From the leasing counter to executive officer

Mandate

Bring brand, advertising, listing standards and customer research under one accountable executive and reduce complaints about what our material promised.

Outcomes

• Cut listing-accuracy complaints from 58 a year to nine after a full audit and same-day withdrawal
• Introduced condition summaries for vacant houses, lowering post-contract cancellations from nine to two
• Sold forty-eight resort apartments abroad on yen prices and disclosed holding costs
• Expanded the multilingual leasing desk to five languages

Decisions in context

The CMO appointment brought advertising, listing standards and customer research under one executive for the first time. Before 2021, each business unit commissioned its own material, and nobody owned the gap between what we published and what customers found. I report to the president, Shunsuke Ogimachi, and lead twenty-six people through four managers. Rents, sale prices and building assessments remain with the business units and qualified inspectors; legal interpretation stays with our legal team. My work is to make our published statements checkable and to show colleagues what accuracy costs and returns. The three cases on this site all come from this period. I present to the board twice a year and report quarterly to the compliance committee, but I am not a director, and I describe that exposure in exactly those terms on this site.

Reason for the move

Current appointment; preparing for a first outside directorship with the president's consent.

Mandate

Build a marketing function for the whole company and grow vacant-house brokerage without damaging trust with sellers or towns.

Outcomes

• Grew vacant-house transactions from about 60 to 140 a year
• Agreed listing exchange arrangements with three municipal vacant-house registers
• Opened the multilingual leasing desk with English, Chinese and Vietnamese support

Decisions in context

Vacant houses were a small, unprofitable sideline when I took this role. Heirs often approached us after years of paying tax on a house they could not visit, and municipal registers listed homes with little information beyond an address and a photograph. I built a small sales unit that visited each house with the owner's permission, wrote honest descriptions and coordinated with three town registers. Transactions grew from about sixty a year to one hundred and forty. At the same time, I brought scattered advertising budgets into a single marketing plan and opened a leasing desk for residents from abroad, drawing on my Tokyo experience. I reported to the director responsible for sales and leasing. The period taught me that regional property demand is fragile, and that one disappointing viewing can end a town's interest in a house for a season.

Reason for the move

Appointed executive officer and CMO when the board created a single customer-facing marketing role.

Mandate

Explain resort apartments and second homes to a growing number of overseas and metropolitan buyers.

Outcomes

• Produced the first English and Chinese ownership-cost guides for resort buyers
• Reduced post-purchase queries about management fees by about half in two seasons
• Organised summer viewing programmes that lengthened the sales year beyond the ski season

Decisions in context

I joined Kumoribashi from Tokyo to be nearer my parents in Matsumoto and to work in a market I understood personally. The resort business was selling apartments to buyers from Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore, as well as Tokyo families seeking second homes. Many were surprised after purchase by management fees, repair reserves and fixed asset tax, because our brochures had concentrated on the view and the snow. I wrote ownership-cost guides in English and Chinese and trained the sales team to discuss holding costs at the first viewing. Queries about fees after purchase fell by about half within two seasons. I reported to the head of the resort business and had no authority over prices, which the business set. The role gave me the inbound-buyer experience that later shaped our approach to the converted lodge.

Reason for the move

Promoted to lead marketing for the whole company and the vacant-house business.

Mandate

Increase the number of owners willing to let to residents from abroad and reduce failed applications.

Outcomes

• Roughly doubled the owners in the portfolio willing to consider foreign applicants
• Introduced pre-viewing cost explanations in four languages
• Cut withdrawn applications after contract explanation from about one in five to one in twelve

Decisions in context

Tsunagite managed homes for owners who were willing, at least in principle, to let to residents from abroad and to companies housing international staff. Applications often failed late, when a tenant first heard about key money or a renewal fee at the contract explanation. I moved those explanations to the start of the process and produced them in English, Chinese, Korean and later Vietnamese. With owners, I replaced reassurance with evidence: payment records, length of tenancy and the reasons for any disputes. The number of owners willing to consider foreign applicants roughly doubled, and withdrawn applications fell from about one in five to one in twelve. I reported to the managing director and led a team of seven. The work taught me that translation and explanation are different tasks, and that owners respond to records more readily than to arguments.

Reason for the move

Returned to Nagano to be nearer family and to join a regional company with a resort business.

Mandate

Check broker advertisements before publication against industry advertising rules and the publisher's own standards.

Outcomes

• Introduced a check that removed let homes within two days of a broker's notice
• Wrote internal guidance on model-room photographs and renovation dates
• Reduced reader complaints about inaccurate listings by about a third over three years

Decisions in context

Ienomado's magazine and website carried advertisements from hundreds of brokers across the Kanto region. My team reviewed them before publication against the property industry's fair-competition rules on advertising and our own standards, querying floor areas, photographs, renovation claims and homes that had already been let. I began as an editor and led nine reviewers from 2006, reporting to the editor-in-chief. We had no authority over brokers beyond refusing or correcting their copy, so every query needed a reason that a busy branch manager would accept. I learnt to distinguish careless mistakes from deliberate attractions, and to stay polite with both. Reader complaints about inaccurate listings fell by about a third over three years. After five years of judging other people's advertisements, I wanted to work where the consequences of an advertisement met a tenant directly.

Reason for the move

Wanted to work on the leasing side again, where advertisements turn into tenancies.

Mandate

Show and let rental homes and explain contract terms to applicants.

Outcomes

• Passed the licensing examination for real-estate transaction specialists in 2000
• Became deputy manager of a branch serving two university districts
• Kept a branch record of applicants refused by owners, which later informed my work with residents from abroad

Decisions in context

I joined Sakuradome after university and spent five years at the counter of a busy rental branch. The work was practical: showing flats, explaining key money, deposits and guarantors, and preparing applications for owners to accept or refuse. A tenant's long walk from the station, which our leaflet had promised would be short, taught me to check every route we described. I passed the licensing examination for real-estate transaction specialists in 2000, which allowed me to give the formal explanation of important contract terms, and became deputy branch manager in 2001. I also kept a simple record of applicants refused by owners, many of them from abroad. I had no influence over those decisions, but the record showed how much time both sides lost when an advertisement did not say what an owner would accept.

Reason for the move

Joined a listings publisher to work on advertising standards across many brokers.