is buying a house such a bad thing?

[canman]

FG lurker. We had our house built 5 years ago, the Jijinsai(sp) blessing of the ground, was held August 2nd, we moved into the house Dec. 23. Now its a little bigger than you mentioned yours would be it approx. 69 tsubo. But just wait until you really get started with the choosing of the light fixtures and the wall paper since nobody paints in Japan. Then the curtains and the where to put the electrical outlets. And the antenna jacks. My advice, when we built we had a double electrical jack put into both the family room and the kitchen to avoid all those octopi you see everywhere. Also closets my good man for God;s sake build closets, they will be a blessing.
About the other structure, I hope you know you will be responsible for the costs of removing it. I'm not sure about Osaka but here in Aomori, they don't take a shovel to the buildings anymore, they take them apart piece by piece and it can cost up to 1000 000 yen. Check into it. If you have any questions please pm me. I don't have all the answers, but having gone through it myself, I will offer you any advice I can.

[FG Lurker]

Thanks canman, I am sure I will have many questions as we move along!

The land is actually being bought "already cleared". Basically they haven't had time to clear it yet and we have agreed to buy it. I didn't want to mess around as I have looked around at land in the area we want to live and a) there isn't that much for sale & b) what is for sale is usually cramped, rectangular, and 20 tsubo or less....

We will have closets in all the bedrooms + a couple others for linen etc. More would be nice though I am sure.... Sigh, just starting and already so many things to think about!

[Maths Dude]

Good on ya FGL, buying a house is a smart move in Japan, provided you dont sell it. At 2.85% interest you can take out a 40 million- yen loan and just has easily pay it off as a $250k loan at 7% interest here in Australia. It is much easier to make money on a sale here though. But if you plan to live in the same place it's a good deal in Japan, plus you'll actually enjoy living more where you are. Life is way too short to be penny pinching in a damn apartment dog box!

[GomiGirl]

We will have closets in all the bedrooms + a couple others for linen etc. More would be nice though I am sure.... Sigh, just starting and already so many things to think about!

If you are building put in more power points than you think you will need and they still will not be enough.

Also consider how much storage and counter space in the kitchen.....

Windows - go the double glazing - you will save a heap of cash in heating in Winter.

[dimwit]

I have devised my own list of necessities if I ever opt to build a house here.

1) As GomiGirl mentioned plugs. A properly wired house is a must

2) NO CINDERBLOCK WALLS, or any other property line walls that restrict your space.

3) Balconies. Can never have enought of them.

4) A goodish sized walk in closet to accomodate my wife's clothing stash.

5) No tatami mat rooms. High maintance - no use. The majority of people I know with tatami use those rooms for storage.

6) Enough land to have a decent garden.

7) Some attempt at exterior design of all four sides of the house rather than just the front.

There are probably more points but those the main ones on the list.

[Taro Toporific]

Mrs Taro spotted a 15 million condo in the Bermuda Triangle for sale a couple days ago.

Why the "Bermuda Triangle"? Because the condo is in a triangular 50 meter plot of land between the Denentoshi Line, Tomei Expressway and Highway 246. Convenient, neh? Location: Eda Station (23 minutes west of Shibuya on then Denentoshi Line (aka Hanzomon Line).

It is a 8 year old "Lions Mansion" that's semi-attached to the station. RUMBLE-CITY!!! because Lions Mansion is a chain has connections with Yakuza. You too can live noise and pollution with a monthly mortgage that is equal to the monthly lease on a new, blacked-out windows, Yakuza-sytle, BMW 7 series.

[Buraku]

building standards a kind of different in Japan

you'll find some expensive places that are almost suitable as dog kennels
outcome of the bursting of the enormous share and property bubble of the early 90s, is compelling the banks to foreclose on larger companies

almost, in the west you'd perhaps be done for cruelty to animals for keeping creatures in such crummy enclosed space. However if you're a Mega-Money guy check it out starting in the late 1990s, U.S. investors began aggressively buying assets from cash-strapped Japanese companies. To date, they have spent at least 15 billion on everything from golf courses, theme parks and property to car, chemical and pharmaceutical companies and pachinko pinball-machine parlours. High-profile American deals in Japan include the giant Ford Motor Co.'s takeover of Mazda Motor Corp guys like Bill Gates or Al fayed could make a few bucks, and if you have wealth like them then rising rents and record-low interest rates that cut funding costs may offer investors greater returns, in other words you can buy a few ant-houses with poor electricty and lack of clean water
and charge outrageous prices for rent
but Japan doesn't take kindly to Gaijin Landlords
http://www.ec2japan.com/img/ec2_img2.gif
When it dawned on people that Japan was suffering unsustainable asset-price inflation, investors willing to chase prices even higher suddenly disappeared. Against expectations, scores of gangsters found themselves stuck with stocks and property plummeting in value by the day, and massive debts they were unable to repay. Today it could face deflation, property built in Japan isn't like the stuff you'd see in Denmark or Canada...its not built to last and Japanese homes fall apart and crumble by themselves after about 35-45 years while some expensive Western homes are built to last for up to 300 years.

