EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW
SUCCESS PERSONIFIED IN A
WOMAN By Ana Pavón
We met with Mrs. Smadar Kahana, the owner of Engel & Völkers Marbella, one of the world’s leading companies in high end real estate. First of all we would like you to tell us about your company Engel & Völkers E&V is a worldwide robust lifestyle real estate brand with additional department units such as aviation and yachting, serving mainly top end clientele. With over 800 offices around the world, in the best prime locations, E&V is today one of the world’s leading companies in the marketing and sale of mid to high-end real estate. More than 12.000 professionals are working under this brand. The group also has an exclusive department, our PRIVATE OFFICE which deals and serves discreetly some of the world’s wealthier clientele. Among our clients, you will find names such as Estee Lauder, George Clooney, Britney Spears, 54
and Claudia Schiffer, to mention but a few. How did you get started in the real estate business? Back in Germany, I was the international marketing director of Sixt Rent A Car, which is considered the most sophisticated company in Germany in terms of marketing. When I came to Marbella, E&V contacted me to do marketing in Spain for them. After one year in this position, in 2005 after realising the great opportunity of expanding with the brand, I bought my first license of E&V for the area of Marbella East and then, little by little, bought all the available licenses for Marbella, leaving me today with 5 licenses and 4 offices in Marbella itself and planning to open the 5th later this year. What do you think are your strengths? Making dreams come true! On top of my 15 years
of vast successful experience in the Marbella market, I have the ability to understand and analyse the market and the trends well in advance, and therefore, can be very quick in planning and reacting. How would you define the current state of the real estate world after Covid19? Contrary to some of my colleagues here that were predicting a downtrend in the market, I was quite sure that Marbella would show once again its strength as a safe place; not only in terms of the standard of living, especially in a lockdown period, but also in terms of a good investment market. The reality so far is that the real estate market in Marbella has remained stable, and in fact, what we are seeing is an increase in the number of inquiries from clients who want to now buy a villa or a nice flat in a green urbanisation and to have a
EXCLUSIVE LIFE MAGAZINE
Entrevista E&V EL06.indd 54
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