This article discusses the fastest way to make a profit on the real estate market in Marbella. It is no secret that there are few opportunities for your energy here. Real estate is one of the real businesses worth pursuing.
You just need to find an unoccupied niche in it. It is the only one that works as an umbrella, protecting you from competition. There is and can be no competition in a niche business.
The most popular business in Marbella is investing in real estate for resale. Despite the apparent prevalence of such a business, the main poorly solved issue is actually making a high profit. A niche in such business is in the category of luxury real estate.
However, most properties do not meet this criterion at all. What I have encountered here is that almost all of the advertised real estate is billed as luxury class, elitist proposals. We will consider only those options that really meet the requirements of a true luxury and only those where the rate of return exceeds generally accepted standards in the industry.
Content:
A successful investment. Redefining aesthetics
All achievements, all riches on earth bagan with an idea
Building unnique villas. An investment with a high rate of return
Luxury World - Everything for Fine Interiors
The most underrated ability is the ability to dream. It is the possession of a magic wand. Up there is always subject to the power and will of your desires. Therefore, the possessed, belong to the world.
A successful investment. Redefining aesthetics
Amazing metamorphoses are happening in this world today. How everything has changed, how everything has been turned upside down. The pandemic has made life before and after. I came to the coast 3 years ago after spending many years away from Europe before that, many years working in Asia. I guess that's what helped me maintain, and even then partially, the world we were used to.
My European friends and partners and, of course, my work saved me from the loneliness of the pandemic. In this article, I want to share my thoughts and reflections on what has made a depressing impression on me here in Spain.
Having appeared on such fine and beautiful coast, many things remained incomprehensible to me, or rather partially incomprehensible. And of course, the reason for these and future considerations are real estate market status and lifestyle here.
I was incredibly lucky that the concept of luxury in its broadest sense still exists among the wealthy clientele in Asia, where the possession of exclusivity is still a concept of choice. In part, and now I understand it very well, this is due to the enormous European prices for those unique items, interiors and finishing materials that make a house really interesting and valuable.
A house should still have value in 20-30 years. And its value is not in the number of square meters. Of course, the location. There's no argument.
When a lifetime is dedicated to Design, yes, that's a capital letter, this concept means primarily the creativity, but not the blind copying of world standards. Design is the ability to create a unique idea of the projects for both residential and commercial real estate. It is the idea that can bring investors other profits and distinguish them from the already hackneyed concept of luxury here.
I spent my whole life creating investment projects in the luxury industry. But now the world has become submerged in industrial design, and the concept of luxury is being blurred to the point where it simply becomes meaningless. What Europe calls luxury is simply not understood in Asia. Design is not about price, design is about ideas.
When I brought my clients and partners from China here and tried to show the best of the coast, the verdict was not comforting. They found nothing unique except the sea and the climate. The level of real estate, which is used to wealthy residents of the Celestial Empire, just does not exist. And the demand could be. A niche has not been created, and the market has nothing to offer not only to Asians, but also to Europeans, who still live by the notion of "not for everyone”.
I would be interested what an investor, including even a buyer, looking for real estate not for profit, not as a business, but simply for living, would say when he saw the cost, incomparably lower than what this market offers, and at the same time, would receive a level of undeniable luxury.
He would probably say that it doesn't work that way. And he would be wrong! It does and it is true. It's just that no one offers it. And they can't offer it, because there are no such opportunities, neither in supply, nor in level of design, no ideas of the very design that makes a property unique.
All achievements, all riches on earth bagan with an idea
He, who seeks will always find, it is just a matter of putting effort into it. He, who sleeps gets only dreams. A huge supply of real estate resembles each other like two drops of water. All the difference is in the size. Glass blocks of houses can be found everywhere. The competition is enormous. Prices depend on only two factors: location and size of the building. I'm not even talking about the interior, it's primitive.
Is there this niche which I'm talking about now? It is undoubtedly in a concept not doing it the way others do it.
One of my clients, Jackie Ma, put it this way, "When they bring me an idea or a project and all my assistants approve it, I throw it in the trash. If everyone can see it, it's no fun. Competition will kill the project. But if they bring me a project that I have to rack my brains to understand it and not immediately understand it, that's what I want. I start studying it in detail."
The world of luxury is dying, if this continues, humanity will degenerate, and soon, coming even to the museums, we will not be able to understand what our ancestors admired. Wilderness is the word that comes to my mind now. Will those creations of modern architecture have value in the future? Where are the great designs that have outlived their creators?
I'm not in any way trying to impose my opinion, I'm just stating it. My understanding of beauty as a timeless value, unfortunately, does not coincide with the tastes of the real estate market as it is now. What will we pass on to the next generation? Glass and concrete houses? Are these the ancestral estates? I sincerely doubt it.
The world has been built up with this faceless architecture. Where are the traditions of a particular country with its identity and culture? Why don't we see it? For me, the classic architecture of Andalusia is much more attractive than the faceless new creations of architects. It has a face.
A house is like a person must have a face, an identity, and be part of the country where it is built. Why cross out the aesthetics brought by centuries of history. So, the conclusion is that to get a novelty in the marketplace, you have to change the aesthetics so that the perception becomes different.
I suggest looking at design differently. It may be closer to some, or it may be beyond comprehension for others. It does not matter. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Let's look at design from the perspective of accessible and true luxury. It is totally realistic to get. If this becomes possible, then perception will change, and a new aesthetic will emerge.
My business has always been about finding unoccupied niches, creating ideas for unique projects, finding ways to implement those projects, and building a team to do it. This is what I did for my Asian clients. They were mostly investors.
There are few ideas in the world at all. Far fewer than investors! Finding this niche requires a lot of work, experience and knowledge. But success comes only to those who are not afraid of going forward.
