People often assume that selling luxury property on the French Riviera is about knowing the right addresses and having a good eye for a sea view. Those things matter, of course. But the skills that actually close a €12 million villa in Cap d'Antibes or protect a client through a delicate off-market negotiation in Super Cannes have very little to do with décor. They have everything to do with discipline, preparation, and holding your nerve under pressure. I learned those skills long before I ever handed anyone a set of keys — I learned them on a tennis court.
Before real estate, I spent years as a professional athlete. It shaped how I think, how I prepare, and how I show up for the people who trust me with one of the largest decisions of their lives. Here is why that background isn't just a charming line in my bio — it's the reason my clients tend to sleep better during a transaction.
Preparation Is Everything, and Nothing Is Left to Chance
Any serious athlete will tell you that the match is won in the weeks before you step onto the court. You study your opponent. You drill the same movement a thousand times so that when the pressure comes, your body already knows what to do. You anticipate scenarios before they happen.
I bring exactly that mindset to a property search. By the time I present a client with a shortlist, I have already pressure-tested each option: I know the building's history, the neighbors, the copropriété charges, whether that "sea view" survives when the trees next door grow another meter, and what comparable homes have actually sold for rather than merely listed at. When we walk into a viewing, I am rarely surprised — and that means my clients aren't either.
This preparation is especially critical for my American clients, who are often navigating a French purchase process that looks nothing like what they know from California or New York. The rhythm is different, the documents are different, and the guarantees are different. I would never send a client into that unprepared, any more than I would have walked onto a court without knowing my opponent's backhand.
Composure When the Stakes Are High
There is a particular kind of calm you develop after playing enough high-stakes points. When the score is tight and everyone is watching, panic is the fastest way to lose. You learn to slow your breathing, quiet the noise, and make the next decision clearly.
Luxury real estate has its own version of match point. A seller changes their mind at the last moment. A competing buyer appears out of nowhere. A survey turns up something unexpected two days before signing the compromis de vente. In those moments, an anxious agent transmits that anxiety straight to the client. My instinct, honed over years of competition, is the opposite: to steady the room, lay out the options plainly, and keep everyone focused on the outcome we're working toward.
My clients frequently tell me that what they valued most wasn't a specific piece of advice — it was the sense that I never lost my footing, even when the deal got complicated. That composure isn't a personality trait I was lucky to be born with. It's a muscle I trained for years.
Discipline in the Details
Elite sport is relentless about the small things. A few degrees of racket angle, a slightly late split-step, a fraction of a second of hesitation — at the top level, tiny details decide everything. That obsession with detail never left me.
In a French property transaction, the details are where fortunes are protected or quietly lost. The wording of a suspensive clause. The precise boundaries recorded in the cadastre. The diagnostics report that most buyers skim and I read line by line. Whether a renovation was properly declared to the mairie. I treat each of these with the same seriousness I once gave to my technique, because I know that the difference between a smooth purchase and a painful one usually lives in a single overlooked paragraph.
Playing the Long Game
No athlete builds a career on a single good day. You build it on consistency, on relationships with coaches and teammates, and on a reputation for showing up and doing the work when no one is watching. That long-game thinking is exactly how I've built my practice on the Riviera.
Many of the finest homes here never reach a public portal. They move quietly, between people who trust one another — a notaire who knows an estate is coming to market, a family who will only sell to a discreet buyer, a fellow agent who calls me first because I've always dealt straight with them. That network exists because, like in sport, I've invested in it consistently over years rather than chasing a quick win. When a client tells me they want something that "doesn't seem to exist on the market," that patient network is often what finds it.
A Bicultural Edge, Reinforced by an Athlete's Adaptability
Sport also taught me to adapt to unfamiliar conditions — different courts, different climates, different countries. That adaptability served me well during the years I lived in California, including my time based near Atherton and my experience navigating the US immigration system as a foreigner on a student visa. I know firsthand how disorienting it is to build a life across borders and to wrestle with paperwork in a system that isn't your own.
That's part of why I understand my American clients so instinctively. I've stood on both sides of the Atlantic. I know the expectations you bring from the US market — the speed, the transparency, the appetite for clear answers — and I know how to translate them into a French process that runs on its own logic. My role is often to be the bridge: negotiating with the directness Americans appreciate, while executing with the local precision the French system demands.
Why This Matters for You
When you're investing in a home on the Côte d'Azur, you're not just buying square meters. You're trusting someone to guard your interests in a foreign system, in a foreign language, often from thousands of miles away. What you want in that person is not flashiness. It's preparation, composure, discipline, and staying power — the same qualities that separate a good competitor from a great one.
Naturally, every purchase also involves legal, tax, and notarial questions that are specific to your situation, and I always encourage clients to work alongside a licensed French notaire and a qualified cross-border tax advisor for those. My job is to make sure you never face any of it unprepared, and never face it alone.
I may have traded the court for the Croisette, but I still approach every client the way I once approached every match: with total preparation, full focus, and a determination to win the point that matters most — yours.
