Buying/Building a house/Imported Houses

[Mock Cockpit]

Lay down the law brother, it's the only way. The trouble is knowing when to go off and knowing when to keep your power dry. I never quite understood these in-laws downstairs and married couple upstairs deals, recipe for disaster back home but when in Nippon........
The drier thing is another conundrum, we have one and it does a good job but only gets used a couple of times a year, mostly by me.
About power points, the rule of thumb is think of a number and double it. Inevitably though you'll have ones you never use and ones that have Rio shanty town-like proliferations of adapters sprouting outwards from it.
My hint- have a few outside, we've got 4 outside ones, very useful.

[ttjereth]

Lay down the law brother, it's the only way. The trouble is knowing when to go off and knowing when to keep your power dry. I never quite understood these in-laws downstairs and married couple upstairs deals, recipe for disaster back home but when in Nippon........
The drier thing is another conundrum, we have one and it does a good job but only gets used a couple of times a year, mostly by me.
About power points, the rule of thumb is think of a number and double it. Inevitably though you'll have ones you never use and ones that have Rio shanty town-like proliferations of adapters sprouting outwards from it.
My hint- have a few outside, we've got 4 outside ones, very useful.

The in laws actually only have two rooms downstairs plus their own bath, toilet etc. The living room and kitchen are DMZ areas My mother in law is just a pain in the ass. Essentially they want more storage space, so we may end up getting rid of a roof balcony and shifting my office down to above the living room and putting in another 4 tatami mat room upstairs for them to use for storage. Our current plan has a huge balcony (built on the roof of the first floor living basically) from my office, but the fact is I'll never use it, so I don't mind making that a room and shifting my office over to make room for the parent's storage room.

I told them they have to pay for all the extra expenses that incurs though.

Outdoor outlets is another good one! Hadn't thought about those.

Our dryer gets used a lot. My wife is lazy, so she'll use it for a lot of stuff. We always use it for towels and carpets and that sort of stuff. There are certain clothes she won't use it for though, and the in laws won't use it at all...

[ttjereth]

Here's our plans for the moment. Still might end up with that huge 2nd floor balcony off my office being converted to a room and shifting my office down (so it's more or less over the living room) instead and putting in a another little 4-5 mat room next between the office and training room. But otherwise this is more or less our plan.

I screwed up the scale on the images when cropping and resizing, but the first and second floors are supposed to be more or shape and scale but the hasty crop job makes the 2nd floor look smaller.

1st fl.


2nd fl.

[GomiGirl]

That looks great - lots of rooms.. but I never understand why Japanese architects never plan for more closets. Built in closets take up less space than extra wall cabinets and are way better for storage and easier on the eye - less clutter. Your plans don't show much actual storage space but fight to keep your room and your roof terrace.

While I am at it - bench space in kitchens or cupboards that are way too tall for the average person to reach without a step ladder. Your kitchen looks great with the island bench and under floor storage. Plus a pantry!! Nicely done!!

[Bucky]

It looks like the living room is way at the other side of the house from the genkan. Is that right? Seems like visitors would have to walk through most of the house to get there. Is that on purpose?

Looks like you've done pretty well shoe-horning the place into an odd-shaped lot.

[emperor]

daft
this is one of the more popular sites in Ireland for buying/renting/etc
(it's usually consumer to consumer - few businesses acting as middlemen and skimming the profits)

are there any good equivalents for Japan?
I mean buying in particular

/daft = also probably interesting for some of you to get some perspective on how much an equivalent sized building goes for in this part of the globe

[ttjereth]

That looks great - lots of rooms.. but I never understand why Japanese architects never plan for more closets. Built in closets take up less space than extra wall cabinets and are way better for storage and easier on the eye - less clutter. Your plans don't show much actual storage space but fight to keep your room and your roof terrace.

While I am at it - bench space in kitchens or cupboards that are way too tall for the average person to reach without a step ladder. Your kitchen looks great with the island bench and under floor storage. Plus a pantry!! Nicely done!!

