As a successful commercial real estate broker, Ron Lazar knows every nook and cranny of Long Island. Now, at the age when many of his colleagues are retired, Lazar is involved in one of the boldest ventures of his career: selling real estate in China.
While the location may be new for Lazar, the job isn't. For more than 30 years, he has worked in commercial and industrial real estate for Schacker Realty in Melville, New York. He was leader and co-owner of the firm until he and a partner sold it in 2000, but he continues working there today. "I definitely wanted to be my own boss at my own business," Lazar says, "especially after I saw my dad forced from his job at 65." The job that Lazar himself once didn't want to be forced from was vice president at Union Underwear, better known for its brand—Fruit of the Loom—and its current owner, Warren E. Buffett. "I was at Union for 18 years, but in 1975, when the office was moved from New York to Kentucky, I knew it was time to look elsewhere."
Back in the present, ask Lazar how a Long Island broker got involved in China, and he'll tell you it was guanxi, or connections. As a board member of the Industrial and Office Real Estate Brokers Association and longtime member of the Society of Industrial and Office Realtors, the well-connected Lazar and his company answered the call when representatives of an economic development zone came looking for a U.S. brokerage to market the property. So for the last three years, Lazar has been seeking tenants for the new, 500-acre Jiaming Business Park in Liaocheng, a city in Shandong Province, part of the industrial and agricultural region of northeast China.
Not surprisingly, there have been challenges. For starters, says Lazar, "the commercial brokerage industry is almost nonexistent there. The land is government-owned, and the concept of selling or leasing it is uniquely foreign. What commissions there are come from the buyer, not the seller." And language is a problem in remote regions. "In a city of 5.6 million people," he reports, "not a single, top-notch English translator could be found, and one had to be brought in from Beijing."
China has been an eye-opening experience in many ways. At celebratory banquets, for example, some 40 dishes are served, always at huge round tables and always featuring ingredients not typically seen at Long Island grocery stores. Drinking games and toasting rituals are important, as is Asian business etiquette. But Lazar says that his biggest worry is "trying to figure out how to reach every major corporation in the world."
With one deal in the works, he is hopeful. While potential buyers are skittish about locating to a remote area that lacks many of the services demanded by multinationals—such as English-language schools for their children—at least acreage is a bargain. Lazar is offering sites at $55,000 per acre, a fraction of the cost near Beijing Capital International Airport at $500,000 an acre.
For his part, Lazar is sanguine and determined to stay the course. "In China, you have to learn as you go," he says. "But, even at my age, I enjoy uncharted territory."