In my understanding of real estate, the value has only three aspects: non-standard architecture, interior design, able to plunge into a world of comfort and luxury, but for reasonable money, not for 50 million, and a cozy landscape around. Just not the landscaping, I call it lawn design, that most do. With a 50 million budget, of course, you can create a unique object to be written and talked about, and that's not always the case.
But can you do the same thing in 10 times cheaper? Yes, and once again yes!
There are manufactures in the world that are so unique that with them it is possible to turn any object into a masterpiece. Unfortunately, there are fewer and fewer of them. By bringing an idea to the table, you can get a unique result.
The world needs a new renaissance, a different aesthetic. And now, industrial design rules the ball. Villas are becoming similar to 3-star hotels, interiors are losing their individuality, fashion for open spaces is killing ergonomics and a sense of comfort.
The world is ruled by the fashion of industrial design. And the individual, too, is dissolving in all this. And yet his individuality is the most valuable thing which makes him a person. I often hear that architecture (clean lines, glass, concrete, open spaces, floor-to-ceiling windows, a minimum of everything, a maximum of views) is in vogue. This is what the market demands.
The market today is fed with stale bread, but the bread must be fresh. Whoever bakes this fresh bread first will start this new renaissance. My friend, I believe, the greatest culinary master Anatoly Komm, the only Russian chef to earn a Michelin star, living in Switzerland says that the high art of his gastronomy requires a certain culture of consumption and cannot be for everyone. I subscribe to this wholeheartedly.
But it is these white crows to create the masterpieces that leave them for posterity, making their history. The rest just goes in the sand. If we can afford masterpieces for the same budget, why follow mass market?
My aesthetic is a world where beauty reigns supreme. My clients, most of them aristocrats, know a lot about it. They have always strived for beauty. They invited the best craftsmen, architects and created the masterpieces that have survived to this day. I want to show what the luxury industry in terms of the famous Asian clients is. In Asia the economy still allows to preserve the true concept of luxury, and not its contrived counterpart.
For me, living in the style of Marbella is the level that you will see in my portfolio. Maybe we are close in spirit in this? And if so, it's worth seeing a slightly different world of architecture, where classic and modern can exist organically together.
That world is still preserved, though it is slipping away from us more and more.
After a long preface, let's look at how you can really make money from real estate. There are two ways: building new villas and renovating old villas and apartments but in a new way to do it not like the others
Building unique villas. An investment with a high rate of return
In numerous articles, we have already written about what affects the sale price. For those interested in the details, I recommend referring to the article "How do I break into a luxury home market".
Let's briefly list these points. They may seem new to many people, but my experience in this industry is exactly that. You have to look at things in a new way and see things that others don't see.
The old standards include, of course, the location of the property. The famous saying "Location, location and one more time location" has never been undone. It's a timeless tenet, but it can also be broken if you want to. We will consider this in a separate article.
But further on, all the reasoning will become quite unusual for perception.
1. The uniqueness of the idea. If at the same budget, or even lower than planned, we can get a real novelty on the market, success is guaranteed. Unique ideas are like hot birds, but they don't fly in flocks either.
An unusual architectural concept will do the trick. The world is terribly conservative and breaking stereotypes is not easy. So by staying on-trend, let's change the idea of modern architecture altogether. What is trending is "boxes" style architecture (glass, concrete, straight lines, a minimum of anything and everything). Great. Let's leave it all behind and modify the facade to give it a novelty: an unusual image, which can attract attention.
2. Few people pay attention to the interior. Usually, the entire interior is an arrangement of furniture. Already this is passed off as a great innovation in the market. And why is this so?
The designer needs to be paid, and a good designer needs to be paid a lot. The second saving factor is the high cost of the interior design itself. After all, you will have to significantly increase the budget, in order to do what the designer drew. But such an investment can lead to the fact that they will simply destroy the profitability of the project. Therefore, we have primitive interiors and projects with supposedly "turnkey" design.
3. Landscape. Typical projects, even if they are presented as luxury, are tied to certain budgets. As a rule, there is not enough budgets for the landscape design. The second reason landscapes are trivial is stereotypes! A landscape is a lawn, flowers, shrubs, a few larger trees. That's it!
For a completely different property value statement, we need other metrics:
4. "Visual value" This concept includes the creation of such external illusions and illusions in the interior, when the object begins to be perceived not as ordinary, but as something special and magic. We put in this concept the creation of a special atmosphere. For example, if we create the illusion that the volume of the house is more than the stated square meters, and the buyer can really feel it when driving up to the house, let alone when looking at the interiors, then we achieve the effect we want: the importance of such an object in the eyes of the consumer is increased many times over.
5. Finally, one last thing. When we visit art galleries and admire art objects there, does the price next to the exhibit shock us? If we like such an exhibit, as a rule, it doesn't shock us at all. Because we are subconsciously prepared for high prices for contemporary art.
And so it is in our case. Has anyone in this industry ever thought that using this principle can increase the value of the property and make it unique? The proper use of contemporary art in the facade, in the landscape and in the interiors can work wonders and raise the sales of such real estate to completely different heights: the entire villa should be perceived as a gallery.
What is the mystery here? The price! We know how to get it all for exactly the same money as ordinary real estate on the market, but get a masterpiece, not the so-called standard of luxury.
This is not luxury - it is an illusion and the market is feeding this to gullible consumers. It's not what you see that seduces you. So you have to see everything with your own eyes first. This is the kind of property we're talking about. Does it make sense to invest in such a concept? There is no question, because the biggest sales, even in a crisis, are the sales of elite real estate.
Luxury World - Everything for Fine Interiors
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