Were you motivated by money?
No, but I have realised that, if you want to succeed in this
business, you have to be able to put up the money for it.
Real estate means starting from scratch, looking after
administrative details, engaging an architect, doing a
market study, understanding what people want and how
much money they have, defining the project and finding
the money to finance it. It’s rather like conducting a symphony orchestra―perhaps it sounds a bit romantic, put
like that, but it’s a job in which money plays an important
role but with the final goal of selling a house or apartment
to a family whose dream it fulfils.
24
Luxury Mauritius
“
You are a property developer. How did you begin your
career?
I am a self-made man. I completed my schooling but
without taking the Baccalaureate exams. I was lucky to
belong to a middle-class Franco-American family, cultured but extremely hard up! My mother was a militant
feminist- she was vice-president of the Italian feminist
movement―and my father did the dubbing for a film
company. If he had a good year, we went on holiday to
the Cap d’Antibes, otherwise we stayed at home! At 18,
I lived in a maid’s room in Paris on the 7th floor of a
building without a lift. I started work in a real estate
agency and fell in love with the job. Four years later, I
became commercial director of a large company and, a
further seven years on, I started my own business. I had
understood by then that real estate is not about property
but about money.
Mauritius
must
remain
elitist
without
being
a ghetto
for the
rich.
So it’s not just a question of money, but also the desire to make
people happy?
Both. When I was young I enjoyed a wonderfully unstable
life with my parents who were rosy-eyed intellectuals. But
the best way to make a family happy is by offering it a
roof over its head, as cheaply as possible. By solving the
accommodation problem, you solve the problem facing all
families.
In other words, this family instability was what influenced
your choice of career?
Absolutely. It made me want something substantial. At 24,
I bought an apartment―it was tiny but it gave me a feeling of security. In the 1970s and 1980s, that is what people
looked for. When I sold a property, I could completely understand the people in front of me. How can you have a happy
life and bring up your children properly unless you solve the
problem of having a place to call your own? For me this is
fundamental. I would never have been able to work in banking or insurance. What has always interested me is the idea
of selling something we all need. I didn’t do my job for the
money, but it happens that to do it properly you have to think
like a financier.