The real estate broker we are likely to attempt to purchase a home from in Japan is, by profession, in sales, and he was very clearly attempting to run a heuristic on me to assess immediate intent / capacity to do the transaction we want to do. This was a hilarious conversation.
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After he was reasonably sure that I had transactional intent he started to try to assess whether I would get offered a mortgage or not, which starts from the point of "So a mortgage means that you borrow money, see..." "Ask me about credit underwriting at financial institutions"
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"... What?" "Well while I very much appreciate how much effort you were about to put into explaining financial instruments to me, we should probably skip to the part of the conversation where you ask me what my occupation is." "... You work at a bank?" "Close enough for now!"
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"Oh. Hmm. Well. We could get started on the, err, application process for a mortgage." "Well let's not get ahead of ourselves; I would still love to chat to confirm my understanding of a few things because, obviously, residential mortgages in Japan are more your thing than mine."
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Conversation winds around for a bit. "Say I've heard that underwriting in Japan happens at the bank branch level. Does that match your understanding?" "Oh yes that's absolutely true." "Fascinating. So I should probably assist you in routing application to person who knows me."
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Lest you think that I entirely got the better of this conversation, my first words to Ruriko after she got back were "This guy is very, VERY good." e.g. "Of course, have to have the wife onboard with this." "Naturally, naturally. What's her biggest concern right now?"
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Now an excellent response there would have been dissembling or rapport building but I instead gave him the true answer and he *immediately* had an empathetic and responsive pitch ready to go for her, which he has been elaborating on via email for days.
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And while I know I'm being sold to and know that being vocally appreciative of his efforts would cost substantial concessions on the pricing aspect, holy cow, is it a fun thing to get the up-close-and-personal version of people who are just very good at their jobs.
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End of conversation
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