two weeks later, we achieved a rent of SGD 10,800. Three years later, here we are with 1200 rooms and counting.

Eugene Lim, Episode 2 - Monk Realty Show

In less than 4 years, The Assembly Place (TAP) has grown from "a social experiment" to a fast-growing, cash-flow positive Coliving business. Eugene Lim, Founder & CEO of TAP, explains the story behind it and shares hard-won advice on growing a real estate business.

Eugene Lim is an ultramarathoner, real estate veteran, and founder and CEO of The Assembly Place, a Singapore-based Coliving firm. In this episode, he talks about -

1) The social experiment behind founding TAP

2) Starting a Coliving business without a security deposit

3) What is a good rental yield in Singapore

4) How TAP efficiently runs 1200 rooms with 30 full-time staff 

5) Diversifying into Coliving Hotel, serviced apartments, and traveler's hostel

6) How an “asset-light” model helped during Covid

Decoding Community Management

"Good community managers and property managers manage the expenses. They make sure that the expenses are under control. Great property and community managers also look at revenue."  - Waqar Hasan

In the world of Property Management, words like community and due diligence are used quite loosely. But what makes a great Community Manager, or what is the due diligence necessary to justify investing in a property?

To answer these questions, we spoke to Waqar Hasan (CPM, PCAM) who is -

• Dubai-based licensed Property Manager, 
• CEO of Itihad Community Management and 
• Author of A Practical Guide to Community Management. 
• Current Board Member and former President of CAIME (Community Associations Institute - Middle East). 

Highlights -

1. Good v/s great community managers
2. Due diligence for property investment
3. Decision-making for smaller firms
4. What you should ask mid-level managers?
5. Practical tips for community management

How to invest in student housing

Sam Chor is the Director of UJ Hostels, Malaysia's largest Student Housing chain. He shares insights that every coliving and community living operator needs to learn to nurture the warmth and positivity that UJ hostels is fostering in every facility.

UX for space design

How you organize and align a space sends out psychological cues that can be hard to put a finger on, but significantly impact the user experience. Just like an app needs proper UX, so does any space meant for hospitality.

Rental Operators can create an effortless and appealing experience for tenants that can be much more inviting and comfortable, thereby aiding them to feel at home and at ease. Our guest Jose Antonio being an expert on Community building shares exactly that with us. Fueled by suburban loneliness and a desire for community Jose believes that we are most alive when we are connected, and that intergenerational communal living offers an alternative to our increasingly isolated world. Drawing upon years of experience living communally throughout the world, he urges us to find one another and build our own micro-villages. Jose supports people and organizations advancing social change by connecting them to resources, opportunities and each other.

Rethinking Coliving

Alfonso Medina is CEO of Madelon, one of Brooklyn, NYC's coolest Real Estate Development services. Alfonso explains what he learned from starting his own venture, and how to power up and launch your own coliving space with super-strong impact

In the second episode of The Monk Realty Show, we explore the coliving scene in Europe.

Luca, CEO of Habyt- the premier coliving operator in Berlin, takes us through what it's like being in the game and answers how to expand across the region despite the many challenges. Coliving spaces are the latest accommodation experiment taking place in Europe in which hundreds of people pay more to be part of a self-contained community.

In the inaugural episode of Monk Realty Show, Chetan Hatti speaks to the co-founders of MonkTechLabs, Ajay Kumar and Balaji Varadharajan.

[0:42] - About TheHouseMonk

[2:20] - Thoughts about the Asian market

[4:25] - Average Coliving rent in US/Europe is 10x more compared to India.

[5:19] - Number of operators, market value, tenants, expected growth

[7:06] - Global Coliving Report 2020

[10:00] - Zoning, taxation, rent control and other challenges for Coliving

[12:11] - TheHouseMonk's role in the Coliving industry