I find it hard to accept that people would put up that kind of money to buy undeveloped property and not do their own research (i.e calling Assessor, Building Department, Planners, local real estate agents and appraisers). All this information about land speculation is available if one knows where to look or who to ask.
The sellers seem to be primarily cold-callers (which basically means phoning a stranger up and trying to get them to commit to something right then and there) and one of their tactics is to pretend to only have a very short window of time to talk and do the deal. Levene on his calls repeatedly calls for "Grace" who's probably meant to be his PA or secretary and makes it sound like he's about to get on a plane (he repeatedly tells his leads that he'll only be in town for that night and tells "Grace" at one point to fetch his passport). Even Roma uses the same tactic with Lingk when he comes to the office to cancel his deal - the whole thing with Levene pretending to be another client is trying to get Lingk to think Roma's too busy to deal with whatever his problem is and duck out. It doesn't work, but that was the plan.
Basically, their whole style of business is trying to get the leads to agree on a deal before they even get a chance to do their own research. That's why Roma's so upset at the thought of having to go back to revisit his smaller deals after the burglary, because there's no guarantee that he
will be able to close them again. They make a deal then and there and if the customer decides later that they want to go back on it, as what happened with Lingk, then they find some way to change the customer's mind or at the very least give them some bs reason why they can't go back on it.
Someday I'm gonna make a movie then laugh watching people over-analyse it
reply
share