Embracing opportunities and minimizing risks: leveraging decision models for project selection in Southeast Asian countries

In real estate investments in Southeast Asia, decisions worth billions of dollars are usually made without systematic analysis, leading to project failures. This paper presents a novel two-tier matrix method that combines the decision on country-project selection into a model. This model could assist real estate investors to select the right projects in Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, which is significantly under-reported. We used the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and the Weighted Sum Method (WSM) to create a matrix model to analyse investment projects. The results are encouraging and indicate that Malaysia is the best country for real estate investment, followed by Thailand and Indonesia respectively. This study also simulates the decision making of very experienced to inexperienced investors. It concluded that the two-tier decision model can safeguard investors from making intuitive decision mistakes and help them to make informed decisions when selecting investment projects in Southeast Asian countries. © 2025 Wilson WK YEH, et al.