This article first appeared in City & Country, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on December 4, 2023 - December 10, 2023

Datuk Seri F D Iskandar
F D Iskandar, group managing director and CEO of Glomac Bhd and patron of Rehda, has three decades’ experience in the property development industry. He sits on the board of several private limited companies, including Axis REIT Managers Bhd, and is the immediate past chairman of the Construction Research Institute of Malaysia. (Note: He abstained from judging Glomac Bhd)

I would like to congratulate The Edge Malaysia for again holding this premier property awards, now in its 21st year. It is an event that the majority of developers look forward to as it is a friendly competition to benchmark ourselves against our peers, to see where we are in terms of innovation, leadership and so on. I also would like to congratulate the Top 30 property developers.

The property development industry is still facing challenges, such as the increased cost of doing business — including development cost, compliance cost and building material cost, especially cement. We have yet to go back to the pre-Covid period and we think end-financing is still a major problem for some purchasers. We hope the government will address the main concern — the economy today, especially purchasing power. The government should also look into the higher building material cost; otherwise, it can be difficult to achieve the goal of affordable homes.

The industry anticipates the effective implementation of Budget 2024’s commitment for infrastructure projects, which is expected to have a positive impact on the industry. The Malaysia My Second Home policy review should also be implemented as soon as possible.

Datuk N K Tong
Tong is the current Rehda president (2022 to 2024). He co-founded and is group managing director of Bukit Kiara Properties Sdn Bhd, a niche developer of innovative lifestyles. He is also an independent non-executive director of Standard Charted Bank Malaysia Bhd and chairs its Board Risk Committee. His other governance roles include being an advisory board member of City Hall Kuala Lumpur and a director of CIDB Malaysia and JA Russell & Co.

This year’s TPDA winners continue to raise the bar, putting the previous years’ pandemic firmly behind them and striving for real estate development excellence for the benefit of the rakyat! While quality, innovation and value continue to feature heavily, there is also a growing focus on sustainable and environmentally friendly built environments that offer better living options for the rakyat.

Tan Sri Teo Chiang Kok
Teo is a patron and past president of Rehda Malaysia, trustee of the Rehda Institute and president of Fiabci Malaysia. He is the current president of the Malaysia Shopping Malls Association and past president of the Building Management Association of Malaysia.

Teo is also a director of the See Hoy Chan Holdings Group in Malaysia. He has been involved in the property development industry for over 50 years and is the developer of the Bandar Utama Township and 1 Utama Shopping Centre.

This year’s Top 10 demonstrate the resilience of the property development companies in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic. Apart from some changes to the positioning, the cohort of the major players have more or less remained intact. However, the juxtapositions do reflect the different levels of the Covid pandemic’s impact on each company. All in all, the industry is in various stages of recovery, although there are headwinds to overcome. These Top 10 companies are well positioned to emerge confidently and continue to perform well.

Datuk Seri Michael Yam
Yam is a past president, patron and a National Council member of Rehda and has just stepped down as the 119th global president of the 48,000-member Chartered Institute of Building. He is the current chairman of the Construction and Built Environment Nexus Champion under the Malaysian Productivity Corporation, which is an agency of the Ministry of Investment, Trade and Industry.

His is also chairman of Triterra Sdn Bhd, Mercure KL Glenmarie Hotel and Metropolitan Lake Development Sdn Bhd. In addition, Yam serves as an independent director of Kwasa Utama Sdn Bhd, GreenRE Sdn Bhd, Borneo Golf Resort, MRCB International Sdn Bhd and THY Urban Development Sdn Bhd.

Until recently, he was an independent director of four public listed companies on Bursa Malaysia and a locally incorporated global bank that is listed in London and on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stepping down after serving the maximum tenure of nine years.

He is the current chancellor of the University of Wollongong Malaysia and an adjunct professor and guest lecturer at various universities in the fields of real estate development and corporate subjects while managing his own development and corporate advisory consultancy. 

