Detached House in Tokyo - Does and Don'ts

[Tsumitate Wrestler]

My wife and I are looking for a detached house in the Nishimagome area of Tokyo.

4LDK +small outdoor space. Budget 70-80 million. SMBC says they can offer us a 0 down loan, off one partners salary alone. They said part of the loan can be used for reforming.

We have 18 Months, until my oldest enters elementary to get this sorted. We can also afford our current cheap company apartment up until we fully move out.

,........

I know nothing about real estate. However, I'm sure there are lots of seasoned opinions here, and I would love input.

Things like.

1. Make sure the property was constructed after 1984.
2. Make sure the land is included. Make sure sure there are no restriction on rebuilding.
3. Check flood maps.

[Moneymatters]

Nice area. A friend lives near. As explained to me, the land is strong and at decent elevation, but as you know flood risk can be very localized.
I will say though. Some of those roads are the reason hand cart fire trucks are still an actual thing in Tokyo.
If that's a consideration for you.
Although my view could be distorted because I drive a *"Wank Panzer"© and was almost in tears driving through some ginnels disguised as roads a few months ago.

This is a good resource.
https://japanfinance.github.io/spending/real-estate/

Knowing the property tax (for the land portion) allows you to reverse engineer a street price (I watch a lot of cop shows).
you can then see how that compares with data here.
https://tochidai.info/
this is one way to see how fair the land sale price is and what, if any, residual value the seller is placing on the building portion.
Good new is that given the area you can be sure of future demand for the location.

Once you have a survey (building inspection) complete it might be good to share results here.

We are also in 23ku. For the outside space. we felt like celebs having a 3m*3m deck on one corner of our plot. It allowed us to do a lot of entertaining when the kids where young.

oh, we share a small dead-end bit of road between 5 houses.
That's never been an issue as it gets such a small amount of traffic.
Three of us also share a retaining wall which "needed" some work recently that was handled amicably by one neighbor selecting the biggest brand most expensive home maker they could find to do the "repairs"...

Having a house is great even if there are just a few meters between buildings. You might be fortunate with friendly neighbors otherwise it's super easy to ignore them.

*I actually drive a fully Electric 4*4 so I'm assuming Extinction Rebellion protestors will simply part for me like I'm Moses..

[CluelessToshika]

3. Check flood maps.

Check fire and liquefication (液状化) risk maps too, e.g.:

- https://www.higaisoutei.metro.tokyo.lg. ... gpred.html
- https://doboku.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/start/ ... a/top.aspx

[Kiro]

And on top of flood and 液体化, also check on the hazard maps if it’s not a plot of land inside a landslide area 土砂災害

[Tsumitate Wrestler]

This is a good resource.
https://japanfinance.github.io/spending/real-estate/

Knowing the property tax (for the land portion) allows you to reverse engineer a street price (I watch a lot of cop shows).
you can then see how that compares with data here.
https://tochidai.info/
this is one way to see how fair the land sale price is and what, if any, residual value the seller is placing on the building portion.
Good new is that given the area you can be sure of future demand for the location.

Thank you!

Check fire and liquefication (液状化) risk maps too, e.g.:

- https://www.higaisoutei.metro.tokyo.lg. ... gpred.html
- https://doboku.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/start/ ... a/top.aspx

And on top of flood and 液体化, also check on the hazard maps if it’s not a plot of land inside a landslide area 土砂災害

Thank you!

[Deep Blue]

One thing that doesn't appear to be very common in Japan, but we insisted on was a full survey. If you are buying a new house it shoudl be ok to skip but we went for a 30+ year old home so I wanted to make sure there were no nasties down the line. The surveryors went into all the crawlways, up in the attic, took moisture readings in the wood, checked for termites etc, assessed a few cracks in the facing - all stuff I'm not comptent to do. They also did the easier stuff of checking all the windows, doors, taps, gas, water, electricity etc.

All written up with photo's and recommendations.

The company name is Sakura home inspection and I'm happy to recommend them

https://www.sakurajimusyo.com/

[goodandbadjapan]

One thing that doesn't appear to be very common in Japan, but we insisted on was a full survey. If you are buying a new house it shoudl be ok to skip but we went for a 30+ year old home so I wanted to make sure there were no nasties down the line. The surveryors went into all the crawlways, up in the attic, took moisture readings in the wood, checked for termites etc, assessed a few cracks in the facing - all stuff I'm not comptent to do. They also did the easier stuff of checking all the windows, doors, taps, gas, water, electricity etc.

All written up with photo's and recommendations.

The company name is Sakura home inspection and I'm happy to recommend them

https://www.sakurajimusyo.com/

This was something that surprised me - I asked about a survey and everyone looked at me as if I was weird. They just said, 'Oh, the real estate company that's selling it has checked everything.' I would have thought the mortgage provider would insist on it! Anyway, we did ask a guy we know (just a sort of labourer guy who worked on renovating houses) to have a look and see if there is anything obvious. But we also had two years' snagging in the contract so if we found anything in the first two years the selling agent would have to get it fixed. Luckily, it turned out okay.

[Deep Blue]

We bought our house “as seen” when the selling party didn’t want any responsibility for defects after signing. This is how all transactions for used homes work in the UK so it didn’t bother me but apparently it’s a bit unusual here.

I used it to knock another 5 million off the price so turned out ok

[tokyojoe]

We bought our house “as seen” when the selling party didn’t want any responsibility for defects after signing. This is how all transactions for used homes work in the UK so it didn’t bother me but apparently it’s a bit unusual here.

I used it to knock another 5 million off the price so turned out ok

Although it is generally how things are sold in the UK you do have some protections.
Firstly most people will have a survey done -indeed I think it might be compulsory if you
are going to be using a mortgage to buy the property. As well as the point of the survey being
to let you know any problems with the property the other point is that it effectively acts as an
insurance policy. If there is something amiss which the surveyor missed (but should have picked up)
you will be able to get due compensation since chartered surveyors carry Professional Indemnity Insurance.
Secondly the official property report that is part of the sales contract is reasonably specific on detail
- for example it should state how old the boiler is etc. If it is found that false information has been entered
by the seller then you would then have the opportunity to take legal action. It is still massively better
to find these things before you buy of course, since even with these protections you can certainly
be hit by something that finds its way through some of the gaps,
there are certainly substantial risks still, but there is some protection in the system.

Do Japanese surveyors have Professional Indemnity Insurance?

[Deep Blue]

My experience of UK surveys is they will disclose anything and everything and couch it in generalities precisely in order to avoid liability for any subsequent issues.

“May be”, “Potential for”, “can not eliminate the possibility of” etc etc. Most houses sound like they are about to fall down if you read a full serveyors report

However I believe most reports are the basic minimum required for mortgage provision rather than a more comprehensive one that costs several times as much and most people don’t want to pay for.