Hello, I’m Tze Yong. My friends affectionally call me Ah Tan and my business associates know me as Tony.  I am not good at content writing using professional business English, so for this website I’ll write informally like I am speaking to you. I feel more comfortable that way and I hope you feel the same. So instead of writing a nice about page to let you get to know me more, I thought maybe it would be nice to have it in an informal Question and Answer style.  So here goes

Question: Who are you?

Eh OK… My name is Tze Yong and I am a realtor with PropNex. Nice to meet you. Before joining the real estate industry, I was a wedding photographer for more than 15 years . I am the founder of Wedding Moments Photography, a multiple award winning photography studio. My website URL is http://www.wedding-moments.com for those who are see my photography works. Prior to becoming a photographer, I was a lead developer in charge of developing realtime mission critical software for the financial market.

Question: Why real estate? You love real estate?

Hmm… This is going to be a long story. Being a wedding photographer is both mentally and physically tiring. I am on my feet for more than 10 hours a day carrying heavy camera equipments and my style of candid photography requires me to be mentally alert all the time so that I can capture the fleeting moments of the wedding day. Unfortunately I am in my 40s now, it is becoming a challenge to maintain the same peak performance compared to my younger self. Nowsaday I took days to fully recover from a wedding shoot. So in 2019, I thought hard whether I might need to start to look for alternative career that is less physically demanding. Going back to IT seems to be a viable option but I soon realised the world have moved on. Now is all about Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Big Data and etc. All the technology acronyms sound so foreign to me. So what’s next?  Then I remembered the time when I needed to sell my mum’s house after she passed (You can’t hold on to 2 HDB in Singapore) and my agent managed to negotiate a good price for both me and the buyer. Everyone is happy. And guess what? I enjoyed being around happy people (and getting paid for it) is also probably why I become a wedding photographer. Being around happy people and being able to document their memories makes me happy, I feel fantastic when I am able to do a good job for my clients. So I went and got my real estate license and became a realtor (or Property Agent as I am more commonly know as)

Question: How can a photographer and programmer help me with real estate?

Interesting question, in fact these skills prepared me well for this career. Would you agree a beautifully taken photo of your property will bring more eyeballs? Everyone love to look at beautiful things right and in this era where online shopping is fast becoming a norm, you really need to standout from the sea of property listings. My years as a software developer working on real time financial market data trained me to be meticulous when it comes to figure crunching. Back in the programming days, I had to write long mathematical code to calculate technical indicators. Number crunching and calculation was part and parcel of my programmer career. Data research and analysis is very important especially when making real estate investment decision. Buying a new launch property is easy,  5% cash, 20% CPF and 75% loan and you can buy a new property. But the more important question would be is the property worth buying? What are the factors affecting future growth? Is there something in the masterplan that will spur future growth? Do you have enough safety funds to tide you over in case of economic downturn? Are you overpaying for a development? Are you sitting on unrealised profit or loss your property? Is it a good time to restructure your property portfolio, All these need data research and data crunching.

Question: One last question, are you the president?

Unfortunately, my business name is Tony Tan. So this always come up. Nope, I am not the president. I usually address myself as Tony Tan (not the president). By the way this is a joke. Factually I don’t have a christian name but my manager feel is better to have one as it will be easier for clients who have difficulty with my dialect name to address me. As to why the name Tony? Maybe I can share the story with you when we meet up next time.