Where do you start buying your own home?

[captainspoke]

I've yet to see an even passingly acceptable kitchen in any tate-uri house.


edit: I guess builders are just ticking boxes, and have never prepped/cooked a meal.

[Rezz]

Thanks for the replies so far. We have a few viewings lined up at some model homes with 4 different companies over the next 3 weeks: Sekisui Haimu (Sekisui Home's little brother), Panasonic Homes and Toyota Homes (3 bigger name ones to keep the wife happy) along with Ai Koumuten (a smaller company with good insulation standards for me).

As someone mentioned here, most of the land in and around the city seems to have conditions attached, so we're going to try and find a housemaker we like first, then get them to try and find land for us that they can build on.

[Tony]

We're currently building a house, and we found our architect via the passive japan association website. I wanted something that was airtight and well insulated, not quite passive house as that's out of our price range, but something very good by Japanese standards.

We then found the land ourselves. On suumo and sites like it you can set search parameters for land that has no requirement to use a certain company.

[Ori]

Don't forget about location. If you plan to have kids, you should consider buying house in the best neighborhood you can afford, with good school (public or private, depending on your plans), abundance of hoikuen (if your wife plans to go back to work) and no municipal housing in vicinity (I've seen enough kids from good families to screw their lives because of wrong kind of friends they made in school years).
Unfortunately, if you go that route, you might find out that you don't have a luxury to build a custom house anymore , so choose wisely.
On the upside, land in such locations usually don't depreciate, and might even appreciate (the building itself will depreciate, naturally), so it will be less "not an investment".
Recently I had to reluctantly let go of a house which ticked all the checkboxes, but the population report from the agent showed that 90% of the population in the area was over 70yo, and the estimate was that in 10 or 20 years it was going to get even worse. Although the area used to be more on a affluent side, there was no development going on or planned, no facilities for elderly and general feeling of decline. And that was in Tokyo, mind you (not 23ku, though).

[Kanto]

Don't forget about location. If you plan to have kids, you should consider buying house in the best neighborhood you can afford, with good school (public or private, depending on your plans), abundance of hoikuen (if your wife plans to go back to work) and no municipal housing in vicinity (I've seen enough kids from good families to screw their lives because of wrong kind of friends they made in school years).
Unfortunately, if you go that route, you might find out that you don't have a luxury to build a custom house anymore , so choose wisely.
On the upside, land in such locations usually don't depreciate, and might even appreciate (the building itself will depreciate, naturally), so it will be less "not an investment".
Recently I had to reluctantly let go of a house which ticked all the checkboxes, but the population report from the agent showed that 90% of the population in the area was over 70yo, and the estimate was that in 10 or 20 years it was going to get even worse. Although the area used to be more on a affluent side, there was no development going on or planned, no facilities for elderly and general feeling of decline. And that was in Tokyo, mind you (not 23ku, though).

My understanding in regards to Junior and senior high schools in Japan was that you need to pass entrance exams to gain admittance.

So you can live next to a good school, but that is no guarantee of anything...

[Ori]

Junior high is compulsory, so there are no exams for the public ones.

[Jake]

My wife and I are considering buying a house now that I have PR and we have some kids. We have a few basic ideas of what we would like; natural light, an island counter kitchen, a decent sized living room and a small garden. I'd also be interested in insulation and maybe solar panels.

The problem we're having is how to take the first step. My wife would like a new designer home, whereas I think I'm more for a prefab or something in the middle. For the homeowners on here - how did you start looking? We're considering going to a Suumo counselling counter because we don't really have anything else to go on. Any advice appreciated!

In my opinion, and based on experience:
1. As suggested SUUMO is good, or ATHOME

2. Forget the designer stuff, buy a house for which someone else has taken the depreciation hit, and you can afford.
You can fit your "island counter kitchen" later, Japanese house prices are going nowhere except down.

3. If that fails get a new wife

[Rezz]

Don't forget about location. If you plan to have kids, you should consider buying house in the best neighborhood you can afford, with good school (public or private, depending on your plans), abundance of hoikuen (if your wife plans to go back to work) and no municipal housing in vicinity (I've seen enough kids from good families to screw their lives because of wrong kind of friends they made in school years).

