8M Real Estate
8M Real Estate owns one of Singapore's largest portfolios of conservation shophouses, but brokers found its website slow, confusing and hard to lease from. We rebuilt it around the portfolio and the leasing journey (and the relationship has since grown into a second build for the group's first suburban development).
A redesigned WordPress platform that presents 8M's conservation shophouse portfolio properly and gives brokers a clear route to the leasing team, now the foundation for a second build as the group expands beyond the CBD.
The Challenge
What we were solving
8M Real Estate is a Singapore investment and operating company built around one idea: breathing life back into the city's iconic heritage shophouses. Starting in the Central Business District, it has grown a portfolio of conservation properties (around 70 properties valued at over $1.5 billion, by the company's own 2026 count) and turned rows of restored shophouses on streets like Amoy Street into what it calls lifestyle destinations, with restaurants, offices and hospitality tenants curated to suit each neighbourhood.
The website was working against that reputation. Brokers and agents, the people 8M most needs online, complained that pages were slow to load, listings were unclear, and there was no obvious way to reach the leasing team. Pages ran long, layouts broke on different devices, and outdated information sat alongside the current portfolio. For a company whose whole business is the careful curation of physical space, the digital space felt neglected.
The timing mattered too. 8M was approaching its tenth anniversary, with artist collective Ripple Root creating anniversary visuals, and the team was clear about tone: refresh the brand presentation, but keep the fun side. Definitely not a boring corporate website.
Success meant a broker landing on any listing and knowing, within a click, what the space was and who to call (and a site the 8M team could keep current themselves).
Our Approach
How we tackled it
Design the leasing journey, not just the pages
The design strategy phase (working with Senior Manager Nazima Huque and her team, with copywriter Janice Kwa on content) started from the complaints, not the aesthetics. We reviewed the local field (Triple P Group, The Working Capitol, Arcc Holdings) and pulled inspiration from The Lo & Behold Group's clean, commercially minded interface, then mapped the sitemap in Flowmapp before any visual work. Full visual designs covered the three pages that carry the business (Homepage, About, and the Leasing/Portfolio pages with property popups), with wireframes handling the supporting pages: who we are, investment, social impact, careers, people, culture and contact.
A listings engine the team runs themselves
We built the site as a custom child theme on the Beaver Builder and Beaver Themer framework, with dedicated post types for Portfolio, Leasing, Team and Careers, powered by Advanced Custom Fields. That structure is the point: a property listing is structured data, not a page someone hand-builds, so adding a new shophouse or leasing availability is a form-fill, not a design job. Enquiry forms route to the right inbox, old URLs redirect cleanly, and Google Analytics 4, Search Console and Microsoft Clarity give the team visibility of how brokers actually use the site. At launch in November 2024 we handed over a leasing and portfolio adding guide along with admin access, so the site's most important content stays in 8M's hands.
The Solution
What we delivered
The site at 8mrealestate.com now leads with the portfolio: the heritage story, the numbers behind the assets under management, and leasing sections split the way enquiries actually arrive (office versus F&B and retail). The presentation problems brokers complained about (slow, unclear, no contact route) were the specific things the rebuild removed. Two years on, the site is still running on the platform we built, maintained and current.
The stronger proof is what happened next. When Amara Holdings (the 90-year Singapore hospitality and property group) briefed its own corporate rebuild, the 8M site was on the table as a design reference: same market, same heritage-meets-modern balance. And in 2026, 8M came back to Chillybin for Sceneca Square, the retail podium of its first suburban development above Tanah Merah MRT (a 20,000 sq ft, 20-tenant destination anchored by FairPrice Finest). That build runs on the same WordPress, Beaver Builder and ACF stack, on 8M's existing hosting, because the marketing team already knows how to drive it.
What we learned
The audience that complains is the audience to design for. It would have been easy to treat this as a branding refresh, but the sharpest feedback came from brokers who could not find listings or a leasing contact. Structuring the whole build around that journey (listing, spec, enquiry) fixed the commercial problem, and the brand warmth was layered on top rather than put in its way.
Structured content is what keeps a real estate site honest. Outdated listings were part of 8M's original problem, and no amount of design prevents that if updating requires a developer. Post types and custom fields turned portfolio upkeep into routine admin, which is why the site has stayed current since launch.
A platform decision is also a relationship decision. Because Sceneca Square could reuse the stack, hosting and admin patterns from the corporate site, the second project started with zero platform overhead. Consistency compounds.
