RetireJapan

We have been looking at some properties, and quite a few have a clause saying "setback XYZm" (セットバック).

I was originally very unfamiliar with this term so I did not pay attention to it, but it turns out it may be a substantial issue in getting a house/land. They are also slightly cheaper (10%) than the rest of the houses.

The term seems to be used whenever the front road is less than 4m wide, hence when you rebuilt the property you can not build on the setback part.
We are a bit confused though as sometimes this part is classified as "private road", other times not.

I am unclear on the potential costs associated with these properties. But for people looking for new houses, I would add that to the list of important matters to consider, as from what I found, for private roads the owner needs to share/cover the cost of paving or other work needed. So, if we need to pay millions of yen at some point later these properties may not be the best option, although cheaper initially. On the other hand, if it only stops us from building in a small part of our land, this would not be so much of a problem considering the amount of money we save on the mortgage.

We will probably end up on the city hall to ask questions, any other thoughts are welcome.

As is frequently the case this is a violently confusing topic and entire libraries could be filled with the knowledge.

https://smtrc.jp/useful/knowledge/hyoka ... 16_06.html

I thought that was a decent introduction to the this and does adress the differences when it's a privates and how valuation is handled.
Although the diagrams aren't quite needlessly complex enough.

If you are sharing liabilty for a private road I wouldn't worry about high costs.
1. It's private so should have little traffic.
2. Maintenance costs, if there are any, will be shared equally. And planned construction, cable install etc. will be handled by whoever requested/required that work.

I've got a 1/5th of the shortest cul de sac in the known world. And whilst it's a bit patchwork after various cables have been installed over the years it's totally fine for the use it gets.


As a side note, the setback you are referring to is a setback部分. Not to be confused with an entire house that could be "setback". (I.e. hidden behind another house with only it's parking space or a path to approach it. The important point of a setback house is to have at least 2m abutting the road or whatever is applicable for the location to be able to build/rebuild. Such land is invariable much cheaper of course.

Thank you Moneymatters, very helpful information.

From what I understood, a private road burden can be had in a road, or part of, that is frequently accessible by many other people, and not necessarily by the few house occupants in a cul de sac only. For example, the public part of the road is 3 meters wide, and the occupant of the property has a burden on the rest of 1/0.5meters, where various pipes, cables etc.. may be underneath.

I was not aware of the other type of setback though. One more thing we should be checking, as for new developments in our area many of the houses only have a narrow path to the main street, just on the side of another (newly built as well) house.

Setback and private road are different things. Although, setback will have to become a private road if owner rebuilds. If owner doesn't rebuild it will stay a part of the building (or land around it).

From what I've heard cost of maintenance is not that big for private roads. A bigger problem is to get consent from all the owners when maintenance of the road of pipes/cabling under it is required.

Setback is much worse. Basically, unless is the land is big enough so that one can transform setback to a private road and still rebuild, you cannot rebuild. Which means the land will be worth very little as soon as the house is old. I would avoid properties with setback.