We don't have a lot of little closets, but several large spaces. On the first floor the in laws' rooms have their own decent size closets, there is a big closest under the stairs, a huge closet at the entryway a closet next to the sink in bathroom, and big walk in pantry in the kitchen, plus the utility room which is where all the usual household stuff gets stored (vacuum, laundry stuff, extra toilet paper, paper towels, etc. etc.).

Second floor that WIC is walk in closet which is absolutely huge by Japanese standards, closet next to the sink, closet in the guest bedroom/future child room.

The two offices don't need closets (one is noted as "study room"). So overall there are less actual physical closets than your average U.S. house, but in terms of actual floor space for storage we're fairly good. All added up we have something close to 20 tatami mats of storage space (adding up all the little closets and stuff) so we should be good. I'm not a huge fan of buying crap and shoving it away in the back of closets never to be seen again anyway, I'd rather just throw whatever it is out.

The kitchen is by far our biggest expense and the area we have been the most picky with. The counter shown in the plans is being put in by the builder and it has cabinets up above to the ceiling as well, but they are these pictured below. you can open them from the front doors, but the entire bottom sort of drops out and lowers down on these pneumatic hinges to get at the stuff easily. The kitchen and both bathrooms are both the highest grade offered (the only option not in the bathrooms is the TV in bathtub, if we had that the wife would never leave ye old furo).



Other than that the two dashed white rectangles in the kitchen are space for an island and another set of counter/cupboards which we are buying seperately and installing outselves after the contractor is done. My wife and I both like to cook so we want plenty of counter space. The huge ass pantry more plus all the cabinets more or less eliminates the need for all the stand alone cabinets, shoki dana etc. that you find in a lot of Japanese houses.

[ttjereth]

It looks like the living room is way at the other side of the house from the genkan. Is that right? Seems like visitors would have to walk through most of the house to get there. Is that on purpose?

Looks like you've done pretty well shoe-horning the place into an odd-shaped lot.

Yeah, the living room is semi-intentional. The south side of the house where the living room is positioned is surrounded by yard and the edge of the hill we live on so we have lots of windows in the living room that face off into the space off the hill. No need to have great big windows just to cover them up/obstruct the view in some other way because there is a street right outside them, or the neighbor's house or whatever. All the stuff along the genkan is right along the road so we intentionally went with the stuff that doesn't need huge windows and such.

You have to walk through the house to get to the living room, but you're only walking through a hallway anyway, so it doesn't bother me.

The lot is an odd shape, but it's less than 10 minutes to the station and 80 tsubo. We actually intentionally chose the odd shaped lot over others (the contractor is more or less developing the whole neighborhood, there are 22 other lots for offer right around us by the same contractor). The lot next door to us is actually the 2nd biggest lot on offer at about 10 tsubo less than ours but is a perfect rectangle (same price as our lot though), but we wanted the corner lot because we are guaranteed to never have neighbors on three sides of us (2 sides are the edge of the hill, 1 side is the road) so we don't end up with the typical Chiba-Tokyo house cramped in by neighbors on 3 sides.

The image below gives a better idea of the layout of the land. We are lot 23 and the road actually dead ends there at that space to the top right of our lot (drew in the lines real quick since the original image doesn't have them for some reason) which is good because we won't have too much traffic coming down to the front of our house and there is a huge amount of space to park on the street should we have guests over and such. The entire area to the right of plots 7 and 8 is a private park for this development, it's fenced in with the only access being from the street in front of us.

[ttjereth]

daft
this is one of the more popular sites in Ireland for buying/renting/etc
(it's usually consumer to consumer - few businesses acting as middlemen and skimming the profits)

are there any good equivalents for Japan?
I mean buying in particular

/daft = also probably interesting for some of you to get some perspective on how much an equivalent sized building goes for in this part of the globe

Wow, Ireland's fairly expensive too. I imagine you get quite a bit more land included with those purchases though.

