Home Tour: $500,000 Renovation for King Koil family’s semi-detached house near Serangoon Gardens
By Guan Tan -
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40-Year-old Alec Liong will never move out of his parents’ house.
Ah, this man has reached his ‘Big 40’ and is still living with his parents. How can? Surely he should at least ballot for a BTO 2-room singles’ flat or buy a condo bachelor’s pad of his own, right?
“Never!”, he exclaimed when I dropped the question.
Not for this man. Though he stands next to you with a gentle smile and humble airs, Alec Liong is the Corporate Manager and Legal Counsel of Matsushita Greatwall Corporation.
In simpler terms, he is son of the respected Singaporean businessman and CEO, Mr Peter Liong.
In Singlish, he’s the ‘son of King Koil’. Strictly speaking, King Koil is an American bedding company and the Liong family manufactures (yes, mattresses are made in our very own Sungei Kadut!) and distributes their products here. But every true-blue Singlish-yapping Singaporean will understand it when we introduce Alec this way, lah!
Who Lives Here: Alec Liong, his father, sister, and aunty (helper)
Home: Semi-detached house
Size: 5,000 sq ft
Interior Designer: Family friend
‘My Grandfather’s Road’
The self-professed ‘Tilam King’ lives with his father and elder sister in a 5,000 sq ft 2-storey semi-detached landed house. They’re but one of four landed houses in a row that belong to the extended Liong family. Punctuated around the landed estate are other relatives’ landed houses as well.
This row of landed houses was built by his main contractor paternal grandfather around 40 years ago. Since then, the extended family has been living in these houses - with no intention to sell them to external parties. “There’s sentimental value,” he continues, acknowledging the rarity of living with your extended family side-by-side. “The more important thing is, we get to help look out for each other.”
Yes, look out for each other. But there’s a kaypoh factor, too. No fishy business is allowed when your relatives are always watching.
When Alec comes home late at night, the aunty next door will pop over in the morning and say: ‘Alec came home so late last night, ah?’, his elder sister laughs as she recounts.
As luxurious as this arrangement may sound, Alec is unbothered by the superficiality and optics of his family’s wealth.
“How much is this house worth?”, I asked.
“Don’t know,” he replies.
To satisfy our curiosity, Alec estimated that this piece of land is worth $6 million currently.
This semi-detached house was last renovated 20 years ago.
$500,000 Renovation
Likewise, he’s not fussed about the interior design or renovation. This house was last renovated around 20 years ago.
“Which interior designer?”, I blurted.
“Dunno,” was his genuine reply.
“How much was the renovation?”
“I don’t know!”, he replies with an embarrassed laugh.
Raised platform 'stages' were a trendy interior design feature to have in homes in the early 2000s. Alec and his sister would perform for the family on stage at gatherings.
The house is very bare at first glance. It’s only fitted with essentials - a TV, sofas, dining table, kitchen, etc. The interior design clearly harks from decades past, and furniture are starting to show signs of age. The aircon units are yellowing, and terrazzo floor tiles told us everything else we needed to know.
(I subsequently asked his father for details - the renovation was done 20 years ago at $500,000. The interior designer was a friend who fitted the house with some coolest interior design features of that time. Excellent memory, Uncle Liong!)
Sliding doors spanning the width of the kitchen were removed to accommodate Alec’s late mother when was she poorly and wheelchair-bound. Safety bars were also added around the house.
A Parent’s Lesson
Even though Alec can’t tell you much about the sums and figures, he can tell you one thing.
“This house is practical,” he says. To him, the house may appear old and simple, but it perfectly encapsulates his family’s personality and his parents’ ideology and teachings in life. “We are a practical family,” Alec quips.
No bells and whistles. It’s clear, a very humble and grounded family resides here.
Their lifestyles speak loud - his father wakes up at 4am for exercise and heads to their Sungei Kadut office before afternoon golf. Alec and his sister follow quickly.
By 7:20am every weekday morning, all three of them are out of the house and at work. If there are no business dinners, they come home for a simple dinner. Whatever their helper Kakak cooks will be what they eat.
Come every Saturday morning, Alec’s father and sister head out for a simple breakfast of wanton mee and you ma cai.
On Sunday evenings, the extended family (a total of 11 aunty & uncles) gathers for dinner at one of their houses in the vicinity. In the past, Alec’s dad used to be the Sunday zhi char home chef cooking for the extended family. These days, Alec took over the baton as appointed chef, whipping up his signature Hokkien Mee dinner for aunties, uncles, cousins (they have 37 cousins), nephews, and nieces.
Just like that, the kitchen became the heart of this house.
The extended family often gathers at Alec’s house for Sunday dinners. They, however, prefer to ditch fancy dining tables for simple foldable tables and chairs at the porch.
“Seems like your extended family is close knit because of the housing arrangement you have here. It’s a privilege, you know?”, I told Alec.
“It’s normal,” he shot me a reply. To him, there’s no stopping families from gathering for a meal and catch up from HDBs to landed houses.
Large format windows allow plenty natural sunlight into the second floor of the semi-detached house. Family portraits anchor the interiors.
Childhood Dream Job
Speaking to Alec, he will remind you that he was first a lawyer with Rajah & Tann, then Shook Lin & Bok before he came into the family business.
And yet, neither law nor his esteemed family business was his first choice.
“If I had my way, I’d be a pilot with Singapore Airlines,” he divulges his childhood dream sheepishly - out of his father’s earshot. When he was younger, Alec went for SQ pilot admission interviews without his father’s knowledge.
“Then why didn’t you pursue aviation?”, I asked.
Practical Alec reckoned if he were to spend so much money on studies abroad, he should get a career with higher return on investments. “So that’s medicine or law,” he continues. He went on to read law at King’s College and Cambridge in the UK. Also, when you’re born to a family like that, you grow up with a knowing that you have to eventually take over the family business.
A study room flanked by bedrooms in the Liong household.
Inheriting a Family Business
So, how is it like taking over a well-established family business?
As he furrows his brows, Alec admits there are hefty expectations ladened on his (and his sister’s) shoulders. “People will say, ‘Oh your father brought the business up to a certain level, you had better maintain it!’,” he muses.
Yet, business environments are ever-changing, and challenges unique to every generation. “There’s the tariff war, the Middle East conflict, and dumping of goods from other countries where they are unable to onsell to the US,” he records. These were challenges that his father didn’t have to grapple with when he started and grew the business into market dominance.
Alec Liong's bedroom on the second floor of his family home is fitted with a full King Koil bed and bedding ensemble.
Second Generation Owners
Now, Alec leads the sales and design team. “I usually run out quite a bit and am on the move by 11am each day,” he says. He quite literally takes the business’ development into his own hands and doubles up as an account manager. “So, I service clients,” he adds, sharing how he and his team painstakingly hand delivers hundreds of mattresses to their hotel clients.
Common bathroom on the second floor of the Liong family home.
“It’s fun, but it’s challenging,” he says before belting out a word of wisdom imparted from his father in Mandarin.
“创业难，守业更难.”
This Chinese phrase calls from a couplet penned by a Qing dynasty educator, Wu Yuzhang. It refers to two distinct phases of entrepreneurship - the start up, and the matured business. Loosely translated, the saying states that while it’s difficult to start a business, it’s even more difficult to keep it afloat.
“So, how to tackle these problems as a leader or business owner?,” I asked.
Alec’s attitude and approach is as straightforward as can be. He simply takes them to stride, and is grateful for problems: “A mentor told us - in business, every day if there are no operation issues, you had better be worried. ‘Cause it means you’ve got no business! It’s true!”