Judging Process

The PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards programme boasts an independent panel of industry experts and trusted supervisors at HLB, one of the world’s award-winning auditing and accountancy networks, which aims to help celebrate and promote the region’s real estate industry on the world stage.

The Awards have an unparalleled reputation for being credible, fair and transparent. Nominees of competitive awards are evaluated based on strict general criteria set by the independent judging panel.

For Developer awards, the judges carefully consider a company’s reputation, image and CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility) or ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) initiatives, overall track record, displays of innovation, and achievement in the past 12 months.

For Development and Design awards, entries are judged based on location, value for money, unique selling points, state of completion, sales success, design concept, site layout, innovation, use of space, quality of amenities, construction and materials used, and sustainable function.

About the judging panel

Judges are selected and invited by PropertyGuru to join the panel for their property industry expertise and knowledge and their standing in the business community. All judges who join the panel must follow guidelines in the judges’ rulebook to ensure that all members take equal responsibility, equal participation is provided by all the panelists, and that the results of the diligent, detailed and thorough process are fair and credible.

The judging panel adhere to the following procedure:

  • The central judging panel meets, in the presence of an HLB representative, to discuss, select and agree upon a long list entrants per category.
  • Local site visit teams are arranged, which may include members of the central panel of judges, to inspect the site of each long-listed development to discuss with senior executives and conduct a detailed review of the development. If site visits for regional areas cannot be arranged, video presentations are obtained from entrants or virtual inspections are organised through videoconferencing.
  • The local site visit teams submit their scoring of the developments inspected to HLB for presentation at the final judges meeting.
  • All site visit and central panel judges must declare any conflict of interest with entrants and are recused from scoring/voting on entries with which they have a conflict of interest.
  • At the final judges meeting, in the presence of an HLB representative, the central panel agree upon the final shortlist, which comprises one Winner and up to four Highly Commended.
  • The organisers will publicly announce the shortlist one month before the Gala night presentation.
  • The Winners and Highly Commended awardees will be announced at the Gala night.

 

Note: The only exception to the above procedures is for the People’s Choice Awards, which are granted to the top developers voted by the public, as well as for the Real Estate Personality of the Year and PropertyGuru Icon awards, which are chosen by the Property Report by PropertyGuru editorial team and presented to an individual who they believe has personally excelled in their chosen field in the last year.

HLB is the Official Supervisor of the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards

Leveraging upon its experience monitoring contests and award systems around the world, HLB is entrusted with overseeing the entire judging process, working with the organisers of the PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards for over a decade now to ensure that the judging is conducted fairly and with integrity.

HLB International is a global network of independent professional accounting firms and business advisers. Formed in 1969, HLB services clients through member firms in 157 countries, with 38,000+ partners and staff in 900+ offices worldwide.

Supervisor’s Role:

  • HLB reviews completed entry forms to check that they meet
    the published criteria.
  • An HLB representative is present at Judges meetings to ensure that criteria and procedures are correctly followed.
  • HLB representatives join selected site inspections to check procedures are correctly followed.
  • HLB approves all Winner and Highly Commended results from the Judges and presents the results to the organizers.

For more information about our Official Supervisor, visit the official HLB website.