(Note: Yam abstained from judging Paramount Corp Bhd and Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd)

It is amazing that it has been two decades since the inaugural The Edge Malaysia Top Property Awards in 2003, which has evolved into the more appropriately named The Edge Malaysia Property Excellence Awards, or TEPEA, to cover the expanded range of categories of excellence in the real estate industry. It is still considered the gold benchmark not only for developers to compete in but also for the consumers to refer to for comfort and assurance prior to deciding who they wish to buy a property from.

Kudos to The Edge’s team for ensuring that the judging and ranking of the more than 100 companies competing in TEPEA are based on very stringent criteria. The evaluation process is robust and is conducted by an independent panel of judges who diligently appraise the qualitative aspects of submission, while the quantitive component is extracted from reliable and authoritative sources.

It is noteworthy that the enthusiasm to achieve a Top 10 placing remains high 20 years on. Looking forward, it is imperative that developers ensure that a substantial part of their submissions includes the ESG and Sustainability agenda over and above the customary factors of Product Quality, Value Creation, Image, Expertise, Innovation and Creativity, and Customer Experience. Congratulations to the companies that have placed in the Top 10 property developers’ list of this respected competition, and we encourage those that may have just missed the target to work harder to make it to the list.

Tan Sri Eddy Chen
Chen is group managing director of MKH Bhd and former chairman of Perbadanan PR1MA Malaysia. A patron and past president of Rehda, he served on its national council from 1996 to 2020. Chen is on the Board of Advisers for the Malaysia Shopping Malls Association (2018 to 2022), and is president of the Building Management Association of Malaysia (2022 to 2024) and past chairman of the construction, property and infrastructure committee of the Associated Chinese Chambers of Commerce and Industry of Malaysia.

(Note: Chen abstained from judging MKH Bhd)

Firstly, let me convey my heartiest congratulations to The Edge Malaysia for the 21st edition of the awards. It has grown from strength to strength. This is certainly an enduring commitment to provide the industry with a sustained benchmarking tool, not only as reference for developers but also for the many other stakeholders.

This year, a large number of diverse property-related initiatives were given recognition. This will encourage companies to innovate and come up with products that will capture the imagination of the marketplace.

Big or small, these players have contributed greatly to the diversity in the built environment.

Kudos to The Edge Malaysia for its support and we look forward to its continuous endeavours to provide the benchmark that helps drive the industry to greater heights.

Datuk Jeffrey Ng
A patron and past president of Rehda, Ng has more than 38 years’ experience in finance and corporate management in the property and hotel industries in Malaysia and Australia. He is a fellow of Chartered Accountants, Australia and New Zealand as well as a member of the Malaysian Institute of Certified Public Accountants, and adviser to the Malaysian REIT Managers Association and chairman of Rehda Institute.

Ng is also an appointed member of the Appeals Board under the Federal Territory (Planning) Act 1982 and industry adviser, Faculty of Accountancy and Management at UTAR. He recently retired as CEO of Sunway REIT and chairman of United Overseas Bank Malaysia, and now sits on the board of Ayer Holdings Bhd and CapitaLand Malaysia Trust as an independent non-executive director. He is the founder of Urban Hallmark Properties Sdn Bhd. 

(Note: Ng abstained from judging Sunway Bhd and Ayer Holdings Bhd)

Gamuda Land deserved to win 2023’s top spot, after a well-strategised execution of consistent and aggressive media marketing, with a focus on sustainability and creative landscape design concepts. Sunway has also done well to return to the No 2 position. It is not an easy feat to stay in the Top 3 rankings every year.

With some exceptions, the Top 10 contenders have improved their rankings from 2022. This can probably be attributed to their robust branding efforts, proven business resilience and strong competitive strengths to maintain or gain market share.

Under current market conditions, homeowners looking for a modern lifestyle with innovative sustainable features would be the biggest beneficiaries of homes built by 2023’s Top 10 property developers.

Au Foong Yee 
Editor emeritus, The Edge Malaysia

The hat-trick by Gamuda Bhd’s property division, commonly referred to as Gamuda Land, is testimony that Malaysia’s best property developer is not born overnight.

