One major thing is the age old discussion regarding variable rate vs fixed rate mortgage and one common conclusion I've read from Japanese blogs and youtubers is that variable makes the most sense because the rate going up above what banks offer for fixed rate is so unlikely to happen and that even if it did, you could theoretically move to fixed anyway.
I thought that made the most sense and put it in my head that if I ever bought a house I'd go with variable and swallow the risk because of how unlikely it would be to go up that significanly. However, one wrinkle that I discovered has to do with the mortgage tax credit. As most of the people in this forum probably know, the government offers 1% of the loan balance at the end of the year as a tax credit. This means that if you have a 30M yen loan balance during December, you can write off 300k yen from your taxes effectively erasing the interest payments and actually MAKING money back (in this case you paid 170k or so in interest on your loan). This goes on for 10 years which is a long time. Now here is the wrinkle. I've read that the government has actually commented that because interest rates on mortgages are so low (< 1%) it doesn't make sense to give a tax credit above what you've actually paid in interest so there is a proposal (not confirmed) starting 2022 that the tax credit is 1% of your loan balance (max 400k a year) OR the total interest payments you've made for the year. In the example above, instead of getting a 300k tax credit, you get 170k which leaves you out the free 130k you used to get.
This actually changes the variable vs fixed argument quite a bit because in this case there is no difference going for a 0.5% variable mortgage vs a 1% fixed mortgage since the tax credit erases the interest payment on both equally. You'll basically be carrying the risk of the variable mortgage going up for literally no gain for 10 years.
Curious what everyone thinks. There's a bunch of links regarding the new tax break system but here's one: https://kakakumag.com/money/?id=16421
Money quote:
借入金利が控除率の1%を下回っているということは、毎年の住宅ローン控除額が、ローンの支払利息額を上回っている可能性があることを意味します。この結果、十分な資金がある人が本来は必要がない住宅ローンを組んだり、減税の適用期間中は繰り上げ返済をしなかったりするケースにもつながり、そのことを会計検査院が問題視したのです。今回の与党税制改正大綱では、最終的に控除率は変更されませんでしたが、「控除額や控除率の在り方を令和4年度（2022年度）税制改正において見直すものとする」と明記されました。
つまり、2022年度税制改正の議論の行方によっては、2022年以降に住宅ローン減税の適用を受ける場合、「1％」と「借入金利」のどちらか数字の低いほうが控除額となる可能性も否定できません。これから住宅を購入する予定がある人は、現状の節税効果を受けられるうちに、入居を検討してみるのもひとつの選択肢になるでしょう。
