Fang Low, the CEO of Figment, grew up in a shophouse in Singapore. He founded the company in 2019, and today, Figment has 25 shophouses in historical neighborhoods across Singapore, including Emerald Hill, Joo Chiat, and Jalan Besar. The company has 10 staff members.
Figment gets its shophouses in three ways: It buys, rents, or manages the shophouses on behalf of the owners. Once Figment has renovated the space, it rents it out to individual tenants. There are around four to five rooms in each shophouse, and monthly rental ranges from S$2,000 to S$4,900 ($1,469 to $3,600) for a room, per the company's website.
For Low, the inspiration to transform shophouses into shared living spaces was partially socially driven.
"Figment was started in response to end that sense of loneliness that one might get in a new city," Low told Insider.
Low and his team talked to Insider about the process of renovating these historical homes, and shared a series of before-and-after photos to show how decades-old homes are transformed.