Older house/Renovation/purchase

[Ori]

I often wonder what the definition is Slightly used means in Japan.
For me around 20 years is slightly used.LOL although in Japan I expect its, last week.LOL.

Around 0-5 yrs I'd say.
Many foreigners (including myself) start house hunting thinking that they are smarter than "stupid" Japanese and will make a great deal buying a 15-25 yrs old house for a price of a land and will have a comfortable life there. Well, Japanese are not stupid and prefer new houses for a simple reason that typical Japanese house is not build to last and furthermore, Japanese building standards (particularly, insulation) were much worse in the past (and are still not great).
Also, that's when stuff around the house, like water heater starts breaking, roof and wall maintenance are needed etc. Often, buying a prefab house or building an inexpensive custom house is a better deal.

[Bubblegun]

I often wonder what the definition is Slightly used means in Japan.
For me around 20 years is slightly used.LOL although in Japan I expect its, last week.LOL.

Around 0-5 yrs I'd say.
Many foreigners (including myself) start house hunting thinking that they are smarter than "stupid" Japanese and will make a great deal buying a 15-25 yrs old house for a price of a land and will have a comfortable life there. Well, Japanese are not stupid and prefer new houses for a simple reason that typical Japanese house is not build to last and furthermore, Japanese building standards (particularly, insulation) were much worse in the past (and are still not great).
Also, that's when stuff around the house, like water heater starts breaking, roof and wall maintenance are needed etc. Often, buying a prefab house or building an inexpensive custom house is a better deal.

That's something I have to agree with. My father in law built his house when he was 26 ish.... and asked them to build a bungalow. Houses are great when your young and fit....pretty heard when you hit 75+ and you can't climb those stairs.

I'm certainly not interested in making money, but I would like something comfortable.
I don't think we could buy new mainly because if we did buy new the price would be high, and at 55... have me working until im probably nearly 90 years old.LOL Yes I could buy new cheaper. but that leaves somewhere in the middle of nowhere. So I think its going to be a balance. if I could buy new, I would. I guess we'll have to see what the banks say on how much they'll loan us.
Im going to put a deposit of 4 million yen down.

I hate iPhone typos. Sorry!

[captainspoke]

I often wonder what the definition is Slightly used means in Japan.
For me around 20 years is slightly used.LOL although in Japan I expect its, last week.LOL.

Around 0-5 yrs I'd say.
Many foreigners (including myself) start house hunting thinking that they are smarter than "stupid" Japanese and will make a great deal buying a 15-25 yrs old house for a price of a land and will have a comfortable life there. Well, Japanese are not stupid and prefer new houses for a simple reason that typical Japanese house is not build to last and furthermore, Japanese building standards (particularly, insulation) were much worse in the past (and are still not great).
Also, that's when stuff around the house, like water heater starts breaking, roof and wall maintenance are needed etc. Often, buying a prefab house or building an inexpensive custom house is a better deal.

I disagree. @Bubblegun--reread my post on the first page. We didn't think we were smarter, we just thought a house would be nice. We had only the faintest glimmer that it was old enough that we were only buying it for the price of the land. We hadn't even looked at many places, and this one just seemed good enough. Price, rather than condition, was the major factor.

We've thought about moving, or rather I have. The main problem with most any house I look at is the kitchens--and this is especially true with any new house on the market. It's depressing--houses that might be acceptable in most other ways have kitchens that look like they were designed/laid out by someone who has never cooked, let alone spent any time in one.

A kitchen should be "U" shaped--and the sink, the stove, and the refrigerator should form a triangle--and no two of them should be in a line. One common fault of pre-made (new) houses is a giant sink (wow! ) and almost no counter space to prep anything. https://i.imgur.com/lrdlWXA.jpg <--To get that kind of kitchen in a new house, it'd have to be architect-designed, and even if they understood and got it right (ha!), the budget would be creaking and about to break. And that's a kitchen in a 55-year old house. (It should have been a deep bay window, more shelf space, instead of what's there.)

One positive I see is that your wife seems okay with an older house. One negative, is that you don't have any DIY background. But youtube is your friend, a great resource.

[RetireJapan]

A kitchen should be "U" shaped--and the sink, the stove, and the refrigerator should form a triangle--and no two of them should be in a line.

We renovated our manshon kitchen in 2020 -pretty expensive but a huge boost in quality of life. Went from tiny cramped kitchen with no space to big open island with loads of counter space, nice oven, dishwasher, etc.

Definitely something that can be retrofitted, and we didn't need to spend as much as we did (we got it custom made with all the wood cupboards etc. made to measure.