Japan is behind in terms of having great internet sites with up to date and comprehensive information in a variety of fields and real estate is one of them unfortunately.

The sites we used when looking were these (in order of scale and usefulness, yahoo and goo are about the same, myhome is the biggest in terms of the number of realtors who actively use it):
http://www.myhome-homes.jp/
http://house.goo.ne.jp/index.html
http://realestate.yahoo.co.jp/
http://www.e-life.co.jp/
http://www.nomu.com/

But like I posted earlier, a lot of the stuff on these sites is no longer available. They leave attractive places up there in order to pull in people looking to buy and then try to introduce them to other plots/houses.

[GomiGirl]

We don't have a lot of little closets, but several large spaces. On the first floor the in laws' rooms have their own decent size closets, there is a big closest under the stairs, a huge closet at the entryway a closet next to the sink in bathroom, and big walk in pantry in the kitchen, plus the utility room which is where all the usual household stuff gets stored (vacuum, laundry stuff, extra toilet paper, paper towels, etc. etc.).

Yes - am very envious of the pantry and walk-in closets!! You have done really well with the design. Especially with all those windows on the East side of the house. Rooms are certainly not pokey at all.

I really was venting in general how japanese architects don't consider storage as necessary and kitchen benches are not included. I edited my posts above to make sure you knew I was talking in general and not your design.

[ttjereth]

Yes - am very envious of the pantry and walk-in closets!! You have done really well with the design. Especially with all those windows on the East side of the house. Rooms are certainly not pokey at all.

I really was venting in general how japanese architects don't consider storage as necessary and kitchen benches are not included. I edited my posts above to make sure you knew I was talking in general and not your design.

Our architect/contractor is fairly good with storage in terms of Japanese builders, we actually had them consolidate a lot of little closets into bigger spaces. For certain rooms, like the offices, I'd rather have the wall space than a closet. But that's just my own peculiarity.

The walk in was my wife's idea. It was actually rather funny because the architect originally suggested we wouldn't need a single closet of that size and I thought my wife was going to attack him. It became very clear that the only change in the size of the walk in that would be allowed would be to increase the size. This of course didn't bother the architect much as he made notes in his architect book with little yen signs dancing in his eyes.

The costs for the kitchen and bathrooms alone are a huge chunk of the entire cost of the house...

The pantry was something I was unwilling to let go of since we tend to visit costco and the like every so often often and we need space for my 24 boxes of macaroni and cheese and other such important things

I don't mind criticism's of the design and such, as occasionally they end up pointing out things I hadn't thought of or considered, but a lot of the more oddball features are actually things I have specifically requested (several big storage spaces instead of lots of little ones, living room at the back of the house, living room being an enclosed space with doors etc.).

It's not by far my dream house or anything, but I won't be able to build my actual dream house anywhere outside of a third world country until I start making millions of dollars a year so I'll settle for a comfortable little place that is at the very least a million times better than my current rabbit hutch

Forgot to mention the house is running us 28,000,000 yen at the moment which includes in addition to everything readily visible in the designs:
highest grade kitchen and bathrooms
2 toilets with fancy butt washing capabilities
2x4 construction
cherry wood flooring throughout the entire house
ventilation system
security/door phone system
48l Gas oven built in below the gas range
Dishwasher built in
double paned windows
hi grade insulation in ALL walls

Other stuff I don't recall at the moment. With all of that loan repayments work out to about a minimum of 7man a month which is less than we'd be paying for an apartment the same size as our current place anyway sooo I'm more or less happy with it.

Plus there's a movie theater and bowling alley at the station (8-9 minute walk from the house) so I'm more or less set for all of my own entertainment needs

[Greji]

Plus there's a movie theater and bowling alley at the station (8-9 minute walk from the house) so I'm more or less set for all of my own entertainment needs

Any goat herds in the neighborhood?

