Which is better — the endless marathon with out any goal or slow calm living through a full and purposeful life, each of us decides himself. But the choice is born or made unconsciously — considers our new columnist, a person who helps people to understand themselves and make the right choices, the owner of the elite real estate bureau Must Have, Elizaveta Nekrasova.
Many market brokers want to make a career and devel-op. After graduating from university, I worked for five years in the real estate business and decided to do the same by moving to property development. A year work-ing for a developer made me realise what I most wanted was to be my own boss and set my own limits. Former clients called all of the time asking to sell and I missed the process much. That’s how my company Must Have was born — the systematic work for developer became my bridge to a new life. I was scared but I’m proud to say that I acted decisively and I’m celebrating the anniver-sary now — five years.
The real estate market appeared in Russia twenty-five years ago with the reintroduction of private prop-erty in the housing market. First company’s name I was working for was Blackwood — although an English fam-ily name it aptly describes the real estate business then and now, a chaotic and dark place. It is not civilized; the words real estate agent carries a negative connotation. There’s a lot of black brokers in the market who suddenly decided to become brokers without any knowledge of law and practice. That is why there’s a lot of stealing and not professionalism. That’s what I’d like to change with my company.
We sell not apartments or square metres, we sell information first of all, the result of scrupulous analytical work being done for years. Despite of this the knowledge of human psychology helps a lot. And this is a key moment in under-standing of our work. A lot of time and efforts are spent to understand what our customer wants. Subcon-sciously, most of people come not to be given a choice, they are ledby a wish to let someone make this choice for them. It is great that they feel like redirecting responsibility to us in such a serious business. It means trusting opinion of profes-sionals who are ready to take it. The best reward is the gratefulness of clients and if they recommend us to their acquaintances it is a highest level of approval.
It is very important in our busi-ness to be able to listen — the basic quality referring to the sphere of empathy, emotional intellect. It is psychologically important that the office meeting is not disturbed. We get acquainted, listen to the person very attentively to understand his request. This is the main key. Most of our clients are people discussed in media where we can find infor-mation about them but nothing compares to the personal contact.
There are not many really pro-fessional developers in the Moscow real estate market. Many amateurs, not high-class architecture and en-gineering. There are just several high-quality buildings in good loca-tions. They are just starting to build something proper, as I assume af-ter going through years of working from first elite buildings of the be-ginning of the century. That is ex-actly why first request of consumer is not matching the bought usually. Everyone has his own image of the house of his dream. The district or the budget might not match but in the end everyone is happy.
Elite real estate and comfort class in Russia in general and Mos-cow in particular differ very much. The circle of our clients is small and we have time and possibility to contact personally. We spend so much time together that we often become friends with many of them and go on working together. There are questions after the deal, about usage, law and we are happy to help with it. That’s what I call Private Banking in real estate. That’s why I refused from the idea of developing the abroad direction, quality consulting and selling is impossible without being there in person.
To understand a person’s lifestyle is also a part of the story about attention and ability to hear well what he says. I had a story with my good friend Vale-ria recently, she is an owner of an architect bureau and works for years in business. She was born at Chistiye Prudy district, loves the place and considers that the office should be in one house and even one entrance with the home flat. As a result, she was living on one floor with her office. She was absolutely OK with it and she was fine but the building was old. So once having dinner with her I told about a new complex that was about to be built in Moscow, “Sovremennik”. That was the night we made a decision to sell her office and flat and move there. Everything went nice and OK, and she is happy and thanking me for two years already. It’s a trend and I like the concept myself — office near to the flat, you don’t have to go out and spend time on going somewhere. It is not an easy task in Moscow — many conditions should match so that everything’s in one place and the budget is the main problem. For example, everyone likes Patriarshye Prydy. Yes, there are houses with underground parking there, but one square metre costs twenty-five thousand dollars so the hard point is budget if a person is limited in it.
A couple of days ago I read one psychologist’s ar-ticle saying that this is a big problem of a Russian busi-nesswoman, we, say, take our office home. In Europe, for example, they use to do it differently, they close their office, lock it with security code, and wiping the load of worries from their forehead walk around the streets as just women. Maybe we should also learn how to switch the inner button before we come home.
The choice is something that happens all of the time in our life and sometimes apparently small decisions turn our life one hundred and eighty degrees around. Every meeting of our life can be fateful becoming a big deal life story. I think much about the question, who decides, if we do it or someone else instead of us or everything is predetermined. But it’s important to be human and keep being decent, honest and never betray yourself. Exter-nal should be the same as internal and there shouldn’t be global lie in your life and then God or Absolute, no matter how you call it, will redirect you in a right direc-tion with the best happenings for you. If you are a good person, everything will be fine, and that’s what I call fate. The main story is mindfulness, understanding of your place in the fast life of the modern man. To be fine in money is a weight not everyone can cope with, some people lose their values. There are many accessories of a wealthy life replicated in mass media which makes it hard to hear your real wishes and thoughts. As for me, I choose to earn less than to make myself less whole.