Those who have been following The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Awards (TPDA) would have noticed how, over the years, Gamuda Land has been inching towards the coveted title of the country’s best property developer. This year, they finally did it!

The TPDA winner is ranked based on the total tally of a developer’s qualitative and quantitative scores, based on a 65:35 ratio. Gamuda Land’s win is all the sweeter as it came up tops in both the qualitative and quantitative rankings, without having to share the limelight with another company.

This makes Gamuda Land the first developer to walk away with, on its own, the TPDA, Best Qualitative and Best Quantitative trophies in the history of TPDA, which was introduced in 2003.

Clearly, it is no mean feat winning the TPDA award. The mammoth task allows little or no room for error in reading the market, planning and execution. While financials are key, the public’s perception of the company is even more pertinent.

Hence, tribute must be paid to all the developers who made it to the top 10 of TPDA. All of them deserve to be applauded and recognised for their sterling performance.

Last but not least, we look forward to Malaysian developers further raising the bar — a key objective of The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Awards.

The Edge Malaysia Top Property Developers Awards is an exercise to rank Malaysia’s top property players based on their quantitative and qualitative attributes. The ranking is published annually.

Introduced in 2003, the awards are based on the conviction that a developer’s quantitative attributes alone are not sufficient to earn it the title of the most outstanding player. A property developer is judged not only on how profitable the company is or how many homes it builds and sells each year but also on its qualitative attributes.

All companies listed on Bursa Malaysia’s property index are automatically considered for the awards while non-listed developers that are interested in being ranked need to submit their entries. Advertisements calling for entries from privately owned companies and the property development arms of companies not listed on Bursa’s property index were published in The Edge Malaysia.

Quantitative attributes 

Four quantitative attributes, namely shareholders’ funds, profit before tax, revenue and cash/net gearing make up 35% of the overall score. Net gearing is defined as the total of long and short-term loans minus cash divided by shareholders’ funds.

All financial data considered for the 2023 awards was based on a developer’s FY2022 results. The quantitative data of listed developers was derived from documents submitted to Bursa. Non-listed companies were required to submit copies of their audited accounts. Where signed audited financial statements were not available, data certified by the developer’s external auditors was used. 

Nine non-listed developers took part this year.

Qualitative attributes

Qualitative attributes contribute a greater weightage of 65%. The five attributes evaluated are product quality (finishing and timeliness), innovation and creativity (in products and marketing), value creation for buyers (capital appreciation), image (includes credibility) and expertise (includes management and experience). Effective 2017, a truncated mean has been adopted to compute the qualitative attributes, where the highest and the lowest scores given by the judges are discarded and the average is based on the remaining scores.

Points awarded 

A maximum of 10 points are awarded for each qualitative and quantitative attribute. Points for quantitative attributes are based on the financial data of the company while points for qualitative attributes are awarded by a panel of judges comprising industry experts and veterans as well as The Edge Malaysia. Also effective 2017, companies with scores that are less than 0.5 point of each other will be ranked equally. For example, company A with 60.1 points and company B with 60.5 points will be ranked the same.

This year’s judges were Datuk Jeffrey Ng, Tan Sri Teo Chiang Kok, Tan Sri Eddy Chen, Datuk Seri F D Iskandar, 

Datuk Seri Michael Yam and Datuk N K Tong. The Edge Malaysia was represented by The Edge Media Group publisher and group CEO Datuk Ho Kay Tat, The Edge Malaysia editor emeritus Au Foong Yee and City & Country editor E Jacqui Chan.

Judges who abstained from the deliberation and judging of companies in which they had direct or indirect interest were Ng on Sunway Bhd (he is former CEO of Sunway REIT Management Sdn Bhd and Ayer Holdings Bhd [director]), Chen on MKH Bhd (managing director),  F D Iskandar on Glomac Bhd (managing director and CEO) and Yam on Paramount Corp Bhd (director) and Malaysian Resources Corp Bhd (director). 

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