[ttjereth]

Any goat herds in the neighborhood?

I hope not. When I lived out in the boonies some around the corner from me had roosters and that was annoying enough in the mornings.

[Mock Cockpit]

I hope not. When I lived out in the boonies some around the corner from me had roosters and that was annoying enough in the mornings.

I remember telling one of the neighbour-hood farmers here that turning his weed-whacker on at 120,000 rpm outside my bedroom window at 6am on a Sunday morning had very little future for him.

[ttjereth]

I remember telling one of the neighbour-hood farmers here that turning his weed-whacker on at 120,000 rpm outside my bedroom window at 6am on a Sunday morning had very little future for him.

This wasn't even a farm. It was a residential neighborhood right behind the city hall but some twat had a bunch of chickens in a coop in his little yard. You'd think they'd have some sort of restriction about livestock in residential neighborhoods or something, but then again this was the same area where half the people (including those across the street from me) burnt their own garbage without thought for where the billowing clouds of black smoke were going to go...

[Grumblebum]

I don't mind criticism's of the design and such, as occasionally they end up pointing out things I hadn't thought of or considered, but a lot of the more oddball features are actually things I have specifically requested (several big storage spaces instead of lots of little ones, living room at the back of the house, living room being an enclosed space with doors etc.).

What height are your kitchen counters? A lot of them are 850mm 'by default'.. I made sure ours were 900mm since 850 would be back-breaking for me.

[ttjereth]

What height are your kitchen counters? A lot of them are 850mm 'by default'.. I made sure ours were 900mm since 850 would be back-breaking for me.

You know, I'm not sure. I know they are "tall type" cabinets because we had to determine that to figure out if the oven would fit, but I don't actually know what "tall type" means. I'll have to ask.

I know our current sink and cabinets are back-breakingly low.

Most of the prep work is going to be done on the island, which is getting bought separately, possibly from IKEA, and islands are generally designed taller anyway, but for washing dishes and stuff taller is definitely better.

[emperor]

http://www.myhome-homes.jp/

thx! this one is pretty easy to use.

buying property in rural ireland used to be a bargain compared with Dublin/the capital or any of the other big cities, so you got plenty of land, wild berries and fresh air around your castle instead of some pokey little semi-detached hovel surrounded by urban decay and a 1m squared concrete yard to let the kids go cry their hunger away in... (cause the mortgage costs so much)

but everyones been escaping gridlock for some time now and there dosent seem to be the difference in price that you might get in most other countries as regards rural:urban property prices such as Japan

[ttjereth]

[quote="emperor"]thx! this one is pretty easy to use.

buying property in rural ireland used to be a bargain compared with Dublin/the capital or any of the other big cities, so you got plenty of land, wild berries and fresh air around your castle instead of some pokey little semi-detached hovel surrounded by urban decay and a 1m squared concrete yard to let the kids go cry their hunger away in... (cause the mortgage costs so much) ]

I'd still love to have a house in Ireland, but I think I better work on paying off the Japanese one first then working on one in the states

Even with all the subprime nonsense in the states you can still get rural places at a huge amount less than anything remotely urban or suburban, but my wife is determined not to live in the country. If it were up to me alone, I'd buy an old farmhouse somewhere where I've got plenty of land between me and the nearest neighbor, but the wife says no.

She thinks the place we're building in Chiba 8 minutes from the station is "inaka"...

[Mock Cockpit]

She thinks the place we're building in Chiba 8 minutes from the station is "inaka"...

You don't need to be too far out of the town before you're in the "inaka" here. Must admit it's one of the things I like though, the ability to be (relatively) out in the country but still close to town. I know what you mean about those big houses in the country. You see those huge, falling down monstrosities and think "christ, what I could do with that", but in the same instance dread the dressing down from the wife if you even dared suggest it.