[Maths Dude]

What's the deal with those 30 year-old L-cheapo apartments? Even if you buy one won't they rip it down after another 20 years ? I remember one Japanese family lived in one of those old government jobs. It got torn down and they were given a brand new one for similar rental.

[Kurofune]

First, apologies if I repeat what somebody else wrote. I don't have time to read the whole thread.

People have different motivations for buying a house in Japan than they do in the US. In the US, it's a market-value investment. You get a nice chunk of property and a spacious house, and you can sell it years later and relocate to an up-and-coming area. In Japan, buying a house is more about having your own place and getting out from under a landlord. Ditching the landlord is especially important when a Japanese person gets older, because the landlord might not want to renew the lease of a couple in their seventies with no income. If you have a house built in your late fifties (earlier if it's an import), you know you have a roof over your head for the rest of your life.

When I arrived in Japan in '97, buying a house in Japan seemed absurd when compared with how much more value I could get by living in the US. That value is diminishing, because the houses being built in the US today are shoddy and the market is overheated. Owning a house in the US still does more for you than owning one in Japan does, but the benefits gap isn't as wide as it used to be.

If (hopefully when) I return to Japan, I'll consider buying a house. I'd look for a bargain lot (I foresee big problems with the wife here) and would put an import house on it. It won't be an investment, but a place to call our own for the rest of our days in Japan. If you plan on being in the country long term, and especially if you can find a bargain, it's worth it when you consider it in the Japanese context.

[Buraku]

over-priced dog kennels


the 50ft gajins females laugh at japanese weaklings

[IkemenTommy]

Why buy a house when you can rent a place like this:

[FG Lurker]

My house building is coming along.

Thankfully my wife and I have very similar tastes and we both like simple designs. We chose the bath room (bath and wall designs), kitchen (counters/cabinets/etc), flooring, inside doors, outside doors, and various other bits in a showroom over about 3 hours this past Saturday. Still have the inside and outside walls, as well as windows and some other items to choose.

UFJ has offered me the loan at 1% locked for 2 years and then lower than usually available rates after that. I will talk to them a bit more though as I may wish to lock for longer at a slightly higher rate. We'll see.

[IkemenTommy]

[FG Lurker]

[ichigo partygirl]

Good to know things are moving along for you lurker. Our house renovations were finished in the weekend. we have new sun deck, lounge, kitchen and bathroom. feels like a new place
goodluck with it all!!

[MrUltimateGaijin]

I'm in Takao, which is outer suburban Tokyo (45 minutes by express train to Shinjuku). I am also a 25-minute walk from the station, which tends to be a turn-off for Japanese buyers. But property prices have plummeted in the area in the past couple of years.

its hard to imagine anything in Takao going up in value. Its not exactly a happening destination. And while it IS Tokyo, it is pretty much the END of Tokyo, it is inaka. Its just more convenient than shizuoka.

25 min walk from the station would be a killer for value. The way the japanese walk it would take them all day just to go to the supermarket.

[sdskinner]

I read that some of you have some experience with Selco homes. How are they? How do they hold up in the long run?
I have seen a few of their model homes and was really impressed. They seemed to be built very well. The only thing that worried me was the big windows they unsed. I would hate to have them blow in during a typhoon.

[sdskinner]

I read that some of you have some experience with Selco homes. How are they? How do they hold up in the long run?
I have seen a few of their model homes and was really impressed. They seemed to be built very well. The only thing that worried me was the big windows they unsed. I would hate to have them blow in during a typhoon.

[Taro Toporific]

My house building is coming along.

I like the appointments and finishing touches you folks have picked out.

