Transcript
Speaker: One week before signing the contract, the owner of the property went missing. And then the family of the owner reached out to the seller agent and she's in the hospital.
Speaker: But it was really suspicious.
Speaker: Welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of buying a house in Japan podcast. I'm your host, Joey joined by my cohost, Take. Today we are joined by a special guest, Ryo Takemoto. Ryo is a superb real estate agent in Japan.
Speaker: Elite. he owns a business, Nostal Homes, helping you with property management for your homes in Japan. But most importantly, Mimpaku licensing setup and everything related to getting an Airbnb started and off the ground in Japan. So welcome. Yo, I think this is your second time on the podcast. Yeah. Thank you, Joy. Thank you, Tuck. My pleasure to be in the podcast.
Speaker: Yeah, this is my second time. Topic at hand today. Ryo has worked with a lot of different clients throughout his time working as a real estate agent, but most importantly and most relevant for today,
Speaker: He's worked with many difficult seller side agents. So when you purchase a house in Japan, Ryo is the guy talking to the seller side. He's talking to their agent. Sometimes you talk to the seller themselves sometimes or just the agent.
Speaker: Yeah, sorry, of the owner directly or usually just the agent? Usually just the agent, but some people. sellers but they are real estate companies not individuals so never like you're never dealing with the old person selling a house in the middle of some prefecture somewhere or the children of an old person selling the house i talk to them sometimes but i mainly work with buyer side ah something we wanted to highlight first with dealing with tough sellers is it ah something common not common what maybe happens 10 15 transactions it's called the ryote deal
Speaker: This is where I call it jokingly called Ryo the master of ryote because he probably has the most of these. Ryo, can you describe what is ryote situation and yeah what does it mean? So ryote means basically both hands in Japanese. realte So the Asians, yeah, two hands, then they are trying to get the brokerage fee both from the seller and the buyer. Just for context here, and in Japan, comparatively to the U.S., s the buyer pays the buyer's agent fee and the seller pays the seller's agent fee. In the US, the seller pays both sides. So in essence here, the Japanese real estate agent is being a little greedy, right? And trying to get both commissions when they should really only receive one. But it's above board, right? they The owners enter in these exclusive deals with their agent, right? So maybe it's not in their best interest, but they have consented to this. Yeah. Joy mentioned it's not their best interest.
Speaker: So the agent is not going to tell them or let them know that they've got a buyer. They got an inquiry from another buyer agent. I guess this is definitely not built for foreigners, first off. But like, why is this in existence? Do you think customers or is owners of the properties really think this is a better deal for them?
Speaker: Let's say if the federal agent is struggling to sell the property, they will be happy to work with other buyer agents. agents by sharing the commission. But if they think the house is easy to sell or we likely get lots of inquiries, then yeah, I think that seller agent will try to find buyer themselves.
Speaker: So the seller's agent is approaching the owners or the owner is approaching the seller's agent? to be like, hey, I want to sell my property. I guess it's both maybe, right? Yeah, I think it's both. So if i if I own a house in Japan and I want an agent to help me sell it, is there really just two kinds of agreements I can have with my seller side agent? One is exclusive and one is non-exclusive or are there more types of agreements there? There are three types of agreements.
Speaker: It's slightly different, but know, the general brokerage agreement and the exclusive brokerage agreement and more exclusive brokerage agreement. Even soon. Super, super. super super pretty So during the summer, we had a lot of these. So the issue that clients face is that they'll be interested in a house and the owner has entered into an exclusive agreement with their seller side agent. And that seller side agent now will reject any prospective buyers that come interested in the house who bring their own agent with them. So in our example, a customer working with Rio, they're interested in a house. Rio approaches that seller side agent and that seller side agent will refuse Rio. They will not sell to Rio's client because they're coming with Rio and they want to collect a commission from both sides. And they can do that because they're in this exclusive agreement with the seller. Seller can't go anywhere else.
Speaker: Is that more or less correct, Rio? That's the situation you find yourself in. And how often do you find yourself in that situation? ah That's a great question. It's not like very of often, but occasionally I face this situation.
Speaker: First of all, all whether the seller has like an exclusive agreement with the seller agent or not, the seller can receive offers from buyers of other buyer's agent. So this agreement is to prevent the seller to find another seller agent. Having this agreement with the seller agent doesn't mean you can't get another buyer from like another buyer's agent. Okay, maybe I was mixing those two ideas together. i thought they were somehow related.
