Creating a Sense of Urgency
The house-building saga goes on, and on, and on. In part one I explained why we are suddenly looking for a company to build a house for us. In part two I shared our initial quote, an eye-watering 46 million yen. In part three I showed our latest plans and quote.
Now we are hurtling towards an artificial deadline set by Ichijo Komuten. We stayed in their model house on Sunday night and had an unexpected meeting yesterday afternoon where our guy suddenly made an impassioned speech about how great his company is and how they would like an immediate answer after they give us the detailed quote next month.
I kind of spaced out during his speech, then told him we’d need the quote to make a decision and couldn’t promise anything in terms of when we would respond.
He had been doing really well providing excellent service and reeling us in until that point, but I think he really blew it with the clumsy sales pitch (my wife and I are both familiar with sales from her language school) and lost a fair amount of emotional goodwill. I’m going to see him one more time before the quote, so I am planning to ask him to get it as low as possible as that is what we will use to make a decision.
One problem I have is that they seem to have the best off-the-shelf product I’ve seen so far. I like the idea of getting the most solid house, then possibly upgrading the interior with nice furniture later (the base design is really simple and neutral). This means that there are not really any comparable options.
I guess the question is how good does the house have to be, and how much is the extra worth? For example, if Ichijo is say 90% quality, would it be worth going with another company that was a bit cheaper if their house was 80%? Or considerably cheaper for 70%?
Some updates:
- Our in-laws agreed to pay 1/3 of the cost (tentatively pegged at 14 million for the Ichijo quote). This is one huge step forward, as I would not really have been willing to do it otherwise. This apparently is about 70% of their remaining savings (they will have 6 million left if we build the house, as well as their >200,000 yen a month pension income). We will pay the bills after we move in, and cover any catastrophic expenses (can’t imagine any, but my wife said she will take care of them if necessary). This set their mind at ease enough to agree.
- My father-in-law already made a will giving the land and property to my wife. We’re going to assume this means it’s not necessary to transfer ownership immediately.
- We met up with my brother-in-law (wife’s older brother) yesterday. He’s fine with whatever we want to do, but suggested we just renovate the existing house and try to expand it. I guess we could take another look at that option for completeness’ sake.
- According to Ichijo, the walls and roof won’t need maintenance (painting/weatherproofing). They are going to give us all the check/maintenance schedules with the final quote. The roof is actually made of the solar panels.
- We ran into a problem with the ‘cliff law’. The property has steep dropoffs on two sides, so there are safety regulations as to where buildings can be built. Our original bungalow plan may no longer be viable as it might be too close to the edge.
- My father-in-law doesn’t want to lose too much of the garden/land to the new building. We might be able to move the building to the road side (which also has the advantage of blocking everything off) to save more of the garden and get the house away from the cliff.
- The model house we stayed at on Sunday was a normal two-story home. I hated it. I haven’t had stairs in my home for about six years now, and I found them really steep. Also the sound carries horribly from the first to the second floor (it has one of those open spaces above the dining room), and if we’re going to have two generations on different time schedules that could be a deal-breaker.
- The fittings (bathroom, etc.) seemed kind of cheap. Ichijo have very limited options (they claim this keeps the prices down) but they did say we could deduct the price of their stuff and choose our own from outside suppliers as long as it was mainly cosmetic and didn’t affect the insulation, air-tightness, etc.
- The ceilings in the model house felt low. When we got back to our manshon, I checked and our ceilings are quite a bit higher. We asked our guy and the standard ceiling height for Ichijo is 2.4m. They have an option to raise them to 2.6m (first/ground floor only) for an extra 20,000 yen per tsubo (so an extra million or so for the entire bungalow). I think this might be worth paying.
- For the solar, we are going to look at a 10.5 kw installation (classed as commercial, so we’d get the 21 yen feed-in tariff guaranteed for twenty years, instead of 28 guaranteed for ten) and see how the numbers look.
- Apparently my wife and I might be able to get a joint mortgage (it’s slightly iffy as she is self-employed and her income isn’t guaranteed), and then we would be able to split the tax deduction (I probably wouldn’t be able to use all of the deduction, and maybe not any of it if I leave my job as planned in a few years). We’ll have to see if banks will go along with that.
