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I never built houses, only apartments.
A developer who is not optimistic shouldn't be a developer.
If we allow more development, it will bring housing affordability.
The government should spend more time on promoting tourism in Sydney.
When the unions were fighting me 45 years ago, they could never beat me.
If the banks become unreliable lenders, apartment prices will drop dramatically.
I've changed Sydney. It's my city, my people. I'm theirs. We belong to each other.
The Chinese were good to us. The war years for us Russians in China were very good years.
Chabad is very important because without Jewish education, Diaspora Jewry would disappear.
I looked around, and I saw cottages everywhere. I thought it was time they lived in apartments.
I tried all my life to make housing affordable. The more affordable the house, the more money I make.
Land values are going up a lot in Sydney, but it's feasible to build because prices are going up, too.
The market is good when the local people are in it and believe in it and support it. That's what I want.
I deal in volume. To sell volume, it must be affordable. So that's my whole life, is to make it affordable.
I don't think I have to combat Airbnb. It is like comparing Tiffany to a shop that sells things for one dollar.
The newspapers were always against me in the beginning because they thought I was depriving people of what they wanted.
We had a Jewish school; we had a Jewish club. My father was a main donor. My mother was on the committee of the school.
My interest is in the Wests Tigers. Nobody can support a team that is all the time on the bottom; that's a waste of time.
My properties are very good income-producing buildings, so I will have a very good stream of profit even if I can't sell.
I fire very little because I try to be very careful when I select people. If you know how to select, you don't fire often.
I realized that we have to do everything we can to preserve the Jewish race. I'm very proud of it, and I think it's wonderful.
I have never laid a brick in my life. But my people have laid more bricks than anybody else put together. Because I know how to pay.
People have lots of money in super, but they have no money in the bank, and the super funds are not built to help people buy property.
Local councils are hostile to large developers and think that, by doing this, they are standing up for the community. But they're wrong.
In Sydney, we always have a deficiency of housing. So that's one good thing, which will cause real estate to keep going up. Not fast, but it'll go up.
There's always room for an operator like Airbnb, but it's quite a different thing to my serviced apartments. Airbnb is a different market - it has nothing to do with me.
I employ thousands of people, maybe 5,000 or 6,000. In my mind, they are all doing well. Because if they are not doing well in their minds, I'm not as strong as I could be.
In this business, you don't have to be an architect or an engineer or a brick layer. But you have to understand how the money flows. That you can only understand if you're on the site.
This is a lifetime job. You don't look at it, you know, now and then. It doesn't really matter. When the market comes down, then I buy my land very cheaply, so I make my money on that.
I don't get involved in politics. I think that it is a waste of time and money because very often a politician cannot do much, and if you give him money, you embarrass him, so he can't do anything.
I would consider selling the whole company; I wouldn't like to sell just part of it, but on the other hand, I have a grandson intent on following my footsteps and another grandson in another couple of years.
I'm easy. Very easy. I'll tell you why I am easy. If someone is no good, I get rid of them. It is no good being tough on somebody who can't do the job. If he can do the job, then there is no point in being tough with him.
It's a very difficult business, and I'm very interested in the future of it after I'm gone, and I thought that if I can't produce a strong management team here myself, and I can find better management elsewhere, then I should sell it.
The newspapers were against me. They were telling me that the Australian dream was a home. But that dream became worse and worse as they had to live further away from the city. My dream became better as we could build higher and higher.
We looked into and tested the Airbnb website and found the inquiries generated were at price points substantially lower than the market is prepared to pay us directly. It was clear that there were no real synergies between the level of our offering and what Airbnb clientele is looking for.