Speaker: Okay, if we have a exclusive agreement with the seller, we have to list the their property on Reigns, which is Realtors database. But if we have a general brokerage agreement with the seller, we don't have to. So technically, no one will know that the seller is listing or willing to sell the property.
Speaker: Oh, interesting. yeah we're For people just listening, we're now starting to understand more learn more about the seller's side as we hopefully sell our Aigawa property in Nagasaki. Shameless plug. Also, shameless plug, Dio is one of our Akiyamart Direct preferred agents. So when you work with the Akiyamart Direct program, you can request Dio. He has dealt with, again, our hardest customers, the hardest properties, I would say, and really knows the space.
Speaker: But Dio, you said 10 to 15% of the time, you'd say? this Yeah, it depends on the area for example the rural of japan have like more exclusive like a real like yeah i always find it interesting what they tell you as well they don't just say they don't oftentimes they act a little bit shameless but they don't come out and say these words like i want both commissions so i'm going to refuse you and do what's not in the interest of the owner that i'm representing but what do they actually tell you they say oh the house is already under contract or what sort of responses do you get how do you know that it's a yote deal When they are like honest, like you just sell, we're not working with other agents for this property. So sometimes you do get honesty. Sometimes. Yeah. yeah and Sometimes they just say, oh, we got this.
Speaker: We are not the listing agent. Sometimes. They say that? Yeah. yeah we are We are not the seller agent. Wow. They say even though they are buyer agent and listing the property to get the client. It's hard to tell. is that Sorry, maybe I misunderstood. that They put up a fake property? They claim to be a fake a buyer's agent. They're not fake. It's allowed. It's completely allowed to list a property as a buyer agent. If the listing agent approves or allows the buyer agents to list to their property, it's normal, a common thing to do. But they are taking out advantage of this situation. The listing agent behaves like...
Speaker: the seller agent. They're not taking the inquiries from the other buyer's agent. Sorry. So this is like a, there's a, there's the listing agent and then there's agent B A and then there's agent B and you're saying agent B is also listing the property. And then when you contact them, they say, oh, I'm just agent B. It's not my property. You have to go talk to agent A. Yes.
Speaker: Yeah. That's what that's yeah really standard. But sometimes when I talk to the agent A, like listing agent, they say, oh, sorry, I'm not the listing agent. Okay, it passes around and around in a circle. So yeah, they hide.
Speaker: Actually, they are the listing agent, but they say they are not. Okay, okay. Sometimes they say it's under contract already. Yeah, right. Under contract or the under offer, or they just stopped. It keeps listed for about two months.
Speaker: Do you ever hit those agents up again? Let's say, yeah, two months later, you see that the property is still listed. Do you go like, hey, checking in or? Yeah, checking in. I think I tried. I did that. One of my clients. Looks like the contract fell through.
Speaker: Still looking for buyers? Yeah. Okay, I'm putting myself in the client's shoes. Could I not just ask you, Yo, to be like, find the owner. Let's avoid all this BS. Can we put offer in the actual decision maker's hands somehow?
Speaker: Would that even work in America? can figure that out in America. We can figure it out in Japan too, but it's kind of like no-no as a like real estate agents. like Blacklist for real estate agents. Yeah, blacklist for real estate agents.
Speaker: They steal by owners from other agents. Okay. Understood. Territorial. Okay. Putting our buyer's perspective in hat on, we show you this property. You come back to us and tell us it's a VOT deal.
Speaker: Typically, is there anything you can do about this? Is there any wiggle room? like What percent chance do you think you can convince the seller to take on a buyer's agent, especially if I'm a foreigner? So the intention of these real-pay agents is just to make more the commission. So sometimes like they are happy if we, for example, me as a representative of the buyer is willing to pay the buyer commission to them.
Speaker: I think that's the only way how I can support like this kind of situation. So just to be clear... in this transaction you would normally get paid nothing unless we charge right if you helped someone buy a property that is a yote deal by the seller's agent how much commission would you make zero right zero yeah yes yes okay what i find really messed up is most times again especially in these inaka areas in japan they cannot even handle a foreign customer is that right yeah that is right
Speaker: Yeah, they are just say, oh, no, i i don't speak English. or yeah Yeah, that's the biggest frustration. On the one hand, they're saying, no, no, no, this is my Yote property. I handle all the buyers. But then we're saying we have a buyer, but you're also saying, on the other hand, that you you can't and handle a foreign buyer.