- I am getting seriously tired of this whole process and don’t really look forward to starting again with another company, or going the seemingly more complicated route of finding an architect to design a house for us. There is a definitely desire to just decide and get this over with. Of course this is what Ichijo are hoping to tap into with their false deadline.
So that is where we are. We’ll hear back about mortgage options and get the final quote next month. I will post again then to get feedback, but what do you think of where we are at the moment? Is there anything else I should ask before we get the final quote? Anything we’ve missed?
Hello Ben
Considering that this new house is going to be where an inter-generational family will probably be staying for the next few decades, or possibly even more, I would strongly recommend to do things at your own pace instead of attempting to reach a definitive conclusion.
The worst thing that could happen is to fork out even more in the future so as to rectify any overlooked aspects, or perhaps even regretted having built the house in the first place. Remember, haste makes waste!
The first step is always the hardest but also always the most critical – similar to how difficult it is to getting started investing for most. One possible way to lessen the tedium now would be to only finalize on the most critical aspects of the house like the space, layouts, power sockets locations etc, then get the house constructed.
After that is done, then perhaps you could approach another company to handle the minor details like the paint job, furniture and interior furnishings.
Hope this helps!
Hi Desmond
Thanks! The only pressing decision (and it’s not pressing, really) is to choose which company to go with. All the detailed planning happens after that.
The thing is, it takes about ten meetings (20-30 hours?) to get to a final quote with a company. As we’re coming to the end of that process, I really don’t want to start again from scratch with a new one…
Step by step though. We’ll see what the final quote looks like and take it from there. No rush at all.
42 million sounds a little steep to me. In Tokyo I paid mid 30’s, from memory (2015 construction, Asahi Kasei Hebel House, 2 story, 120msq).
But then, factors I think made in cheaper in my case
1) I did not opt for solar panels so that’s 2.5 million yen right there. I gather you are counting on that as an investment though.
2) We were told that overall material and construction costs were expected to increase in the following year (due to Abenomics etc). I believe this was true, and so the same house today could cost more for this alone, versus when we locked in our contract.
3) Another thing that apparently helped us keep our cost down was that our design was essentially a square box – no jigs and jags in the floor plan. Jigs and jags apparently increase construction costs, but may be unavoidable depending on the land on which you build, preferences, etc.
I felt somewhat rushed and as if I was overlooking things, but in the end the most important features of the house to us we got pretty right (good natural light utilization was key for us). Things like noise between 1st and 2nd floors is the sort of thing that we overlooked, but at least in our case hasn’t been a major issue to date.
If I were to start all over, the floorplan I would not probably change greatly – it’d be more details like extra sound proofing in this wall and that, etc. (I do recall feeling like I wanted to start over again at one point myself, but my spouse wasn’t having any of it!). The question I’d ask myself if I were you is, if you were to start over again, what would you change, and how fundamentally different is it from your current plan?
Hi SB
Thanks! The cost of the house is going to be around 30 million (according to the rough estimate we got last time). On top of that we have 2m to demolish the current house, 2.5m for sorting out the land (car parking, etc.), 3m for solar panels, and then fees and taxes and things.
We’ll see what the final quote looks like.
Ichijo was the best of the major housebuilders we talked to. If we went looking for other options, they would be: a) getting someone to renovate the current house (rip it apart and rebuild the walls, etc.), and b) getting an architect to design something from scratch and then manage the building of it. Reckon the renovation would be considerably cheaper and the architect could give us better design with similar quality.
Getting the quote on September 4th, so I’ll post details after that.
What Ichijo style are you looking at going with? My wife and I did a bit of looking around at houses on a whim a few months back, and dove deep into the rabbit whole. We talked to multiple house makers, did an overnight stay in an Ichijo place, but ultimately, decided to slow it down (with all the pitches coming in, we were scarily close to biting the bullet, but hadn’t really thought it through that well). My plan now is to get the family house, which is on a sizable amount of land, in a fairly good location, knock it down, and rebuild (it’s pretty old).
Hi Tony
We’re considering the i-smart series with optional ‘dessicant’ humidity control system.
Did you see anyone of comparable quality to Ichijo when you were looking around? We talked to about ten companies, but only Hokushu and Ichijo stood out (and Hokushu was more expensive with inferior tech).
The only other place that we liked was Sweden House. It’s not quite up to Ichijo when it comes to C値 and Q値 (not really sure what to call these In English, but it’s about how airtight the construction is, and how much power is required to heat/cool the house), but I just like their houses in general. We still go to check out newly built houses by Sweden House every so often. I have a plan in my head of what I want, but I’m not sure how much freedom you have with design with either of those companies. We’re a few years off still, though.
You’re doing it right, then. We’ve been doing this semi-full time for months now, and I am only just getting to what I feel is a baseline of basic knowledge…
I’d be happy putting it off a couple of years, but my wife wants to get it done as soon as possible (while her parents are still relatively healthy).
If you don’t even know if they can build the place you want, how can you make a decision?
That is an extremely pertinent question that we will be bringing up when we get the quote.
The way it seems to work is that you decide on a company, then pay them a one million yen deposit to lock you in, then they do all the planning and preparation work, then you give them 1/3 of the construction cost, then they build the house and then you pay the rest.
There is a chance that between us being fussy and the cliff wall, they won’t be able to design something we like that can also be built on that plot. I’m guessing we lose our million yen in that case, but I’ll see if I can get a better deal than that 🙂
I honestly don’t think you should have to pay them anything before they decide if they can build it or not. For sure, I wouldn’t pay 1 million. Our builder checked our land to make sure they could build on it before we paid for the land. Our purchasing of the land (from a different company) was dependent on us being able to build on it.
We didn’t have cliff issues, though.
Yeah, the cliff thing is really annoying because it is not something you can check in advance.
Apparently the way it works is that you submit the final design to the city planning office and they make a judgement as to whether that particular design is safe in that location.
And of course the company doesn’t want to make a final design (months of work) without a commitment from the customer.
We’ll see what they say next month.
Wow that’s quite expensive!
I was looking at prices on Saitama and Kanagawa last week with an easy access to Roppongi/Roppongi Itchome (not more than 1 change for commuting and 30-45mins max) and I found new houses (3LDK, 4LDK) at around 25-30 millions.
If I go a little further in Saitama (50 mins direct communiting with Saitama subway line to Roppongi Itchome, but not the most convenient for my boyfriend), 10-20M looks pretty OK too. But maybe it’s already constructed houses and there isn’t the flexibility you have I don’t know…
The quality of the house is going to be different. Also, sometimes with already built properties you might find a situation where the developer is having trouble getting rid of them and has been forced to lower the prices. A colleague of mine got a very cheap house in this way.
Although the cheapest/best value houses are probably 10-15 years old.
“Also the sound carries horribly from the first to the second floor …”
A local friend got an architect-designed/built house, and this has been one of his comments off and on. Not an open design like the one you stayed in, but still…
“…the cliff thing is really annoying because it is not something you can check in advance.”
I thought you could get briefed on the general conditions, and that builders would know in general based on experience. Maybe not?
Hi CS
The cliff thing is incredibly vague. We had a survey done, and to start with how they measure seems to be subjective, so we have two possible lines.
The final decision is made by the city planning office, and only after receiving the final plans for the build including full ground surveys for the land *and the cliff*.
Basically, a bit like the immigration office, it’s up to the officer you end up getting.
So the builder can say what they think will happen, but at the end of the day it’s not their decision, and it is a decision based on whether a bureaucrat believes a particular house design on a particular plot will be safe.
Looking at your one floor plan, I was thinking that you needed more storage places. Maybe they could put in a loft or an attic, with the pull down stairs. We also built a house with Asahi (so cement panels and steel frame) and what I like the most is a large storage room on the first floor (storing our seasonal clothes, suitcases etc, and then a pantry by the kitchen, which is kind of a junk room with shelves for food and the cat litter box etc. besides the regular closets etc. It makes a huge difference to have a place to store boxes etc. Just to share, Nancy
(maybe you could call the Before/After program and see if they would rebuild the original house, then you wouldn’t need to worry about the cliff, since the structure is already built)
Thanks Nancy, that’s a great point. Our latest plan has an extra walk-in closet for our bedroom. I hope it will be enough.
One thing is that I have a strong attraction to minimalism, and I find the more space we have the more crap we put in it!
We used to rent a 100 tsubo house, and when we moved out we needed two skips to get rid of all the stuff we couldn’t take to our current manshon. Haven’t missed a single thing.
I like the before/after program idea, but I couldn’t bring myself to mug enough for the cameras.
Spot on about not needing planning permission to renovate: our Plan B at the moment is a local firm that specializes in renovating houses -we’re going to see if they could handle it, and how much it would cost.
More interior storage space is always good, especially a pantry. If you have that, then you don’t need a stand-alone food storage cabinet. Same for dishes, the more built-in cabinets, the less need for a china cabinet (only need one for the display curios!).
Our house has 2.4m ceilings. I think you can get used to that height fairly quickly. It is just now you stayed one night and then back home to the higher ceilings. And it is easier to reach the light fixtures and any spiderwebs in the corners.
I think you can probably do better if you look for specific fixtures you want, such as kitchen sink, vanity/senmendai sink and counter (be sure to have those built to your and wife’s height, not just standard), with a wall mirror (not an all-in-one vanity with the make-up lights), and maybe even the type of toilets and lights. Depends on what kind of catalogs he uses.
What I don’t quite understand is why you would be talking to a house builder about furniture. They have no clue. You have to look for yourself, not just at catalogs, go to showrooms.
Yes, it is all very tedious, but as someone else already mentioned, this is a long-term investment, as in decades. So take your time. Ask how long the quote will be good for–one year, six months. If he says a week, you should give him the talk about you won’t decide under pressure like that. I guess that the builder has to line up his own ducks before building can start, and they want to hit the ground running when it does.
One question to ask could be about the whole building timeline, what is ideal time of year to start building in your area and how long is the building process?
Hi Catherine
Thanks! We’ll definitely think about storage space more when designing the final floor plans.
Ichijo makes everything themselves (kitchens, bathrooms, etc.). It’s all included in the price. It keeps the costs down. If you want to go off-spec you can delete the cost of their fitting and choose your own elsewhere, but it’s going to cost you a lot more 🙂
The timeline is about 14 months from signing the contract. The house is made in a factory in the Philippines, so it doesn’t really matter when it gets built. They slot the shell together in about three days apparently!
Take a one week holiday somewhere nice. Sit on a beach somewhere. Drink cocktails and think it all over when you’re not stressed out / busy. Get everything into perspective. Make a decision (if you can) – come back and go with what you’ve decided!
Thanks, Julian! Coincidentally we’ll be taking a short trip to Sweden next month, so that might be a chance to do some thinking about this.
We probably want to explore Plan B as well.
42 million is a friggin’ unbelievable number (and that’s outside of Tokyo, and land is not included?!!?!?!!). Sorry, but I would never, ever opt for that.
Another factor. When you rehab an old house, the property taxes don’t change; when you build new, they do.
Our taxes are now about 55,000/yr. If we rebuilt new, property taxes would be north of 200,000 (I think). So factor in about 15万 of extra taxes per year for building new.
Coincidentally, we’re going to talk to a renovation specialist company tomorrow too and see what they can do for us.
Stay tuned!
If I’ve learned anything from your posts here, it’s that I shouldn’t try to build a house in Japan.
Is that a fair assessment?
Ha, ha, probably 😉
You can build houses much cheaper, or you can pay a lot more than we are considering. I had a look at a couple of architects that might be able to build something of similar quality, but it would cost about 60% more so that is kind of beyond our budget!
I think objectively the best deals involve buying a well-built house 10-15 years old, outside of the main urban areas. As depopulation advances we’re going to see more and more empty buildings which should result in falling prices.
My house (in Okinawa) is about a year old. I’m pretty happy with the decision to build. 4 bed, 2 storey 28m not including land. Concrete.
Great to hear!
To be fair for us the cost of the house itself is ‘only’ about 30 million 😉
My wife and I went through the home buying process about 7 years ago. What you’re feeling isn’t unique, we also found it very tiring and drawn-out, and came away thinking we wouldn’t want to do ‘that’ again. But be patient, it’ll be better once it’s done.
Our first challenge, and the biggest, was the loan. We had unique circumstances, which were complicated by the Lehman shock which hit the world market the year before. It sounds like this won’t be that difficult for you, just make sure you know how much the bank expects you to provide for the downpayment. Took us over a year to save enough for the downpayment before a bank would seriously consider us. And make sure you have some extra available for unexpected costs.
I hope that the fact that the property is near a cliff doesn’t slow down your construction or necessitate costly reinforcement. We know someone who experienced that type of issue. The person who led us to our homebuilder already had plans to rebuild her house, but was delayed–her property bordered a hill and needed to be reinforced since it was settling/sliding a bit each year. The city was going to do that work for her and her neighbors, but it took them several years before they accomplished it. In the end, we finished our house well before hers was done. You’ve already had someone come by and take a look, I cannot think of anything else you can do. Best of luck on this front.
One of the things which steered us towards our homebuilder (Tokyu Homes Millcreek) was their extensive experience building American homes (as opposed to ‘American-style’ homes). My wife lived in one house in the US, and she so loved the design and central air that she wanted one here. Tokyu is connected with a US homebuilder, so they build with 2x4s and use a lot of components from the US, such as Anderson double pane windows and insulation. We also talked to Sweden House, but they didn’t have the same experience with central air. We love it. We had heated floors in the apartment we lived in Seoul, it’s standard there and does well in the Korean winters. However, Tokyu didn’t recommend it. The only thing I would want is a built-in humidifier with the central air.
Kitchens in Japan get no respect, they’re generally small and have little counter space. We moved a wall a bit to ensure that we got enough room in the kitchen. We went with a standard cabinet design from Tokyu, but extended the main counter about a meter, and added a second counter across the room for the microwave and toaster oven. (If your wife doesn’t want one of their designs, you can just as easily and probably more cheaply go with an Ikea or Nitori kitchen, and have your company install it.) Make sure the height of the countertop works for everyone who might use it. If you have space, an island is very handy in the kitchen, gives you extra counter space and storage underneath. We have fixed kitchen storage cabinets above the counters, so we had them install fluorescent lights under the cabinets to give the counter lots of light, all from one switch.
As others have said, storage, storage, storage. In our case, we put a six tatami walk-in closet with the master bedroom, a medium-sized pantry in the kitchen, a double-wide closet with shelves in the utility room and family room (helps minimize the clutter). I also made sure that they knew that we’d be storing heavy items, so they provided extra-strong shelves. We also had an attic installed.
You already talked about electric wall plugs, and I agree, more is better, and get enough amperage to avoid blown fuses. I had every room in our house wired for internet, although this may not be necessary with the higher quality wireless systems available nowadays.
Late in the design process, we decided to get a whole-house water filtration system. The filters are in a housing outside, before the water comes into the house. Note that chlorine still gets through. Along with feeding improved quality water to all the faucets, it also makes cleaning anything exposed to water, especially the ofuro, easier. My wife noticed immediately that her hair felt better after showering. We no longer buy water from the grocery store, it’s mostly what we drink. Highly recommended. If you’re interested, I can give you more details on the system we installed. Filters need to be changed annually, which are expensive in Japan, but I found that the same filters can be ordered much much cheaper from the US.
You’ve already heard from others that it’s better to do much of the outfitting of the house yourself, and I agree. The choices available from Tokyu were fairly limited. They had a lot of choices for wall coverings and curtains, but not that many for lighting fixtures and faucets. We ended up having Tokyu install the curtain rods, and then we order
Hi Tedley
Thanks for the really detailed comment! I think it might have been a bit cut off at the end, Weebly has a certain character limit.
Yes, the loan will be fine. We’ll probably try and put both of us on it this time so we can combine our incomes.
Storage. Yes. We will take another look at that. I like the idea of walk-in storage. Right now we use our spare room for that…
We get the final quote on Monday the 4th, and I’ll put something up about it on September 6th. Still quite a ways to go!
Here’s the rest of Tedley’s comment, by the way 🙂
“then we ordered the curtains from Nitori and installed them ourselves. We also used the light fixtures we had in our previous apartment, just had Tokyu install the right ceiling fixtures.
We had them install a full-length mirror on the door inside the walk-in closet, the only open space which wouldn’t get filled by clothing. To support this, they added a couple of hinges to the door so that it would withstand the extra weight.
As others have said, don’t get rushed by the company, you’re the paying customer. A house is the most expensive thing most of us buy in our lives, and there are so many things to decide. Our Tokyu salesman had to wait a year before we closed the deal, that’s an inevitable part of their job.
By the way, where will her parents live while the house is being rebuilt?”
We’ll figure out where my in-laws will live nearer the time. One option is to live with us (I don’t like this option, living with them in this small space for six months will do my head in), another is to rent them a flat in the same building. We’ll see what we end up doing and how the timing works out.
Like you mentioned somewhere, it is hard to find previous threads. But anyway, about getting a loan, I don’t remember if I mentioned anything.
Be sure that any loan you look at has you paying “principal + interest” each month from the very first payment. That is, the loan amount is divided by the # of months, and the interest is calculated however they do it.
Because we could make a large down payment, we only had a 10-year loan, with the interest rate good for 5 years. We paid the same principle each month plus interest. The interest was highest on the first payment and decreased over time. By the end of 5 years, we had paid half of the principle and my husband decided to pay off the loan at that time. The early-pay-off fee was way less than any additional interest on the loan. (The amount we could have earned on that money from investing it wasn’t worth the additional time of having the bank as a creditor.)
I say this because my husband had heard and read about people having agreed to loans and ended up paying only the interest for the first few years and no principle. So when it came time to renew the rate, 100% of the principle was still owed.
You may have to shop around for the loan. Don’t expect your usual bank to be grateful for any additional business from you. That is pessimistic, but highly likely unless you have an exceptionally good relationship with the loan manager.
Hi Catherine
Thanks! Good point about avoiding interest-only mortgages.
There are actually two types of ‘normal’ mortgage: one where you pay the same amount of principal every month and your interest goes down over time, and one where you pay the same amount of money every month, and the relative amount of principal within that goes up over time. Apparently the latter is more beneficial.
Fortunately our circumstances (public servant + okay income + low-ish loan) make us extremely attractive to banks, but I’m still planning to go around and see what is on offer 🙂
Not to hijack the thread, but the second kind of loan is the one to stay away from. That is the type with the interest front loaded, which is bad for you (good for the bank).
You know what front-loading of investment charges is in long-term contracts, it is the same at the bank. Not good for the consumer.
Try to get any bank to print out both scenarios. In the first scenario, payments start higher but continually decrease over time, and you are paying off the same amount of principle each month.
Also consider that maybe down the line if you have the chance to get a cheaper loan, you want as little principle as possible to transfer.
Hi Catherine
I think it depends on how you see debt. Personally I am happy to borrow as much as they will give me at 0.5% if I can invest the same amount and get 3-5% return 🙂
My understanding is that for the same payment, it’s better to pay the same amount each month and pay off the principal faster over time.
If you are assuming a higher payment in the second scenario, you are not comparing apples to apples.
For example, if you pay 40,000 yen a month, it’s better for you to keep paying 40,000 and have the principal payment increase over time. You will pay off the loan quicker than if you start off paying 40,000 yen but the interest payment goes down over time, reducing your payments but prolonging the loan.
In the end, you want to pay as little interest as possible. If you can get a loan for .05% and keep that rate for 30 years, go for it. But if when you read the fine print and find that they will adjust the rate after so many years, then you will want to have been paying off more of the principle each month.
Make the bank print out both scenarios for 25- and 30-year periods.
I think a post about mortgages in Japan might be useful. Time to do some research!
On the interest repayment method options, I wouldn’t say that constant principal payments are necessarily superior. It depends on circumstances. Seeking to minimize total interest payments from the outset of the mortgage is one, but not the only consideration.
In my case, I have a huge loan (huuuuuuge), and I opted to make constant monthly payments. Currently, interest makes up about a quarter of each monthly payment. Over time, this percentage of the monthly repayment amount that interest represents will decrease, while principal payment percentage will increase – but each month, the total sum amount I pay is always the same. This consistency is nice.
Conversely were I on the constant principal repayment option, I believe I’d be staring at bigger monthly payments now, but enjoying lower monthly payments during the latter part of the loan (and lower overall interest payments).
But rather than commit to paying higher repayments in the early term of the loan, I personally thought it better for my circumstances to opt to pay a constant amount each month, and seek to reduce the overall interest burden that I bear over time by instead making early payments, once a year. (Making such early payments is free with my financial institution.)
There are some pretty handy mortgage calculator tools online that help to simulate such matters.
My understanding is that for a given monthly repayment, constant payments are better.
Comparing them to a larger initial payment doesn’t make much sense to me as that involves paying more money so it is not comparing apples to apples 🙂
I also have constant payments on our manshon loan (just under a sixth of the payment is interest now, and that drops by 11 yen a month). It’s quite fun to see the principal payment rise over time.