First of a new series. We bought a house and its a fixer upper.

F.Y.I

This house is about 28 years old and has been taken care of. By that I mean when something broke or leaked or whatever its seems to have been repaired properly of course there are little things here and there that will need attention Thankfully we have been left with a new roof and gutters.

Here is the layout On the first floor we have a kitchen and a full bathroom. The kitchen is pretty sparse and beat up but it will have to wait until next year. We are going to do some of the carpentry now so that will be an easier job next year...Part of that is a result of the larger unit bath going in. There is also one tatami room and one bedroom /office downstairs. My office gets a new floor and the tatami mats get the boot. We will be expanding the room into the closet for more space. We will keep one tatami room or small living room down stairs. The upstairs also has two good sized bedrooms. Outside we have a good size driveway thats according to Japanese standards, and of course, no yard. I like the fact that its a corner lot though and its in a quite neighborhood with a 12 min walk to the station.

Right now the important things to get done are getting the bathroom updated and getting the upstairs bedrooms insulated and putting new wall board in those rooms. New wiring is going in as well. I will be doing all of the work aside from the installation of the unit bathroom and all it encompasses. With that in mind, the toilet room is left untouched to save money and it really just needs some paint anyway. The vanity sink will be done by me. The plumbers will leave me pipes to connect to so most of the money is going towards the bath/laundry area.




So you are all impressed or interested in how I bought a house in Japan? Well its not all that fantastic and exotic. Real estate sales and purchases are very similar to the west at least ours was. We made an offer signed a Japanese purchase and sales agreement and then got our financing with a bank. We stamped our hankos on a stack of papers and bang it was all done. We even used Century 21 and boy they were polite. One thing that struck me was how the Japanese Century 21 agents were very open with potential problems and issues with the houses we looked at. They even pointed them out at times. Maybe we got lucky but it was a very positive experience. Just remember one thing for me. If I was not married to a Japanese person this would have been much harder for me or impossible for in the short time I have been here in Japan. You can not get a loan if you do not have a stable job or a stable house hold for that matter. My wife did most of the paperwork and I kept my fingers crossed. Getting a loan can be difficult because there is no enforcement of sexual, racial, health or age based discrimination when it comes to banks. And they will check you out thoroughly and make sure your work and financial history is correct and acceptable by their standards. All banks seem have their own standards. It is simply their policy. I doubt we will have a credit crisis in Japan. You must work for a respectable employer and have worked there for at least one year. Its not like back in the states where you can lie and get twice your worth in cash credit. Another thing is that it was mandatory for us to go over the loan and purchasing document three times, line by line item by item. painstakingly. Once at the office when we signed the offer, once at our home and again at the office before we signed the final deal. Wow! No backing out of that deal or wining that you did not understand the terms of the loan. One major difference in our loan is that since we bought an old house in Japan we couldnt get a simple thirty year fixed rate because they discriminate against older homes, regardless of value, in our case.. We have to refinance every ten years. But the bank will give us an interest break if we stay with them. Right now we are locked at 2.1% (prime is 4% yea I said 4) fixed for ten years then we refinance with a 1 percent of prime in ten years. In the mean time we are saving to pay the loan off early. Most likely in 20 years not 30. Basically the loan payments are about half what we pay in rent so we just save the other half for the final lump payment. Well it all looks good on paper. If you buy a new home the restrictions are less and the fixed mortgages go longer term.

There will be more about this later in the series as I go into more details about loans and prices and such. For now it's a big effort to get certain things done ahead of the move and final installation of the unit bath. (less info)