[IkemenTommy]

Land values rebounding

[Taro Toporific]

Land values rebounding

Only downtown Tokyo...
Japanese crappiest-in-the-developed-would housing is dropping like a rock out here in shit-burbia. That 10 million yen ($89,742 U.S. dollars) Lion's mansion (2LDK 60 sqm) 28 minutes from Shibuya is still for sale after 2 months.

[IkemenTommy]

That 10 million yen ($89,742 U.S. dollars) Lion's mansion (2LDK 60 sqm) 28 minutes from Shibuya is still for sale after 2 months.

Where exactly is this?

[Taro Toporific]

That 10 million yen ($89,742 U.S. dollars) Lion's mansion (2LDK 60 sqm) 28 minutes from Shibuya is still for sale after 2 months.

Where exactly is this?

It was for sale at Eda Station, on the Denentoshi-sen 28 minutes from Shibuya (Tsuzuki-ku Yokohama). There's a Japanese TV show on the weekends that features shit-house deals like this every week. (Does anybody remember the name of that show?)

[IkemenTommy]

Ugh.. Eda is a shit hole. No wonder.
Taro, I'll be commuting to Yokohama every day soon so I'll probably see you around
By the way, I ended up getting the job so thanks for all the help with the rirekisho

[Mulboyne]

Land values rebounding

Only downtown Tokyo...

Reuters: Little recovery seen for rural Japan's land prices
TOKYO, Sept 21 (Reuters) - For anyone who has been to Tokyo's neon-lit Ginza shopping district, with its brand-name boutiques and pricey sushi bars, the sight of retail arcades throughout the country that call themselves "ginza" can be depressing. As rural land prices continue in a 15-year decline, many of the outlying "ginzas" are full of shuttered shops, pale shadows of Tokyo's bustling Ginza where some land prices jumped by 15 percent in the past year, according to data released on Tuesday. While the fall in rural land prices may ease somewhat in coming years as the economy recovers, economists say, values are likely to stay under pressure in the long run as local populations shrink and factories move overseas... A square metre of land in central Ginza was valued at 15 million yen ($134,000) as of July 1, up 15 percent from a year earlier. But prices nationwide continued to fall. Excluding the big three cities of Tokyo, Osaka and Nagoya, commercial land prices fell 6.1 percent while residential prices fell 4.1 percent, both declines only slightly smaller than in the previous year...The population is also expected to concentrate increasingly in major cities. Some 100,000 people move to the Tokyo area each year from the countryside, according to government data.

[Kurofune]

If you're really loaded, you can have a house built by a carpenter who specializes in the kind of construction used for shrines - high-grade thick wood, wooden pegs, etc. Those houses can last for decades and probably hold their value. Other than that, you're throwing your money down the drain. Most Japanese want a house so they don't have live under a landlord and abide by typical apartment restrictions. Also, you don't want your lease renewal denied when you're 70 because you no longer have income.

[Mulboyne]

Sentaku: Be Suspicious When Buying a House

- The Japanese are a people who work dutifully. Previously there was a blanket acceptance of the seller’s representations when people bought homes and this didn’t present a problem.

Okoshi: It is this exceptional social capital of Japan that has enabled us to come this far based on mutual trust. I believe this began to collapse about 10 years ago. Conversely, we became a free society, a society not of joint responsibility but of personal responsibility. It is correct to act from a position of “man is born evil” when buying a house. Even in the case of the earthquake-resistance standards, it doesn’t mean that the national government is guaranteeing your safety.

There is an odd non sequitor about global warming in this interview which looks like it must have been transposed from a separate piece.

[Mulboyne]

Blogger Roy over at Q-Taro is buying a house in Tokyo. He says he was helped a good deal by this informative write-up of the process by a fellow-blogger over at dannychoo.com:

Tokyo Property Purchase

[Catoneinutica]

Blogger Roy over at Q-Taro is buying a house in Tokyo. He says he was helped a good deal by this informative write-up of the process by a fellow-blogger over at dannychoo.com:

Tokyo Property Purchase

Debito also has a great four-part essay at his website. Face it, though: housing is a depreciating asset in Japan, a consumption good and not an investment, as we tend to think of it in the west.

-catone
-TIJ: The Land of Negative Equity

[Taro Toporific]

As I said before, the availability of the past year gaijin mortages have EXPLODED. Hell, I have been rejected for many, many years because I don't have a perm visa, but I got one in Jan. at only the 1.25% interest rate. I made of 9,000,000 yen in appreciation in the past six months (yes, yes, I know that's just paper profits but the condo next to mine in Denenchofu sold for 9 million more than mine which is exactly the same).