With more than 25 years in the real estate industry, it is unsurprising that PropNex executive chairman and CEO Ismail Gafoor should identify with the game of Monopoly, where players compete to build a property portfolio without losing their metaphorical pants.
A favourite family pastime—and one which he consistently won until his children wised up to the strategies—it became an education tool that PropNex could use to teach consumers about residential property investment in Singapore. This May, the company launched a nationwide Monopoly competition, with the game tweaked to account for the city state’s different property segments, multiple home ownership and cooling measures. The key to winning, according to Gafoor, is the ability to make decisions. “Sometimes, you hold on to property for emotional reasons, which will not give you results,” he says. “Winning is all about upgrading or disposing, while ensuring your cash flow is there.”
In other words, it is about calculated risk and methodical acquisition, the approach that Gafoor, who has a bachelor’s degree in land economics from the University of Technology Sydney, adopted to expand PropNex from a two‑person operation in 1996 to Singapore’s largest real estate agency in terms of sales staff. As of January 2022, PropNex has about 10,800 sales agents—roughly 30 per cent more than its closest competitor, ERA Realty Network. Last year, a bumper period for Singapore real estate, PropNex recorded revenue of $957.5 million, $65.1 million of which was net profit, a 108.6 per cent jump from the year before.
Gafoor, who controls about 65 per cent of the company, has come a long way. The 59‑year‑old entrepreneur grew up in a one‑room HDB rental flat he shared with his parents and five siblings. As a boy, he delivered newspapers for four cents each. While serving in the Singapore Army, he discovered a more efficient way of making money. A friend’s uncle had earned $250,000 from a house sale and Gafoor figured that four such transactions would make him a millionaire. His ambition sparked, Gafoor left the Singapore Armed Forces in 1995—he was a colonel by this time—and, a year later, started a real estate business, Nooris Consultants, with his wife.
Convinced that he needed economies of scale to succeed, he teamed up with four other agencies in 2000 to form PropNex, only to have the partnership fall apart due to differing values. The blow was an invaluable lesson for the businessman. He joined forces with the remaining partners with the understanding that they would collaborate, instead of compete, with one another to grow the company. A key merger with Dennis Wee Group (DWG) in 2017 transformed PropNex into Singapore’s biggest real estate agency. It went public in 2018 and has ambitions to dominate the market in Southeast Asia, having established offices in Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam and Cambodia in the past six years.
MUCH TO SMILE ABOUT
Gafoor has much to be cheerful about. “I’m a happy person,” he says in between munches of biscuit he is eating for energy after the photo shoot for this story. He is referring to his general character and not his achievements, and jokes about his name sounding like “Is‑smile”. He admits that he likes to talk: to be sure, his presence on social media as well as professional and consumer educational platforms shows him to be a tireless champion of his business, staff and family. He likes to use the word “love”, sometimes with the lofty adjective “unconditional”, to explain PropNex’s success, which hinges on the company looking out for its employees.
“It’s unconditional love, truly,” says Gafoor, that allows him to be equanimous about departing staff. “If they choose to leave me for opportunities elsewhere, I’m not upset. If they come back, my heart is big enough not to harbour anger.” He adds that unconditional love is the basis of the company’s “rich sharing culture, where people can be unselfish about spreading knowledge”.
“Leadership is not like running a marathon, which has an end point, but like running a relay”
