How Can You Benefit From Comparing Transacted Sub-Sale Properties Prices?

We recently interviewed, P.Premendran, Managing Director at Brickz. If you have not known before, Brickz’s mission is to make transacted sub-sale property prices in Malaysia transparent to help home owners, investors and real estate agents save hours of property research time by guiding them to take the right actions, based on the right insights.

Brickz realized some people need this information to assist them on their property purchase decision, therefore by turning transacted property data into information and knowledge in the most efficient way will be able to help them in the process.

Q: What does that mean transacted sub-sale property prices in layman term?
A: This means prices of secondary properties or properties previously owned by someone that has been resold and the new owner has paid the stamp duty for the purchase. The price is the price the new owner paid for the property and the date is the SPA date.

Q:  I can see that Brickz is not only providing Home and Commercial properties but also extends its services to Industrial, Land and Agricultural property insights. What initiated Brick to cover such vast and technical aspects of properties in Brickz website?
A: We realised that not many sites provide this information. Even though the transactions are not many, it will be invaluable to anyone to who is interested in that category. For example, we even wanted a farmer to do his due diligence before buying or selling a farm.

Q: Obviously, Brickz is set to differ itself from other property websites by having more technicalities in delivering their information and the site targets to help not only buyers and investors but also agents. How would you describe the feedback from your visitors so far? Who are your main visitors, are they comprise of more buyers or agents?
A: The feedback has been very positive thus far with a lot complimenting the ease of use and also the transparency of the date. For the single reports, its usually buyers. For the subscription we can see a balance between investors, agents, property developers and valuers.

Q: Is it fair to say that Brickz is relying on Valuation and Property Services Department (JPPH) to obtain the information? How frequent that the data is being updated through JPPH?
A: Yes, the data source is only from JPPH and it is updated on a monthly basis

5. Your pattern recognition system is currently running over 350 algorithms and rules that automatically detects and fixes inconsistencies and the number of algorithms are growing by the day to improve the accuracy. How many technical members are on board with Brickz and how Brickz ensures that the data is current and accurate?
A: We have two programmers full time on the algorithms and mechanics and one full time on the front end features. By ending this automated system, the assurance is that once an inconsistency is found, not only will it be fixed, the system will ensure it will not be repeated again.

We have a data analyst who will comb through the monthly data received to see any new inconsistencies. The benefit of having such a system is that, the more data we have and the more algorithms we create, the smarter the system will be.

Q: Apart from the sites, do Brickz organizes any other property seminars and events, i.e talks/ courses? And how the people can participate in the events?
A: At the moment, there are no on-ground activities being held.

Q: Through the website, the search does not have any suggestion for appreciating properties or booming location. How does Brickz helps to narrow down the search?
A: The site purpose is to allow users to decide on their own by providing them the data and at same time the charts on the trends. We do acknowledge that more transactions on a location does not mean it’s good therefore we decided not to provide any suggestions.

We do not position ourselves as property recommenders but instead as a property research tool for users.

Q:  To this date, How do you interpret the transactions which have been done through Brickz? Would you reckon any signs of trend or demand that is currently developing in property market now?
A: At the moment, we do not provide insights on the transactions but we are in discussion with some property insiders to provide contributions on insights.

Q: Since launch, how is the response towards Brickz and how will Brickz improvise its services in the future?
A: Since 12th May (the launch date), the numbers have been growing. Currently the average daily unique visitors is about 400 and we have single report and yearly subscriptions on a daily basis.

Q:  The search is now made default to cover Kuala Lumpur and Selangor for the time being. Is expanding the search to other states necessary? What will be the the property outlook in other states? How do you expand the data search after KL & Selangor?
A: We do have plans to expand to other states in the future as we have received requests from Penang, Negeri Sembilan and Johor. These would be the first 3 states for us to move into.

Q: For the newbies in property market, how do you recommend them to use information that they gather in Brickz for their first investment/property?
A: For newbies, my assumption would be they are planning to buy their first house. If they are buying a secondary property, my recommendation is for them to search for that particular property in Brickz to find out what was the latest transacted prices.

To be more precise on the floors/unit numbers and trend, I recommend them to buy the single report to see all the available transactions for that project. If they are buying a new property, they can still use Brickz to find out what are the transacted prices for similar type in that area they are keen in.

Q: TheEdgeProperty also provide data of property transaction, for free. How is Brickz different and what’s your advantage?
A: How we see ourselves different is as below:

1. We also provide the latest 10 transactions for free. If fact 50% of brickz transactions can be viewed for free. The difference is we give the user no matter if you are an agent or a home owner, an option to purchase the report to even view all the unit addresses, number of rooms and floors for the project.
2. We can break down by sub-type. For example, intermediate, corner, end lot.
3. We can do market research based on town, townships, projects, average price, period using our filtering features.
4. We believe our data accuracy is stronger with our pattern recognition system.
5. We provide for all Land uses and building types – not just the premium ones
6. Our latest official data is more updated
7. We fully declare that our source is official from JPPH

For more thorough demonstration and how to make the best use of Brickz to research your property purchase, check out this recording I’ve done with Prem: