Buying a house in Japan

[grungy-gonads 54]

Yes, wallpaper. It's not really done here is it. Like cheese, really.

[NoFakie 45]

I've only seen photos, but it looks like the Ocean has got a lovely pad on a nice site with views. Again, testament to knowing what you want and looking for it.

 

If I remember correctly, Selco is 2x6, so the walls are 50% thicker than 2x4. That's good for insulation and soundproofing. It also makes the house stronger, of course.

 

Wallpaper is cheap. I think that's the simple answer. Its also wipable and doesn't crack in minor earthquakes, but cost is the main one. Our place is half wallpaper (plain white, no texture) and half lime render. We wanted all the latter but our budget said no.

[Go Native 70]

Originally Posted By: ger

What's with all the generic wallpaper that people have? Why doesn't anyone seem to paint their walls?

I did paint the interior of my house but frankly because I did most of the plastering myself the finish wasn't that great. I've since had a few rooms wallpapered and will likely get the rest of the house done with it as well. You can get some nice wallpapers though, not just the general generic stuff you see in most houses.

[Ocean11 0]

I'm not sure why people don't paint their walls, but I think it has something to do with cracking when the walls inevitably move, and not being bothered to think about it very carefully. We have a very nice product from www.pavistamp.com. It's a kind of putty plaster with little stones in it. It's natural-looking, easy on the eyes, and free of all nasty smells and emissions.

 

2x4 is a bit behind the times. For many builders, 2x6 is now standard, and the more expensive builders are even going up to 2x10. You can pack in a lot of insulation with 2x10.

 

Another thing to remember when building a house is that children don't stay children for ever. They may not thank you at first for putting their bedroom on the other side of the house, but they will later.

 

> but everything would cost extra of course

 

"of course"? What do you mean, "of course"? Komi yo, komi!

 

Soundproofing is another broad, involved and generally expensive area. Charcoal-coated sheeting is supposed to be a cheap, thin, and effective approach.

 

Most of the people we know did very little research before building, and paid no attention to future running costs. Consequently, they paid over the odds for uncomfortable housing which is a permanent drain on their finances. They tend to stagger about and splutter a bit when Mrs11 tells them how little our monthly bills come to.

[NoFakie 45]

There are lots of natural plasters you can use. Some of them you can apply yourself if you're not bothered about ultrasmooth. The most popular ones in Japan are lime render with straw and seaweed as binders (shikui) and keisoudo (diatomic earth, a kind of fossilized plankton or suchlike). There are some great imported ones too.

 

If built properly, new houses are far more airtight than old ones, so you should be careful with the paints and woodfinishes. The ones in the typical home center in Japan look pretty nasty. I wouldn't use them indoors myself over a large area. We've got a lot of wood in our place, but it was done with a combination of persimmon juice (kakishibu) and natural German varnishes by a company called Osmo. Our place smells of wood, not that "new house" smell. Beeswax, linseed oil, tung oil, etc. are also great for wood.

 

As for wall thickness, you can get insulation that is more compact than glass or rock wool, but those are the cheapest. More expensive insulation might pay for itself if you don't have to bump up to 2x10, where the framing lumber will be expensive. Some insulation, like spray-on cellulose and foam, for example, are done by specialist subcontractors, who may be more clued-up than your typical builder.

 

Tama Home etc. are franchises, so what you get will vary on which komuten builds the place. There are no government inspections to ensure they do a good job.

[gerard 6]

Here's another one. We're looking at a lot that used to be farmland. I think a rice farm. They basically converted a chunk into a small residential suburb with around 5 or 6 lots, bordering other remaining rice farms. Maybe most people would not question the stability of the land but the thought has entered my mind. The process of converting farmland to residential land is regulated by law and takes three years or more to complete so it's easy to just assume that it's perfectly stable but I definitely want to make sure that my house doesn't sink back into the rice farm one day.

 

Anyone know anything about this sort of thing?

[Ocean11 0]

You normally have a 'jiban kensa' where a guy comes with a boring machine and bores holes in the ground. You get the results back a while later. I seem to remember it costs around 100,000 yen. Generally people get it done after they buy the land, which is putting the cart before the horse really. However, your 'developer' may already have done that and may be able to show you the data. Definitely ask for it, and try to make having the data in advance a condition of purchase.

