8M Real Estate
8M Real Estate owns one of Singapore's largest portfolios of conservation shophouses, but brokers found its website slow and hard to lease from. We rebuilt it around the leasing journey in 2024, then built the Sceneca Square site in 2026.
8M Real Estate now has a corporate site that presents its shophouse portfolio properly and routes brokers to the leasing team, plus a Sceneca Square site on the same stack.
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 heritage shophouses. It has grown one of Singapore’s largest portfolios of conservation properties and turned rows of restored shophouses on streets like Amoy Street into lifestyle destinations.
In 2024 the website was working against that reputation. Brokers, the people 8M most needs online, complained that pages were slow, listings were unclear and there was no obvious way to reach the leasing team. Outdated information sat alongside the current portfolio. 8M was approaching its tenth anniversary, and the team was clear about tone: refresh the brand, keep the fun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, on a site the 8M team could keep current. Two years later 8M came back with a different audience: the families of Tanah Merah and Bedok who would walk to its first suburban mall.
How we tackled it
Design the leasing journey, not just the pages
The design strategy phase, with Senior Manager Nazima Huque’s team and copywriter Janice Kwa, started from the complaints, not the aesthetics. We reviewed the local field, took The Lo & Behold Group’s clean, commercial interface as inspiration, and 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 and Portfolio pages with property popups), with wireframes for the rest.
A listings engine the team runs themselves
We built the site as a custom child theme on Beaver Builder and Beaver Themer, with post types for Portfolio, Leasing, Team and Careers powered by Advanced Custom Fields. A property listing is structured data, not a hand-built page, so adding a shophouse or a leasing availability is a form-fill, not a design job. Enquiry forms route to the right inbox, and Google Analytics 4, Search Console and Microsoft Clarity show the team how brokers use the site. At launch in November 2024 we handed over a leasing and portfolio guide with admin access.
Sceneca Square: the same platform, a different audience
Sceneca Square is the retail podium of a mixed-use development above Tanah Merah MRT, around 20 tenants anchored by FairPrice Finest, and 8M’s first move beyond the CBD. In 2026 we built its site on the same stack as the corporate site (Beaver Builder, ACF, Stores and Promotions post types, Gravity Forms), with Paya Lebar Quarter as the visual benchmark. Four journeys shaped the sitemap: what’s there, what’s on, how do I get there, and I want to lease space. The site went live in August 2026, ahead of the mall’s marketing launch.
What we delivered
8M Real Estate now has a corporate site that leads with the portfolio, with leasing sections split the way enquiries arrive (office versus F&B and retail). The problems brokers complained about (slow, unclear, no contact route) are gone, and two years on the site is still running on the platform we built. Sceneca Square lives at scenecasquare.com.sg, run by the 8M marketing team, who were adding tenants and removing “Coming Soon” labels within weeks of launch. When the marketing team changed hands, the new team still chose us for its next site because the platform was already familiar.
What we learned
The audience that complains is the audience to design for. The 2024 rebuild could have been a branding refresh, but the sharpest feedback came from brokers who could not find listings or a leasing contact. Building around that journey (listing, spec, enquiry) fixed the commercial problem.
Structured content keeps a real estate site honest. Outdated listings were part of 8M’s original problem, and design alone cannot prevent that if updating needs a developer. Post types and custom fields made portfolio upkeep routine admin, and the same pattern let the Sceneca team manage store openings from week one.
They took the time to fully understand our requirements and how we wished to present the information.
