Buying a house next year

[DragonAsh]

We pay about 60,000 yen a year for our 9 million yen manshon (market price is a bit higher, maybe 12 million?). Paid in installments, not too bad

Wow, that seems high? I live about 30 minutes outside Shinjuku in a fairly big four-bedroom Y25 million house and my property tax is a bit over Y70,000/year...

[RetireJapan]

Wow, that seems high? I live about 30 minutes outside Shinjuku in a fairly big four-bedroom Y25 million house and my property tax is a bit over Y70,000/year...

Is it new? I think I read somewhere that new buildings pay less property tax for a while... ours is 27 years old unfortunately, so no mortgage rebate or discounting

[DragonAsh]

Definitely not new. It was renovated, but the house itself is I think 17 years old or something like that? The renovations did help with things like earthquake insurance and such, but didn't result in any change in the property tax. We're living right next door to the in-laws, in a slightly smaller house and the property tax on that property is roughly the same (a bit less).

[donpaulo]

...
... However the property tax is outrageous and only goes higher just about every year. In fact my wife often will not read any letters from the tax folks in the evening as they cause her to become upset and lie awake at night. Its going to get worse too. MUCH worse so be prepared for that.
...

This puzzled me when it was posted, and since Kiyora999 has quoted it, I'll offer my two cents.

We've owned for 25 years or so (single unit, wood-framed house), and our property taxes have only ever gone down.

This, in spite of some neighborhood improvements that have made our place more sellable (if it ever comes to that)--a major loop road went in 12-14 yrs ago, making anyone's commute and access to our place really easy. And as a part of that, they put in a park that's three doors away, and the sprinklers in the road (for snow) start one door away. There's another huge park (several hectares) about 5-700 meters away that was finished after the loop road.

Property taxes are one factor when considering what to buy. This last cycle (spring) we paid ¥55k and change; tax on new construction would be considerably more (4-5 times?). Also, AFAIK, renovation does not change your taxes, so savings on ten years' worth of taxes could go a ways towards improvement costs.

Wow, late to the thread err reply

We are in Shizuoka-ken and demand here is very high. There is no snow in winter and housing is selling rather briskly, although you have the odd outlier who keeps prices at near bubble highs. Eventually a developer buys these lots, subdivides and crams 2 or usually 3 houses onto the land with each one in the 25 million range.

Actually pre-Olypmic hype, our prices compared very closely with Tokyo. There are many 2nd homes here and many families from other prefectures are raising their kids as well. Its somewhat promising as Shizuoka folks don't really value education as much as others do, so our students are mostly from other prefectures.

please spaghetti monster, make my taxes GO DOWN !

I wish our taxes would go down.