Very useful insights, thank you. We already have a one year old and we're planning for another in the next year or two. We're currently aiming to build in one of the quieter wards in the city, mainly due to it being a bit greener and having some space to spread out. It seems to have generally good comments online regarding safety and local schools. The "best neighborhoods" would likely mean building a much smaller house in a busier ward right alongside a bunch of others, which isn't something I think we'd be happy with in the long run.

2. Forget the designer stuff, buy a house for which someone else has taken the depreciation hit, and you can afford.
You can fit your "island counter kitchen" later, Japanese house prices are going nowhere except down.

This was a big issue for me initially, but I've decided that I'm comfortable paying more for a house that has everything we want and can enjoy now rather than having to renovate or "make do" with. With the cost of a mortgage being so low here, I'll be happy to be paying less than I currently pay in rent for a space the whole family can enjoy. The bonus of having land to leave to the kids at the end of it all is just the icing on the cake, even if it's not worth that much. I know that property isn't really a monetary investment here, but I'm sure it'll be a quality of life investment.

[SZQ]

OP, hope you don't mind me joining this thread. We have started a similar journey so didn't want to create new one. Have you made any progress?

We have decided to buy a place because we plan to stay in Japan for the remainder of our lives so not really bothered about depreciating asset. Want a place to call our own and live in comfort.

I'm in my early forties already so left it a little late. We are both foreigners and no PR yet (3 years in Japan so far). I know this will make getting a house loan difficult but it's not impossible so we're going to give it a shot. We're both full time permanent employees and work for large stable Japanese companies with a combined income of roughly 10m. We live in Kanagawa, work in Tokyo.

I know for sure I don't want those new prebuilt homes. I've seen a lot of flyers in the mail about those and they all seem badly designed and cheaply made. I dislike living+dining+kitchen all in one room. The kitchens themselves are tiny. The worst thing is that all the homes are squashed together, no pavements, no greenery, no privacy. Just depressing frankly. Would rather rent.

Would love to find land and hire an architect and design my own home from scratch but we really don't have the knowledge or time to do it.

So that leaves a used house or stock/custom house from a builder. 10-20 year old used home would be perfect but need some luck to find one in a good location. There just aren't that many available are there? Something bad must have happended for the seller to sell at a huge loss...

We went to a model home park (in Toyosu) for the first time last weekend to have a look at new houses built by the big names. They were amazing! Obviously those are unrealistic for us and are there to show off their fancier designs but interesting anyway. We were going to visit all of them but only managed two. Takes a lot longer than I thought and is quite mentally tiring speaking with the sales people (our Japanese level is not great N3/4 level).

Our mistake was that the two we visited may have been the most expensive companies, Hebel and Ichijo! The model homes were very large but what surprised us was that they were both three stories. Apparently meant for multiple generations of families in the same house. Hebel quoted 90m and Ichijo (iSmart model) quoted 80m for the house alone! Although, we are only interested in a single family house with two stories but would like some decent space.

Apparently Ichijo have underfloor heating in all their houses which is uncommon in Japan I think. Hebel have a 30 year warranty which sounds great and the sales guy was pitching the fact that their houses last a lot longer than others (70 years+). Both seem really well made with good insulation. Hebel house seemed a little bit more premium in my opinion.

Anyway, going to try and visit some other companies in the next few weeks that hopefully fit our budget better which is around 60m max. including land. Maybe our budget is unrealistic.

Sorry for the long post My question is, do these companies divulge the rough construction costs of their houses anywhere? So we can rule out those that are out of our range. Obviously it would be an estimate but it would be nice if they gave example like "this model, this size and design, without appliances costs this much to build".

[Beaglehound]

Regarding cost, we are in the sticks and had a house built last year by a local builder (one carpenter who basically subcontracted everything else) and it cost just over 20 million for a 34 tsubo house over 2 stories with a concreted car port, including air conditioning (which doubles as the heating system). Another 700k for concrete piling as the land was soft, but we figured that is an investment anyway. It’s built with cypress wood (metal siding), has decent double glazing, rockwool insulation throughout, a mid range kitchen with IH cooker, low end bathroom (still nice enough), ecocute boiler, laminate flooring, decent lighting system. Just to let you know that, although building costs are likely to be higher where you are, the house build does not have to cost the earth, especially if not everything has to be top of the range.