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By Charumini de Silva
PropertyGuru, Asia’s leading property technology company and the host of the region’s largest real estate awards, officially opened the nominations and entries period for its prestigious competition in Colombo recently.
The third edition of Annual PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards (Sri Lanka) recognises the year’s most outstanding developers, projects and design which is scheduled to be held on 26 July at Shangri-La Hotel in Colombo.
“PropertyGuru aims to gain trust from consumers and aims to promote best in real estate for developers and consumers to create something for the future that will develop over time in to a community,” PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards Business Director Jules Kay told journalists in Colombo last week.
He said they intend to provide more than just residential opportunities and investments.
“Sri Lanka is very much at the frontier when it comes to these goals and that’s why we are proud to be a part of country’s real estate industry and to award and reward those who commit themselves to quality,” Kay pointed out.
Noting what made PropertyGuru standout as a regional property awards platform, he outlined fair, transparent and judged by independent experts as some of the salient features of the award scheme.
“Our judging process is intense and it happens over a period of time by our expert panel of judges,” he said.
He noted that this also provides the opportunity to showcase and share experiences of property development which is also a very important part of the PropertyGuru, Asia Property Awards.
“An important part of the Asia Property Awards are the categories, and these are developed by the judges to match actually what is happening in each market of the real estate sector. This year in Sri Lanka there is a wide spread of categories which reflects what is happening in the industry and how diverse it is,” he stressed.
According to the organisers’ online submissions are now being accepted on www.AsiaPropertyAwards.com. The nominations are open to the industry and the public.
Open categories include Best Condo, Housing, and Residential Development in Colombo, North East, Central, and Southern Sri Lanka. There are also commercial categories for Best Retail, Office, Mixed Use, Industrial, Hotel Development, and Boutique Hotel Development.
A new category for Best Residential Development (Maldives) has been added due to strong interest from residential developers on the island.
A few special awards are lined up for entrants with exemplary track record in Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), Sustainable Development, Design and Construction, Customer Care, and Building Communities initiatives.
In addition, a new Sri Lanka Real Estate Personality of the Year awardee will be named; it was presented for the first time in 2018 by the editors of PropertyGuru Property Report magazine to Pradeep Moraes, Director of Indocean Developers Ltd and Chairman of the Condominium Developers Association of Sri Lanka (CDASL).
The highest honours will go to the Best Developer and Best Boutique Developer.
The main category winners of the local competition will then be eligible to compete at the regional Asia Property Awards Grand Final to be held in Bangkok, Thailand in late November where finalists from more than 15 markets from Sri Lanka to Australia will vie for regional accolades.
He said Sri Lanka’s real estate industry has shown great potential for growth following the enthusiastic response of entrants to the first two editions of the competition. One of the country winners, the twin towers of Altair –– designed by legendary architect Moshe Safdie –– eventually took home the Best Condo Architectural Design (Asia) at the Grand Final in November 2018, besting 11 other finalists from across the Asia-Pacific region for its cutting-edge and pioneering concept.
With a solid reputation for fairness, transparency and credibility, the 2019 PropertyGuru Asia Property Awards (Sri Lanka) will be independently judged by a respected panel of experts led by Dr. Nirmal de Silva, Director and CEO of Paramount Realty. The judges will also conduct supervised site inspections for long listed nominees.
The 2019 PropertyGuruAsia Property Awards (Sri Lanka) is supported by official airline partner THAI Airways; official portal partner LankaPropertyWeb.com; official magazine PropertyGuru Property Report; and the award-winning team of BDO, the official supervisor.
The black-tie gala event, which was attended last year by nearly 400 guests, will be produced by the new awards business director Jules Kay, who is one of the original members of the Asia Property Awards team when it was established more than a decade ago.