 

Incidentally, rice paddy isn't soggy all the way down. I've seen rice field topsoil being scraped off and carted away, and there's typically firm, well-drained soil about 20 cm down. Rather than the concern about the rice-field, it's more important to look at the geology of the area as a whole. Also, if there are any hills nearby, check the 'doseki' maps provided by your Prefecture to make sure there isn't a thick blue arrow pointing right at where you plan to build your house. Many people are not surprisingly unaware of this precaution.

[NoFakie 45]

A small corner of our place was rezoned from hatake (normal agricultural) to residential (juutakuchi) when be bought it, but it didn't take three years. It was done so we could buy it together with the adjoining residential plot that has a separate plot number on the land survey. Only farmers and farmers on paper are allowed to buy hatake and tanbo (paddies), and you're not allowed to build on them unless you have a large area or have them rezoned. Our rezoning was therefore done to allow us non-farmers to buy that bit of land. I think my father in law owns some paddies and we could have wangled something, but we didn't have to anyway.

 

As for what farmland is rezoned as residential, I would guess that no complaining neighbours and "friendly" relations with the people on the council are more important than the actual stability of the plot, which I doubt will be tested with public money. Someone might just pop by in a car and see if it looks high enough, or maybe not even that. The regulation about rezoning is not about protecting the buyer, its about protecting the limited farmland that's left from development. When land is rezoned from farmland, its value dramatically increases. Though it costs a lot in the shops, most farmers make bugger-all growing rice. Selling land for development is a big earner for them.

 

We had a jiban chosa that cost about 50,000 yen for a flat site that had already been built on. I was told 70% of people in Nagano don't bother, though some may live to regret it. A lot of paddies rely on heavy irrigation and are not marshland, so your plot may well be fine. The only downside is that infilled land is generally made up of crushed rock and recycled concrete with no topsoil to speak of. If you want to plant a garden, you should bring in soil and build raised beds. On a tight site, access to do so might be easiest before you build the house.

[gerard 6]

Cheers, guys.

....yeah, I wonder how much top soil I'd need to lay grass... or a hedge... or maybe a little tree or two.

[gerard 6]

Financing.

 

Seems like we can get a 10 year loan for around 2% or less!! And it seems like the Government subsidizes the laon by giving you 1% cash back each year. At least that's what my wife said from preliminary research. Seems too good to be true.

[indosnm 0]

ahhh 2%, we can only dream!

The upside for us is that property prices rise, rather than fall! (can't have it all I guess)

[gerard 6]

Yeah, there is that.

[bobby12 0]

nice, but bare in mind depreciation of the house value. is it cheaper than renting?

[gerard 6]

I couldn't really get my head around the fact that houses depreciate in Japan for a long time but hey - you gotta live somewhere. Renting and owning seem more or less the same financially and the idea of having a place that's totally our own sounds pretty good right now.

[bobby12 0]

If there's no financial benefit, you have to balance the huge loss in flexibility (difficult to move) with the benefits (what are they?) of having your own place.

[thursday 1]

industrial standard cooking appliances and utensil storage.

[gurgle 0]

Originally Posted By: Indo

The upside for us is that property prices rise, rather than fall! (can't have it all I guess)

Land prices have cetainly been rising is a lot of places outside of Japan, but it's a bit of a myth that the house price does not depreciate. Westerners tend to spend a lot of money maintaining their properties and pretending they never spent the money. The Japanese typically do not spend this upkeep money. Outside of Japan there has been inflation in building costs and therefore in the building itself in the recent past, but it's wrong to think that the house price does not depreciate or cannot depreciate. For e.g., I reckon you need new kitchens etc. every 10-15 years. The fact is, most of the capital gain is on the land value. If we ever get Japanese style deflation....look out.

OK - That was nothing to do with buying a house in Japan. We bought a "used" one, it was unbelievably easy and way below replacement cost.

[shadowtec 0]

this is a really interesting thread... I don't see myself (at this point in life) living in japan but the idea of a holiday home (the log cabin type) where you can spend x months of the year snowboarding and playing radio (vk2fsng) is food for thought

 

I wonder how much it would cost ?

[indosnm 0]

Originally Posted By: gurgle

Originally Posted By: Indo

The upside for us is that property prices rise, rather than fall! (can't have it all I guess)

Land prices have cetainly been rising is a lot of places outside of Japan, but it's a bit of a myth that the house price does not depreciate. Westerners tend to spend a lot of money maintaining their properties and pretending they never spent the money. The Japanese typically do not spend this upkeep money. Outside of Japan there has been inflation in building costs and therefore in the building itself in the recent past, but it's wrong to think that the house price does not depreciate or cannot depreciate. For e.g., I reckon you need new kitchens etc. every 10-15 years. The fact is, most of the capital gain is on the land value. If we ever get Japanese style deflation....look out.

