It started with a question nobody could answer.

My name is Evgeny Kovalev. I’m an entrepreneur living in Phuket and building property-related businesses here.

It all started with a simple question. I was renting a villa in Phuket and wanted to know how many units in my complex were actually occupied, but I couldn’t find the answer anywhere.

So I started digging myself. I found independent data on how properties are actually used and ran the numbers. In a complex of 100 villas, average annual occupancy was around 53%. Even in peak season, December to February, it only reached 73% — nearly a third of the villas sat empty. Meanwhile, around 70 villas were on the long-term rental market, so tenants had plenty of choice.

With these numbers, I went to the owner and offered a price below market. Anyone good with a calculator would have agreed. My owner agreed right away: he knew his own villa well, but he had no picture of the whole complex. That data simply didn’t exist back then. Then the same thing happened in another project.

That’s when I realised this data works both ways. Tenants and investors don’t overpay, and owners set a realistic price instead of sitting empty for months. That’s how LocaIQ was born.