Yesterday Inman News announced the addition of David Stein as their new GM. Stein has more than 16 years experience with more than 16 years experience with startups and the web. 

Prior to this position with Inman, Stein worked with Inman News founder and publisher Brad Inman at HomeGain and Turn Here. Stein was also VP of real estate at Reply Inc., according to this Inman News post. Also, Stein had this to offer on the new position:

“I’m excited to join one of the most trusted brands in real estate, and work again with Brad.”

Looking past the Inman release, Stein’s recommendations are stellar where managing expertise is concerned. Peter Christy, Sr. Director of Technology & Development at SmartShoot, offered this via Stein’s LinkedIn profile:

“David has a unique ability to manage both upwards and downwards. In the six years that I have worked with him and for him, I have been continually impressed with his steady focus on company objectives while simultaneously ensuring that individual team members opinions and input are not ignored.”

Stein graduated from the California State University-Fullerton – College of Business and Economics, with a BA in Entrepreneurial Management.

Energetic entrepreneur and Asia-file – Patrick Grove

Whether you want to buy or rent a property, iProperty Group probably has you or your business covered for finding, investigating, and making choices for the Asia real estate market. With sites covering locals from the Philippines and Indonesia, to Hong Kong and Malaysia, a score of portals show off the best of Asian properties. Let’s take a look at just a few of these, and more importantly, the organization behind them.

thinkproperty.my

This niche portal (below) is aimed at the home owner intent on listing their own properties. it is interesting to note, that while this Asia market is a relatively new one online, that iProperty has built and scaled a fairly cutting edge site here. At least compared to many, many North American counterparts. News, forums, blogs, and some key resource leads, the site is not a full on full up repository yet, but it does seem to be the “go to” FSBO site in Malaysia.

thinkproperty.my – a clean and efficient locator

GoHome

GoHome Hong Kong dot com is a multilingual real estate portal akin to one of the American listing aggregators. The Chinese language version may not be the cup of tea of interested English speaking house hunters, but English and shows off a vast information port for anyone in the market. I do not personally like sites of the type, they seem too cluttered, but the point is – iProperty has covered the niche where others have not. By contrast, Hong Kong Homes may have a cleaner site, but it is two dimensional by comparison with the listings at GoHome. The screen below shows the look of the landing.

GoHome.com.hk – not loveliness, unless listings count

Get A Rumah

We could show all the websites iProperty Group operates, but domain names and site design (even proliferation) are not all there is to engaging a market. Taking a deeper look into Indonesian rumah123.com (yes, people in Asia love colorful), you’ll also find a fairly massive social media engagement. The Twitter feed is almost constant and responsive, even though @rumah123  does not quite follow enough, it’s easy to see the company focus is spot on. Ditto for Facebook, the company has 123,000 plus likes and they talk it up every single day. The images from this Facebook profile tell all. People, properties, execs, sales folks, buyers, and pretty parts of the countryside, you name it – I would go to these people to buy. No questions asked.

Rumah123.com – somebody knows how to do social

There’s no real need to dig deeper, companies like iProperty are all about capitalizing on successes, using success as a template. Where you see one superb engagement, sooner or later you’ll see the others fall in line, like ducks in a row. As soon as I saw how this company did social media, it was clear somebody there uses his or her brain.

Mobile sites, commercial and residential, social media, even the upcoming iProperty Expo tells of a company moving forward fast, a company some other regions could emulate. And where one finds leaders, one also finds sponsors, in case you’re in need. The Expo has a leading lineup of developers and other industry entities like; UEM Land (Malaysia),  Property Barrons (low high conversion), Bright Heritage (engineering), Bina Puri (construction), and many others.

Led by Simon Baker and Patrick Grove (image top), iProperty is vested with experts across a wide array of fields. Baker, for instance, is an online revenue driving machine. He is also CEO of Classified Ad Adventures, as well as the decision maker for several past key online developments. As for Grove, he is Co-Founder of iProperty, but that’s just for starters. He is also the modus behind Catcha Group, a leading media investment company in South Asia. The due make for a powerful skill and influence set, marrying ad and online reach with events and media, the results can be seen.

Now add in still more key execs, like CEO Shaun Di Gregorio (above left), and the term “Team” takes shape. As a last professional accolade, Di Gregorio former head of the Australian operations of the REA Group, Sean is the field general in the trenches. For a lesson in team building, here we have great and enthusiastic soldiers (evidence the real people in SM), and segmented expertness in command (leaders in online, events, media, real estate).

While we make special note of the leadership here, the real tale of a good company story resides in their chosen employees, we leave you with Nazrin Mohd Nasir, one of the company’s enthusiastic partners who won an iPad for contributing. We can learn a lot about contributing, growing, and success from watching such companies. Read the financial at Bloomberg, for other clues.

Nazrin Mohd Nasir & the iPad won for contributing