[ttjereth]

You don't need to be too far out of the town before you're in the "inaka" here. Must admit it's one of the things I like though, the ability to be (relatively) out in the country but still close to town. I know what you mean about those big houses in the country. You see those huge, falling down monstrosities and think "christ, what I could do with that", but in the same instance dread the dressing down from the wife if you even dared suggest it.

I'm used to the dressing downs and I have no problem suggesting it, but in the end it just ends up with her unwilling to move there. We were originally going to move to Tochigi and buy a plot of land 2 minutes from the Tobu line station direct to Tokyo at half the price of our current plot but twice the size, but the wife ended up deciding she didn't want to live out in the boondocks and her parents ended up not being too keen on it either.

Me personally, I'd like a piece of land big enough that I could shoot my bow in the yard without having to worry about hitting the neighbor's house (or the neighbors)

[ttjereth]

Loan approved!

Balcony from my office is gone, office and training room are shifted down to the space where the balcony was, new storage room next to the training room + 1,000,000 yen, the parent's in law are paying.

[amdg]

Woot! Whens the housewarming party?

[ttjereth]

Woot! Whens the housewarming party?

Good question. According to the architect if everything goes smoothly from here on out the house should be done by September, according to the construction company November is more realistic.

Oh the joy of having my own little space with an actual door, a real kitchen, and bathroom that doesn't flood if you take a shower longer than 5 minutes

[Charles]

..According to the architect if everything goes smoothly from here on out the house should be done by September, according to the construction company November is more realistic..

Don't forget "The Estimator's Rule" which states "Everything takes longer than estimated, even after taking The Estimator's Rule into account."

[Adhesive]

Congrats! I hope everything goes smoothly for you. We'd like to build our own place someday as well, possibly in Japan, so this thread is very helpful.

[ttjereth]

Congrats! I hope everything goes smoothly for you. We'd like to build our own place someday as well, possibly in Japan, so this thread is very helpful.

Thanks. Hopefully I won't have much to add to the thread in terms of problems and things that went wrong with the construction

As another note for the thread in general, we got an interesting bit of info from the bank. Out of the several thousand applications for loans they receive from non-Japanese each year, only 1-2 loans are actually ever approved most years.

That's a pretty harsh pass/fail percentage to overcome.

Also according to the construction company and architect this is probably the best time to take out a home loan because of the low interest rates, which they both predict will start to climb again shortly.

[Mock Cockpit]

Don't forget "The Estimator's Rule" which states "Everything takes longer than estimated, even after taking The Estimator's Rule into account."

When we signed our contract in 2003 they told us when everything would be happening from grounbreaking to handing us the keys. Everything happened the day they said it would. Thumbs up for them.

[ttjereth]

When we signed our contract in 2003 they told us when everything would be happening from grounbreaking to handing us the keys. Everything happened the day they said it would. Thumbs up for them.

I have faith ours will be done more or less on schedule as well. They have 22 other lots to build just in the area we are in and a whole other project of the same size a few stations away, so time is more pressing for them than us. The only thing the builders seem to think might slow things down is the rainy season.

[Catoneinutica]

Terrie Lloyd has a fairly lengthy editorial on the JapanToday website:

http://www.japantoday.com/category/commentary/view/200-year-rabbit-hutches

This line resonated with me:

[INDENT]Typically, Japanese homes cost around 30 million - 40 million yen, so the average family is still paying through the nose to build somewhere to live. It is estimated that the major builders (Sekisui, Daiwa, Misawa, etc) are charging about 20% more for their cookie cutter solutions than if a homeowner was to get their own architect and do it themselves. Unfortunately, people feel so unsure about their own abilities in the so-called expert area of homebuilding, that they allow the housing titans to do it all for them.[/INDENT]

Twenty percent is exactly the amount we estimate we saved by getting an architect from one of the imported house companies to work under the table for us, and just using a local construction firm. The building process was much slower - nearly a year as opposed to what seemed like two or three weeks - but the quality of the stone masonry, painting, plastering, etc, was a good deal better. Worth the wait.