RetireJapan

I remember a while back there were some Australian banks in Japan that were offering house loans on property in your home country. Does anybody know if these still exist or if any Japanese banks are willing to offer mortgages? I did not find anything by Googling. A possible solution to British banks and building societies tightening up their lending criteria to expats.

I informally asked my bank here a few years ago. We had paid off our mortgage here, had a healthy bank account and income and they said that they would very likely not lend for a property overseas although they would be happy to lend us money for another property in Japan. Makes me wonder what the Japanese who buy property abroad do. We ended up just buying outright as it was so much less hassle! HSBC used to offer mortgages to expats but IIRC the terms weren't particularly good. It was about 2005 when I looked into it with them, though.

I think many Japanese people just pay cash-in-full for the property - especially if they are going for the (now defunct) depreciation loop-hole. I can't speak for the UK, but some Canadian banks still offer foreigners loans for purchasing Canadian properties. It requires 35% down and there are other conditions so I am kind of surprised that UK lenders are so hostile to the idea.

On this post I have outlined the trials and tribulations of attempting to buy a house in the UK for an expat living in Japan. This being my second time of doing it I have the benefit of hindsight of experiencing it before about eight years ago. Everything has changed since then from level of salary, to monthly rental multiples for the value of the loan, job status (only full timers), stamp duty (much higher for second house owners), the removal of deduction of interest for your tax deductible for your tax return. This made the mortgage application procedure a challenge... What took me five days in Japan to get an offer from a bank. In the UK took me five long months. I had the seller's agents continually mailing me saying they were withdrawing their offer if things didn't move on. Finally I got the mortgage offer from the building society in early January, we had put in our offer in August.

I thought I had jumped through every hoop there was, and was pleased with myself that I had stayed the course. What could go wrong.... Anyway my solicitor had told me that there was a ground rent clause that it would double every twenty years, the ground rent seemed quite a modest sum of 500 pounds a year. It was seven years into the first twenty years (the flats were a new build) My solicitor told me that he had other clients who had had offers rescinded from lenders because of these ground rent clauses. Needless to say, it wasn't before long that my lender got in contact with me to say that they were rescinding my mortgage offer because of the ground rent clause.

The double of ground rent clauses has become a bit of an issue in the UK especially with new builds and now with houses, which were in the past always freeholds. Flats are on the whole are mostly leaseholds.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2017/ ... ed-to-know

Good luck to anybody trying this for themselves in the UK. The people who I have been talking to about this have all been cash buyers.

That really sucks.

With flats (apartments) in the UK you don't only have the ground rent problem you describe but also monthly maintenance charge. Following article describes some poor folks stuck in limbo as their charge increased from £90 per month to £500 or even more! This is a specific situation (fire safety upgrade) but the point is that stuff like this is out of your hands as a flat owner:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... w-cladding

... also you have the problem that you never know who your neighbors will be (top, bottom, left, right) or how much noise or other nuisance they make. For these reasons I personally prefer a house but understand houses where I'm looking (Liverpool) will be significantly more affordable than where you're looking (Oxford).

Hope you get something sorted eventually, good luck.

When the Grenfell fire came we got a letter from our landowners that our flat didn't have that type of cladding, actually it is just normal brick. It is a ground floor flat of a two storied apartment building. You are right about neighbours I have had issues with water leaks from the neighbours above into the bathroom, fortunately all been sorted out by my letting agent.

I am thinking that maybe the Bicester flat falling through was a blessing in disguise. The agent kept on saying how there was so much high level employment around the area especially with the Bicester Village- more visited than Buckingham Palace and the Tate Gallery by Chinese tourists- then you know what happened....

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... oronavirus

I have an apartment in London over 10 years now
Service charges started at 1500 per year and now are 3.000
If I do not pay these I can get a solicitors letter I was told
The high service charges also now impact the value of my apartment
The service I receive even I pay such a large amount is sub standard and there is nothing I can do about it
Beware of buying such leasehold properties in London

concerned wrote: ↑Tue Feb 25, 2020 11:43 pm I have an apartment in London over 10 years now
Service charges started at 1500 per year and now are 3.000
If I do not pay these I can get a solicitors letter I was told
The high service charges also now impact the value of my apartment
The service I receive even I pay such a large amount is sub standard and there is nothing I can do about it
Beware of buying such leasehold properties in London

I imagine that includes the ground rent, too? that does seem rather high over 10 years. I have had my flat in Oxford for 8 years and the service charge and the ground rent was about 1700 pounds when I bought the place and it is about 2000 pounds now, it appears to go up with inflation. Like you, I am not exactly sure what it pays for in the exteriors or gardening.

"I imagine that includes the ground rent, too? that does seem rather high over 10 years. I have had my flat in Oxford for 8 years and the service charge and the ground rent was about 1700 pounds when I bought the place and it is about 2000 pounds now, it appears to go up with inflation. Like you, I am not exactly sure what it pays for in the exteriors or gardening.*

The Ground rent is an additional 300 per year. Also I had a look at my statements for the last year and total service charge was actually 3,200 so including ground rent am paying 3,500... My building also has an elevator and there are about 25 units in the block. Oxford soounds like a better investment.

Hi. I'm not sure if this thread is still active but I have a question about tax wrt to BTLs outside Japan.

My understanding is that if you have been in Japan more than 5 years then you have to pay tax on income from outside Japan.

This would presumably include rental income from a BTL in the UK and assuming you're taxed on gross rental income (before costs like mortgage interest or whatever) your yield after tax isn't going to be great with the Japan taxman getitng a big slice of the pie.

Of course, you can say the same about any investment that's not in a tax efficient vehicle, but can anyone provide info on how JP tax works for foreign BTLs?

Cheers