Before:

After (the big electric oven/microwave normally lives in a cupboard and only comes out once a year to cook turkey:

[captainspoke]

Ben--that looks great!

***

https://suumo.jp/chukoikkodate/ishikawa ... _97479917/
As someone who browses, this place looks interesting to me. 1975, so 45+yrs old, 119m2 of floor space, the lot is 269m2. I've seen the outside of this place in person, but have never been inside. ¥550万. The big washitsu looks fine--maybe replace the tatami, and that's an 8 and 6, so a 14-mat dining/living room, and a little extra space before the windows to the outside. Of course have the kitchen reformed, and that size would be fine to work with. The window is like ours was--that could be bigger but the trade-off is where the cabinets above it would go, probably the opposite wall.

The other first floor room (pic just after the floor plan) looks like it'd be fine until you really want to do something to it--so just new curtains and light in the meantime (carpet?). New wallpaper in the toilet would hold that for a while. Have the bath area done with the kitchen, hot water for both. The upstairs rooms are not too bad as is. Stairs are narrow, but not steep like many older places.

[Bubblegun]

I often wonder what the definition is Slightly used means in Japan.
For me around 20 years is slightly used.LOL although in Japan I expect its, last week.LOL.

Around 0-5 yrs I'd say.
Many foreigners (including myself) start house hunting thinking that they are smarter than "stupid" Japanese and will make a great deal buying a 15-25 yrs old house for a price of a land and will have a comfortable life there. Well, Japanese are not stupid and prefer new houses for a simple reason that typical Japanese house is not build to last and furthermore, Japanese building standards (particularly, insulation) were much worse in the past (and are still not great).
Also, that's when stuff around the house, like water heater starts breaking, roof and wall maintenance are needed etc. Often, buying a prefab house or building an inexpensive custom house is a better deal.

I disagree. @Bubblegun--reread my post on the first page. We didn't think we were smarter, we just thought a house would be nice. We had only the faintest glimmer that it was old enough that we were only buying it for the price of the land. We hadn't even looked at many places, and this one just seemed good enough. Price, rather than condition, was the major factor.

We've thought about moving, or rather I have. The main problem with most any house I look at is the kitchens--and this is especially true with any new house on the market. It's depressing--houses that might be acceptable in most other ways have kitchens that look like they were designed/laid out by someone who has never cooked, let alone spent any time in one.

A kitchen should be "U" shaped--and the sink, the stove, and the refrigerator should form a triangle--and no two of them should be in a line. One common fault of pre-made (new) houses is a giant sink (wow! ) and almost no counter space to prep anything. https://i.imgur.com/lrdlWXA.jpg <--To get that kind of kitchen in a new house, it'd have to be architect-designed, and even if they understood and got it right (ha!), the budget would be creaking and about to break. And that's a kitchen in a 55-year old house. (It should have been a deep bay window, more shelf space, instead of what's there.)

One positive I see is that your wife seems okay with an older house. One negative, is that you don't have any DIY background. But youtube is your friend, a great resource.

Sorry if I misunderstood. I heard some non Japanese think they can buy cheap and somehow make huge profits.
I understand what your saying. For me it’s mostly about the deposit I have, and also my age and then carrying that loan for…however many years.
Buying a house when your a young “Japanese” salaryman is fine, but I certainly have some doubts. I even squeaked at the mortgage guy saying we can apply for a loan and just pop in 35 years just to make it look smaller.
Now there is no way on this island, planet of universe and I working doing head shoulders knees and toes at 80, 90 years old. In fact I’ll probably be lucky to even touch my own knees and toes at that age. So the cunning plan is ( according to Baldrick) to have the lot paid off by 65.
I’ve seen two places that a company has renovated which were ok. The other one we saw looked like it came from Hiroshima, and was half way up what seemed like Mount Fuji. So the wife kicked it into touch.
Instead of buying a smaller new place,
I don’t mind buying an older property with more space/ garden, and spending another 5 million improving it.

Even though I’ve been here for what seems an eternity I realize I’m culturally illiterate when it comes to buying a property here. So I’m glad everyone is chipping in, and keeping me in the rails. The wife isn’t really one for reading up on this stuff. But I do think that cheap will either mean it’s in the middle of nowhere, or closer to the town but really bad condition. and expensive might mean a matchbox nearer the city.
Two things for sure that will be done on what ever we find is
1 a new kitchen
2 a new bathroom.

The wife thinks we could borrow the money from the bank.

[Bubblegun]

A kitchen should be "U" shaped--and the sink, the stove, and the refrigerator should form a triangle--and no two of them should be in a line.

We renovated our manshon kitchen in 2020 -pretty expensive but a huge boost in quality of life. Went from tiny cramped kitchen with no space to big open island with loads of counter space, nice oven, dishwasher, etc.

