4 life lessons that blogging about properties has taught me

As we are approaching the end of 2020, it’s time we took a moment to do some year-end reflections.

It has been more than ten years since I first started this blog in August 2010. I don’t know how many readers followed my blog since Day One (and I am very grateful if you are one of them). Those who did probably notice that my blog posts have evolved over the years. With better market knowledge and more life experiences, I am now more mature, not only in age, but also in my thinking as well.

Blogging about properties has enriched my knowledge of real estate and taught me about people. After years of meeting and observing ordinary homebuyers, property investors, real estate salespeople and industry stakeholders, I have learned three things about human nature:

1. Intelligence can occur at any age, but wisdom only comes with age and experience. And being wise is more important than being smart.

2. The market and our circumstances may change from time to time. But a person’s character and values can hardly change.

3. Education, capability and integrity can be mutually exclusive qualities in a person. Among the three, integrity is the rarest.


Blogging has made me a better person. It helps me understand more about myself. With constant reflections during writing, I have picked up four important life lessons:

Life lesson #1: It takes losing something to find yourself and see the truth.

Some of you might have suffered loss of business, income or employment due to Covid-19. Let me share with you a real-life story: A senior executive of a large organization once lamented that people all treated him nicely because of his title and social status. After he left the company, he felt relieved. Now what he missed most was not the power that came with his position, but the power to fix things when he saw something unfair happening.

His words immediately struck a chord with me. I used to experience the same in my full-time job: People were nice to me because of my title, the organization I worked for, and the company budget I managed. Many were eager to get in touch, took good care of me and spoke highly of me. Many a time they faked it to make me feel good.

It’s a big relief when I decided to leave the corporate world. From now on, I don’t have to entertain anyone who is not authentic. And it is priceless to see the few people who still stick around regardless of how I look, where I am or how much I make.

However, there is a price to pay. In the past, when I said something was not right, someone would go and fix it. These days if I say something is wrong or unfair, no one will do anything about it.

Anyway, I have done my part to expose the lies and warn the vulnerable. At the end of the day, whether people want to know the truth, what choice they make, and what consequence they face are not my business anymore.


Life lesson #2: You realize your true worth when you least expect it.

Everything happens for a reason, including this global pandemic. When life is all smooth sailing, it may just be the calm before the storm. The reverse is true. During challenging times, believe that this may already be the best arrangement for you at the moment, though you may not have the foresight and wisdom to realize it now.

I was an ordinary person leading a mundane life. I used to make a living out of management jobs in MNCs. After making some money from my property investment, I was fortunate to have the financial freedom to spend more time with my family and do what I really enjoy doing, including writing and blogging.

Then I started getting e-mails from strangers, thanking me for sharing with them the truths about properties. They are grateful that my blog or my book have saved them from making wrong decisions in property purchase. They hope I can continue doing more of what I am doing now.

This is something new to me. I am not their potential customer or VIP client. I never give them any big business. Unlike healthcare workers or social workers, I have never saved a life or helped a soul. Yet these strangers spend time writing long e-mails to tell me how thankful they are.

To my former companies, I am dispensable. But to my readers and followers whom I have never met, they let me know that what I am doing as a hobby has its value, that my existence has its worth and meaning, that an ordinary person like me can have a mission in life too.

For the very first time, I feel proud of myself.

I could have continued job hopping from one MNC to another until I retire. I could have bought other undervalued properties and sold them for a profit years later. I could have kept repeating what I have done. But there is nothing extraordinary there, with no breakthrough.

Then heaven gave me the opportunity to venture into something new: To write clumsily in my second language, meet people from a completely different background, and understand more about how things work in this world. How interesting!

When you work hard for money, you expect to be rewarded. Whatever reward you have is not a surprise to you. When you do something not for money, when you are not expecting anything in return, you often end up getting something much better than money.

Lucy Maud Montgomery said in her novel Anne of Green Gables: “Some people go through life trying to find out what the world holds for them only to find out too late that it’s what they bring to the world that really counts.”


Life lesson #3: You can trust anyone with low or no qualification, but not anyone with no integrity.

In Hong Kong, because of rags-to-riches tycoons like Li Ka-shing and Stanley Ho, people look up to those who come up from nothing. In the US, because of entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, people look up to those who drop out from college to grow a humble start-up into a business empire. In Singapore, because of our worship of scholars, people look up to those with high education qualifications.

ERA’s KEO Eugene Lim told the media in 2018 that over 60 percent of their agents are degree and diploma holders. New agents are also younger and better educated, with more than one-third are degree holders.

That sounds like a good trend.

But think about those who sold us the EcoHouse Brazilian public housing project, the Castlewood Dream Phuket Hotel & Spa, the Soilwood and Noble Consulting Group projects, and other “investment opportunities” that went wrong with investors fail to get their money back. Aren’t these people also highly educated whom we all look up to?

The truth is: In this industry, the education level of a marketer or an agent has nothing to do with his or her honesty, integrity and trustworthiness.

We teach young children honesty in kindergarten and integrity in primary school. For people who have never learned these two fundamental values, what’s the point of telling others that they have a bachelor’s, a master’s or a doctorate degree?


Life lesson #4: It is not a shame if you don’t have money. It is a shame if you cheat others to make money.

Many people have big dreams and possess what it takes to be successful in their field. They have higher intelligence, wilder imagination and bigger determination than others. These people are either a great person or a big screw. It all depends on their character, their values, and the path they take in life.

I can come up with an “exciting” investment scheme and market it as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. I have charisma to draw a big crowd of investors to put in their life savings. Most people won’t bother to check the facts or run the numbers anyway. So long as I make my money, who cares whether these people end up losing their shirt? The smart rule the world. Let the poor be poorer.

I can play with people’s fear of the depreciation of their 99-year HDB flat, talk them into selling their flat and buy two private homes or a commercial property for investment. It doesn’t concern me whether these people can really afford to do so. It is not my problem if they can’t get any loan, are forced to cancel the booking and pay a five-figure sum to the developer for nothing. So long as I make my money, who cares if these fools end up with no home but a money draining investment property in this recession?

I know how to maximize the gross floor area with countless shoebox units. I can squeeze three tiny bedrooms into a 750 sq ft unit. They are selling like hot cakes in a hot market. My clever inventions help to bring in record revenue and profit for the company. The projects even bag the industry’s best design awards. So long as I make my money, who cares whether these small units are livable or not? I don’t have to eat my own dog food. I am staying in my bungalow.

We can come up with tons of excuses: It is not easy to make money in this market. This is just a sales tactic. Everybody is doing that. It is willing buyer willing seller. They are aware of the consequences …

We all have our own boundaries, though we don’t all set the same boundaries in exactly the same place. Deep down we know very well where we draw the line and what things are off limits.

If in doubt, imagine what our teachers, parents and children will think of us if they know what we are doing. Will they be proud of us? Will they disapprove? What will the honest people say?


My new book Behind The Scenes of The Property Market: Finding The Truths and Exposing The Lies of A Not-So-Transparent Industry is now available online or at Kinokuniya and major Popular bookstores.