Despite bad luck with sources in the past, I was able to get meetings with 4 different people; all of which seemed to be fairly decent sources. However; all of the realtors except for one, LOVED to veer off the subject and talk about everything but the topic I tried to focus them on which was extremely frustrating. Because of this, I was only able to cover little ground despite meeting with them for a lonnnng time.
The first lady I met with, we talked for an hour (and again, didn’t get through half of the things that I hoped for) but she offered to take me on a housing tour of the city which was quite amusing. Her driver took us around in her car and we went to all the different neighborhoods on my housing grid, and in between tour stops, I tried to get as many additional answers out of her as I possibly could. Though, we visited some properties and I was able to see first-hand the different characteristics of the properties that expats would live in here. We drove around for about 2 hours (after a 1 hour meeting at the café) and she wanted to take me to lunch but I needed to get back for a 2 pm meeting. The people at the café must have thought I was nuts; they saw me sit down with different people 3 different times throughout the whole day, and every time I ordered the same thing and had the same waiter.
The people from the second meeting also drove me nuts. One of them was a guy who spoke no English – (whom I later found out was Annette’s constant companion), and the other was Annette who was so nice and lived in Canada for 10 years, but again it was difficult getting information out of her. These realtors made you wonder if they even knew the market at all; they kept on changing their story, and everyone’s information seemed to be completely different. I met with Annette and friend (his name was Summer) for an hour and a half and I had another meeting in minutes so I wanted to get them out the door before the next realtor came and saw me sitting there with other realtors. Sneaky sneaky, and it all went down just in time. They left and Julia walked in. I needed to run upstairs quickly. Annette had offered though to take me on a tour the next day, I didn’t want to say another realtor had already done that so I said sure sounds great. I had no idea what I was in for.
When I came back down, we sat at the coffee shop (yep my 3rd time of the day and literally, this time I had just gotten up from the table) and I ordered the same thing from the confused waiter. Julia was great. She was to the point and appeared to know her stuff even if she didn’t at all. (I think she was a great source, but not as great as I initially though). We got through the meeting in normal time and she was pleased to meet me; she said she never knew this type of job existed but she was happy to help.
This was it for today. 3 meetings down and I had one more on the day I was to leave Kaohsiung with a loyal source we had met for years. Tomorrow I had a few things that I wanted to do but didn’t know how long my “tour” with Annette would last; well we’ll see!
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