What does Cambodia's active promotion of digital transformation signify for the intermediary industry? 

Compass Cambodia - Cambodia recently launched "Digital Economy and Social Policy Framework of Cambodia", which will strongly support digital transformation, implying that information technology will offer systematic reform to Cambodia's development. This is not only a type of emerging technology, but it also gives rise to many of the fast-growing developing sectors.

Cambodia is committed to achieving five "Digital Development Goals" in the next 15 years.

Digital transformation is to comply with the trend of a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial change, which continuously deepen the application of cloud computing, big data, blockchain and other new generation information technology, accelerate business optimization and upgrading and innovation transformation, transform and enhance traditional kinetic energy, create, transfer and obtain new value.

Cambodia will strive to achieve five "Digital Development Goals" in the next 15 years (2021-2035), according to the "Digital Economy and Social Policy Framework of Cambodia" project: building digital infrastructure, building digital system confidence, cultivating digital citizens, implementing e-government, and promoting digital commerce.

Cambodia's digital transformation will accelerate as a result of the government's aggressive promotion. Is it vital for the real estate industry to move towards digitization throughout this process? 

Digitalization may bring new hope to Cambodia's real estate industry

At present, Cambodia's real estate industry is still in its early stages of development. The traditional operation mode is primarily responsible for the operation mode of new house sales, stock house market, and rental market.

The industry is not transparent, its employees are not professional, it lacks effective supervision and guidance, and all types of disorder occur on a regular basis.

1. Deceiving customers. This is due to the system's lack of digitalization and and online system. Housing information is not transparent; real estate advisors or intermediaries will withhold part of the housing information in order to promote the sale. The most common examples are uncertain property rights and unclear prices, etc,

2. Earning from the pricing variations. Earning price differences in secondhand house transactions is a typical occurrence in Cambodia. On the one hand, the buyer and seller, as well as the intermediary, have yet to establish a reliable commission scheme. Even if the legitimate intermediary refuses to take the price difference and raises the commission in line with market trends, they will still confront illegal black intermediary and minor intermediary operations, which will damage the industry's system.

3. Protecting one's rights is tough. There is no relevant agency to control the employment standard of intermediate brokers due to the high availability of intermediary brokers and the early development of the Cambodian intermediary industry. In the market, there are a lot of black agents, unlicensed agents, and independent brokers. Once the event occurs, responsibility for buyers or owners, such as through irregular, unprotected intermediate businesses or independent brokers for real estate transactions, is extremely difficult.

4. Disclosure of customer privacy. A person in the industry said that if a customer gives his personal information to an intermediary, other intermediary companies may know the customer's information.

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Although not all intermediaries have these issues, once such behavior is discovered in the market, it will negatively impact clients' perceptions of the entire business. In the long run, it will also have a negative impact on the industry's beneficial development. Based on the reality of the above issues, only legal compliance, a high-quality service agency, and expertise are the greatest choices for buyers and businesses. At the same time, we can better encourage the benign development of Cambodia real estate transactions by persisting in positive development, upholding the industry's basic principles, and respecting the broker group's payment.

The Promising Future Of Digital Real Estate

The real estate industry's digital transformation is a critical step toward making transactions more transparent. It can only be better supervised and used if we remove the offline manual effort and put it online for digital administration.

First and foremost, following the real estate industry's digital transformation, we can use big data to present the most accurate real estate transaction data, effectively squeezing or even eliminating the use of fake data by intermediaries to artificially inflate house prices. This will contribute to the industry's long-term stability and healthy growth.

Second, as digitalization continues to advance, it will give the sector with more and more emerging technology support, resulting in a new house viewing experience. Some real estate platforms, for example, have created VR, video, and live viewing services that not only provide a more convenient viewing experience for users, but also contribute to the industry's orderly development during the epidemic period. The local real estate sector will go global with a faster and better image thanks to the use of big data and information technologies.

Finally, the advancement of digitization is conducive to opening up the full link operating mode of pre-sale and after-sale, assuring the greatest possible protection of home buyers' interests, and comprehensively resolving the industry's existing specific problems.

In fact, given Cambodia's current state of development, there are also some companies with foresight in the industry's development direction that explore the way for digital real estate development, such as Compass Real Estate Platform, as a multinational real estate technology company with over 40 housing section standards has been established in order to deliver comprehensive, real, and detailed housing information and real estate selection through maximizing information transparency and improving the quality of real estate services for local real estate demand users in Southeast Asia, Middle East, and North Africa. Through ERP products of merchants, it provides promotion and customer acquisition and work efficiency promotion value for local developers and intermediary brokerage companies.

Due to the fact that real estate digitalization in the Cambodian market has not really developed, local homebuyers and property owners have yet to experience the obvious power of digitalization. But the secure transaction link is something every home purchaser expects in order to have a good buying experience.

Overall, Cambodia is generally strongly promoting digital transformation, and in the future the internet industry will be a key driver of economic growth. As the conventional driver of national economic development, property actively fosters the strong partnership with the Internet industry, which will achieve the ideal 1 + 1 > 2 status.

Source: Compass Cambodia Original

Editor: Liuyuan         Chief Editor: Sunnie         General in Chief/Executive Producer: Nicole         Translator: Malinda

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