How these two sisters juggled a high-growth startup and giving birth

Sisters and startup founders Race and Rhonda Wong have had an interesting two years.

In September 2016, they launched Ohmyhome as a one-stop solution for housing-related transactions, providing a full range of services that includes agent services, mortgage consultancy, and home staging.

A little over a year into their proptech business, the Wongs became new mothers. By the time their company turned two in September 2018, the Ohmyhome app has had more than 200,000 downloads and 52,000 monthly users, as well as 5,000 active and genuine listings on the portal. They’ve also had transactions for over 2,000 homes – a combined value of more than US$618 million.

Race and Rhoda Wong / Photo credit: Ohmyhome

Tech in Asia spoke to chief operating officer Race and chief executive officer Rhonda about Ohmyhome’s milestones, and what it’s like to raise young children and a fledgling business at the same time.

Tell us about the inspiration behind Ohmyhome.

Race: Having moved from home to home in our growing-up years, we understand how difficult that could be and how important a home is to any individual. We have identified the problems – a lack of transparency and knowledge, the lengthy time it takes, the stress and the high costs involved – and were inspired to set up Ohmyhome.

We wanted to create solutions that could revolutionize the entire housing transaction experience, to provide people with a platform and services that are simple, fast and affordable. We wanted to put the control back into the hands of homeowners and home searchers because housing is the most important thing and most expensive asset in our lives – it deserves to be well taken cared of.

Rhonda: We’ve always wanted to create a company that could both be successful and positively benefit others’ lives in ways that matter. In our years of running real estate businesses, both from an own-stay and investment perspective, friends and family who encountered problems with their housing transactions often sought our help because we have industry experience. While they had our help, there are many others facing the same set of problems but do not have such help.

What unique problem is Ohmyhome solving? What makes Ohmyhome different from its competitors in the proptech space?

Rhonda: The problem that Ohmyhome is solving is the inefficiencies in the current process, and this is consistent across the world.

The problem can be broken down into three specific areas. First, the lack of information transparency. Ohmyhome addresses this by creating the agent agendum, which clearly sets out the agent’s work. Additionally, the DIY transaction directly links up buyers to sellers, and tenants to landlords.

Second, the long time it takes to find a suitable home/buyer. The market average selling time is 120 days. Ohmyhome solves this problem by having an extremely fast transaction speed that is made possible with superior matching algorithms, innovative features such as ShoutOut, where property sellers respond to buyers’ home requirements, as well as our capable team of agents. Our fastest selling time is one day, and our average is 33 days.

Third, high agent commission costs associated with each transaction. If a flat costs S$450,000 (US$327107), the standard agent commission for the buyer at 2 percent is S$9,000 (US$6,542), while the standard commission for the seller at 1 percent amounts to S$4,500 (US$3,271). Ohmyhome’s agent services are at a fixed rate of S$2,888 (US$2,099) net for sellers and S$1,888 (US$1,372) net for buyers.