OK - That was nothing to do with buying a house in Japan. We bought a "used" one, it was unbelievably easy and way below replacement cost.

yeah gurgle, you need to spend cash on keeping it modern but compare the cost of a new kitchen every 10-15 years and a few other things you still get a better deal when you consider that you need to pretty much re build a "modern" house in Jp every 25-30 years.

[Go Native 70]

Gurgle it really depends on where you are in the cycle of the economy. Housing prices are likely to remain pretty flat for the short term in the west so spending up big on a reno now may not give you the sort of returns you're after. But during a period of rapid appreciation you can do very well. In Aus I bought a house and did a big reno on it. Even with the cost of the reno taken into account we sold it less than 2 years later for a 60% profit. 30%+ a year return on an investment is pretty damned good. I had a number of housing investments in Aus during the boom that did very well. I sold it all up when I came to live in Japan.

[indosnm 0]

unfortunately those days of boom are over. Still I am waiting for more bust, which I am certain we will see should interest rates rise in the near future. All these first home buyers have bought up at these record low rates... surely to cause some pain at the slightest rate rise..

[bobby12 0]

In the UK, Im not sure many first time buyers are buying now. People are wary of the interest rates ('the only way is up' as the 80s hit goes), further house price falls to come, and anyway it is hard to get a loan unless you have big deposit (many ftb dont have 25% to splash).

 

I am hoping to become a FTB in another 2/3 years, but first I want to get up to 25% deposit and I think there can only be further price falls to come during that period.

 

Lowering the interest rate should have caused a run on houses, but it had almost no effect. The fact is that houses are way overpriced compared to average income - I think av. house price has to fall another 40% to reach traditional ratio of house price/av. income. I believe it will come, when people finally change their mindset from 'house as investment' to 'house as a place to live'.

[bobby12 0]

Studying a little into my theory above, I see that house prices have:

- had a traditional ratio of 2-3 X av. income (1980-2000)

- went to 5.5 X av.income at peak of the bubble last year

- now come down to about 4.1 X

 

...so my hope is that house prices will come down another 25% to the traditional mean, or fall further.

 

source

[gerard 6]

Originally Posted By: bobby12

If there's no financial benefit, you have to balance the huge loss in flexibility (difficult to move) with the benefits (what are they?) of having your own place.

Flexibility is the biggest benefit to renting imo. Plus, renting a house is really reasonable in Japan.

Advantages to owning or building your own place:
You can decide everything and you should be able to get exactly what you want. That's a big one.
You can do whatever you want to the house and property. That's another big one.
You get a certain satisfaction from knowing that it's yours. That might be kind of materialistic or superficial but I don't think so.
The landlord isn't going to ask you to vacate the house because her son is moving back to Tokushima and wants to live there or something like that. It's yours and you can keep it as long as you like. If we rent, I imagine us moving around for one reason or another every few years and I'd rather have a more or less permanent home for the kids.

I'm really not saying owning is better though. I had always thought I'd rent, mainly because of the flexibility issue and the fact that houses depreciate a lot here. A lot of people luck into a really good deal with renting, but I've just kind of changed my mind recently.

Originally Posted By: bobby12

Studying a little into my theory above, I see that house prices have:
- had a traditional ratio of 2-3 X av. income (1980-2000)
- went to 5.5 X av.income at peak of the bubble last year
- now come down to about 4.1 X

...so my hope is that house prices will come down another 25% to the traditional mean, or fall further.

source

That's an interesting statistic. It might be more reflective of people just buying cheaper smaller houses when the market is down, rather than overall drops of housing prices, though that would obviously factor into it also. I've been mulling that one over a bit over lunch and we calculated our own ratio if things go as planned. Seems OK.

[bobby12 0]

those stats are for the UK, so no relation if you buying in japan.

 

today we visited friends who just bought a house (it had just been finished, they hadnt moved in it yet), it was pretty gorgeous inside but basically just a standard new japanese house that will be falling apart in 30 years. they are both 30 so not great timing to be needing a new place when you are about to retire. i didnt ask if they had consider that.