Definitely something that can be retrofitted, and we didn't need to spend as much as we did (we got it custom made with all the wood cupboards etc. made to measure.

Before:

After (the big electric oven/microwave normally lives in a cupboard and only comes out once a year to cook turkey:

Very nice kitchen.
My brother just spent 30,000 pound doing up his place back home. Sooo jealous when I look at his kitchen/place.
But he did knock in a wall or two to make the place feel bigger.

A nice u shaped kitchen or island would be nice.

[Tokyo]

Any advice anyone on making offers, and if you managed to negotiate a price?
We noticed how ( as seems the norm here) they have the selling price, then they all start to add on, Tax for A, Insurance for B, home loan insurance for C, and something else for D. It turned out to be around an extra million yen on top.

Yes, we have experiences of both making and receiving offers since we bought and sold Japanese property in the past 15 months.

After we found the manshon we wanted, we asked our agent for advice as we wanted to go low with our first offer. He was a cool, low key guy who didn’t exaggerate or push so we trusted him. He said that the only danger of a low offer was to a private owner who may become offended and cut you out of further consideration. A low offer to a corporate owner is obviously not taken personally and is therefore safer. Since the owner was corporate, we started low and negotiated to an agreement. Ultimately, we were only able to negotiate a couple of million off but we are extremely happy with our purchase. (Prices in our area went up 9% last year - that’s an increase of about ¥700,000. Monthly!)

Next, we experienced being in the position of receiving offers when we sold our place. On the first day of sale a guy offered about ¥3mill lower than the asking price. Two days later, another offered full price. But because the 2nd offer was from a super fussy guy who asked literally hours of questions, we asked the 1st guy if he would increase his offer and meet us halfway. He declined but it demonstrates how we were willing to accept ¥1.5 mill less to deal with a less troublesome buyer.

Nice guys don’t always come last. Good luck!

[mighty58]

I did a similar thing to what you’re considering. I bought a 20 year old, 3-storey, 180m2 house, and had the following done prior to moving in:

Exterior

• Roof central pillar replacement
• Roof tile replacement/repair where necessary
• New roof paint
• Siding replacement/repair where necessary
• New caulking for all windows
• New coat of paint for third floor + any other exposed siding
• New waterproofinging coats for four balconies
• Pressure wash

Interior

• new kitchen (straight, just under 3m)
• new bath unit (1620 size)
• new wood floorboards (1st and 2nd floors)
• underfloor heating for 2nd floor living room
• new underfloor insulation for entire first floor
• new main bathroom sink unit w/shelving (180cm long)
• new secondary sink unit
• two small toilet-side sink units
• complete replacement of wallpaper
• new genkan shelf unit for shoes
• lighting – new LED units throughout
• conversion (removal) of one large closet into floor space

Cost: 11m yen, rolled into the mortgage. btw, the shop that did our renos put some pics up on their website, if you’re interested: https://www.actyhome.com/reform/allreform-0.html. As you can see, we tried to keep it clean and simple, more of a spruce-up than a full re-design.


Tips? I have many, but here’s a couple important ones:

• Get at least three estimates. I got one from a big name place, a regional mid-size player, and a small local shop. I went with the local shop, and not just because their estimate was the lowest. Being a big customer for a small shop has its benefits. In order to properly assess and ensure estimate comparisons are apples to apples, you need a solid understanding of what you want to do. So make up a list, and give the same conditions to each shop. Don’t just give them the list though, walk through the house with the person and describe to them what you want to do. Observe how well they listen, and how closely they actually examine the state of what needs to be done, that will all be part of your assessment. Of course, leave leeway to see how creative/helpful they can be as well. You will need to talk to these people over several meetings lasting 1-2 hours each, so make sure you like them.
• The devil is in the details. Request catalogues, pore over them, go to showrooms, and just really get into the weeds of sorting through the different options and configurations. Generally, a base grade of a higher-end line will be far superior to a high-spec version of a mid-line range, without much difference in costs. Understand which options are worth shelling out for (like a solid stone floor for your bathroom) and which are just expensive fluff/vanity options.

As for the inspection, there was a previous thread on this here, but definitely do it. It will help you better understand the house and to prioritize what you need done. It will also likely serve as excellent material to aid you in price negotiations, because they will find several things. I ended up negotiating about 10% off the price of the house.

[Beaglehound]

That looks really nicely done at a decent price. I guess the key is the age of the house and the state it’s in. Your house was ‘new’ enough to allow the relatively light touch approach but old enough to have depreciated significantly, perhaps close to completely. A good find.