THE Emerald has long been known as one of the most beautiful and prominent villa compounds in Shanghai. Over the years, it has gained the reputation as the residence of many CEOs and senior executives of Fortune 500 companies. Today Erwin Rusli, general manager of operations of Shanghai Hui Bao Real Property Development Co Ltd, talks about the development of the project and his thoughts on the city’s property market.

In your opinion, what are the key elements that have made The Emerald a standout?

An upscale expatriate compound cannot rely on just a few elements to be as successful as The Emerald. I attribute the success of The Emerald to a combination of so many great and small elements that in its sum offer our tenants a great place to live in.

In essence, it is the combination of our convenient location, our wide selections of villa sizes for any family size, our beautiful and well maintained villas and the compound’s vast and beautiful landscape, the availability of three excellent international schools in close proximity, the great services from our experienced Asset Management and Property Management team, and of course our strong commitment and ability to foster a very strong community bond among the tenants.

Another unique distinguishing element is our commitment to maintain the compound in new condition. As the developer, we spend a lot every year in the upkeep and maintenance of the compound’s facilities and villas. Before a new tenant moves into our villas, we will renovate the whole unit so that it will look very new when the tenant moves in.

Many visitors to our compound cannot believe that we have been in operation for more than 15 years as our villas and compound look so new.

As a villa compound mainly targeting senior expatriate executives, what particular ambience do you wish to create for residents?

The ambience that we wish to create for our residents is one of home. As mentioned before, we would like these expatriates to love the compound and to regard it as their home in Shanghai.

When we say home, it is not only an empty cliche. We try to deliver this through both our hardware and software.

As an example for the hardware factor, If you notice, all our villas are built in North American style. This is because North American tenants are our major tenant segment. It is very often that North American potential tenants coming to our compound for the first time to comment that our villas reminded them of their own houses back home. This sense of familiarity greatly adds to the ambience of “home” we try to deliver.

Not only in the architecture of the buildings, this sense of being in a North American environment can be strongly felt and seen within the compound’s gate-less neighborhood. If you come by our compound in the afternoon, you will often see children and pets playing freely, riding their bicycles or skateboarding all around the compound.

In terms of software, we try to provide as much as possible — all the conveniences and comforts that expatriates and their families may need when they are living in Shanghai.

This ranges from assisting them in doing the foreigner residency registration when they just move into our compound, to helping them pay utilities bills, ordering drinking water, referring ayis, ordering laundry services, booking taxis, conducting repair and regular maintenance services, providing curtains, carpets and sofa cleaning, to providing occasional translation assistance.

We fully understand that only when our tenants get the sense of safety, comfort, and convenience that they will regard our compound as their home in Shanghai.

You have people from almost 40 countries living at your compound who have different cultural backgrounds as well as different customs and habits. What is your take on offering all of them a warm home-like feeling in this small “melting pot?”

The multi-cultural environment that we have in The Emerald is something that we are very proud of. To create a sense of home for all these tenants from diverse cultural backgrounds and countries, we will first need to be respectful to, sensitive to, and knowledgeable about their habits and customs.

Within our 15 years of servicing this upscale expatriate community, we have been very fortunate to have many employees who are bilingual, capable and possess excellent inter-cultural communication skill. Many of them have also been with us for years and they are highly experienced and sensitive to these cultural differences.

Our employees face these cultural differences on a daily basis. For instance, potential tenants from a certain region may request more colorful wall paints or curtains, while potential tenants from other regions may prefer lighter tones. We always try to accommodate these preferences as much as possible.

We also face this when doing regular maintenance work. For instance, when doing maintenance work that requires our staff to enter a tenant’s premise, for tenants from a certain region we will have to wait until the male spouse is at home. Otherwise, we can only send female staff.

During Thanksgiving, it is also our custom to send turkeys as gifts to our tenants who celebrate the event.

Even in our clubhouse restaurant, our monthly food promotions try to cater to the many nationalities that we have in the compound. We have had Italian, German, Japanese, Thai and England food promotions.

We heard a lot about those fantastic community events organized by The Emerald. What do you hope to achieve by doing these events?

To create opportunities for our residents to get to know each other and have fun, we organize many events throughout the year such as Halloween Party with Zombies Attack theme, Celebrities Bash Welcoming Party, Easter Egg Hunts and Old Shanghai themed party.

Through these events, many of our tenants and their families became very close friends. Many of them who were going back to their own countries told us how much they were going to miss all these events and the fun that they had with their neighbors.

Among all services provided to your residents, what are the most popular ones for expatriates? What new endeavours have you made recently to further raise their quality of living?

We believe our check in orientation program, while not something glamorous, is something that is very appreciated by our tenants.

When our tenants move into our villas, our staff will provide a very detailed orientation that covers general introduction to the compound’s and surrounding areas’ environment and facilities, introduction to all the services that the developer’s Asset Management team and the compound’s Property Management team provide, information on their consulate contact, nearby hospitals, malls, supermarket, restaurants, and other daily living services. Last but not least, of course our contact number that they can call whenever they need any assistance at all.

As for new endeavors, many of our tenants are soccer fans. We are now building two new soccer fields to replace our existing aging soccer field.