Edgar van Schaik, Director of Rockefeller Estates - the exclusive agency for the sale of Swiss Development Group's luxury residences, shares the exciting path his career has taken and the favorite parts of his job. Edgar van Schaik with Swiss Development Group is the newest member to be appointed to the Luxury Real Estate Board of Regents, which this year celebrates their 10th anniversary.
How did you get your start in real estate? I never thought I was going to work in a civil industry because I was born, raised and educated in an Army environment. I signed up and was trained to become an officer in the Dutch version of the Navy Seals. That dream was quickly shattered when I helped three thieves in finding their way to the hospital. In the process however I fractured my hand enough to be out of service for a while. While my hand was healing I did a short bachelor’s degree in international marketing. An internship was a part of the program and I ended up in Time Share in Switzerland. This company offered me a full time job and later I set up all their sales and marketing offices in Germany, Singapore and Taiwan. The seed of passion for real estate was planted!
What path has your career taken? As said, I started my career in Time Share. I still call this the University of SALES. There I learned there's a huge difference between offering something and wait and see, or selling something and closing the deal. I moved to the telephone and computer industry and enjoyed "surfing the wave of success" that this industry was going through around the Millennium. During that time, I never felt a connection with the product, so when the opportunity did arise to get back into real estate and work for Intrawest, I was happy to do so. Then Intrawest (Fortress) decided to leave Europe and I changed to another passion of mine - private aviation. Dealing with the very high end luxury kind of clientele in private aviation opened the door for me to be head hunted for this job at SDG where a combination of pure sales skills, but more important cultural intelligence is needed in order to be successful.
Why is your company successful? Very simply because we sell LIFESTYLE and not real estate. When you sell SQM or square feet, the comparison for the client is relatively easy, a few internet searches and you'll have the answer whether this is a fair price or not. Selling lifestyle is selling emotion or quality of life and being able to separate logic from passion and desire. When you a.) Have sales people who can do that and b.) A product that allows to do that, you have a winning formula. I believe at SDG we do have that combo.
What are your favorite parts of your job? Obviously being in sales, our energy comes from success. Especially at SDG I would say we have a good "helicopter" view of the total picture - it's the end result that counts right? We can hover over our portfolio and decide on priorities very quick. This combined with a relative large autonomy makes it interesting for me to work with the client and be creative in finding a solution for their specific situation. Some clients prefer a discount today, while others prefer to pay less capital gains in the future thus keeping the purchase price as high as possible and see all kind of costs absorbed by us. It's not very often that my colleagues in other projects/competition can offer this.
What do you enjoy doing outside of work? I used to be very sporty during the summers, I was waterskiing every morning at 6 AM on the lake with friends, and in the winters I went every weekend to my place up in the mountains to ski on the snow from early in the morning to late in the afternoon. Three knee operations later, marrying my beautiful wife Tijana and simply being the father of a now six-year-old daughter however the sports moved gradually to a second priority. Now spending time with the family has taken over the number one spot, but Sasha now skies with me and last summer even water skied for the first time, so I'm working hard on a joined first ranking!
For more information on Edgar or the Swiss Development Group, please visit www.sdg.ch.