Speaker: So it's like a gridlock system. Yeah, I think they are taking an advantage of the situation. yeah Messed up. So Ryo and I guess our listeners who are looking at these properties, there's like 10 to 15% chance if it's in like real rural Japan,
Speaker: that this happens with a traditional ryotei, maybe potentially greedy seller. How do we get around this or how have we gotten around this in the past? Okay, so the real estate agents in Japan can only make 3% of the property price as a brokerage fee. And in this ryotei situation, I can't be involved as an agent.
Speaker: So in this case, I will behave like a consultant or advisor through the transaction. So I can do the translation or contract, like specialized in the foreign international transaction, your international payment. So even with the real estate agents, I have closed some deals.
Speaker: For listeners here, like the short, what we've done is we've just added an extra buyer's agent commission to pay real directly. and So let's say you're looking at a property. Unfortunately, if you really want the property in like this is it and you're dead set on it there's nine million properties abandoned in japan just heads up but if you're really set on this property here we unfortunately have to charge you an additional buyer's agent fee which could be let's say 3.3 percent or three percent of the property price or if it's lower than eight million and it's like basically another two thousand us dollars roughly to pay do
Speaker: On our side, we need to make sure Joe gets compensated for this work, obviously. It's a shitty situation, but this is our only way around it if you are interested in this property. So if you're listening, like we might send this podcast out to folks who hit the OTA deal. There's really nothing we can do.
Speaker: And at the end of the day, we need to make sure our boy, Dio here is compensated for his time. Just tack one thing on that. I think when we interviewed Shu, I asked this question and I think off the record, when we were talking to Emil, I've also asked this question to other agents in the space.
Speaker: And both of them just say we can't do anything with Yote deals. We just have to advise the client to keep looking. So this is our attempt to try something and hopefully it works. But again, as mentioned, 9 million abandoned homes in Japan, sometimes your best bet is just to move on.
Speaker: cut your losses. It's an unfortunate situation and we're trying something if you are dead set on the house. And unfortunately, these real estate houses normally look like really good deals because the listing agents are confident enough to sell, to find the buyer them themselves without working with other seller like buyer agents.
Speaker: Do you think the owners of the property are aware of what's going on or do you think usually they have no clue? No clue, no clue, yeah. It's the unfortunate reality of the Japanese real estate system, right? and Where if you were to go directly to the owner, could burn some bridges, blacklist you as a real estate agent. Real estate agents can't sell to foreigners.
Speaker: It's such a weird blockage. I think they use this as an excuse. We got an interest, but they are from overseas, so I don't recommend this kind of things will happen.
Speaker: Some sellers might know that the seller agent block other buyers or buyer's agent because they trust them so much and the seller doesn't want to have a like unknown or random buyers coming from like yeah unknown buyer's agents.
Speaker: They trust that the seller is blocking all the bad people from buying the house. Yes. If you love the property, though, we've we've honestly, how many Dote deals have you done for us? Maybe four, I think? Yeah, four that two, is three, two, three.
Speaker: So if you're dead set on the property, it's just going to be an added cost. Look at it that way. But if this is really your dream property and some of the houses we bought for those four folks, they are like pretty awesome.
Speaker: Like, M in Okoyama. there was That one is a Ryotei deal? Yes. Oh geez, like her spot is awesome. She's listening to this. We'll get her on the podcast. But yeah, sometimes it's worth it to pay that extra two, $3,000 or whatever the extra commission to get that dope property, which the seller's agent feel confident about.
Speaker: I don't like this situation, but Yeah. The people that have done the Yotei deal, have they pushed back or shown any regret by paying that extra commission yet? I know it's pretty early, but feel like they're all happy. i think they're all happy.
Speaker: No pushback for now out of three four real deals. I think the saving grace is like any other foreigner would have to pay this price. There's no way of getting around it. I was just thinking about this. Even a domestic buyer, but you know if you're representing a Japanese person, if they still wanted you to represent them for whatever reason, they couldn't buy the property either. But I guess they would probably just go with that seller's agent to to let them handle everything because there's no language barrier. I think so. I think so. Yeah.
Speaker: They just try to find the somehow, yeah, the seller agent. And the yeah, it's possible if listeners from overseas can speak Japanese or understand Japanese very well and comfortable signing everything in Japanese like instructed by the seller like without the agent. Definitely don't recommend just the amount of paperwork and the emails and the process that a lot of these traditional agents have 20-30 years behind it feels like in in whether the document formats the technology like I'm very honestly speaking I would definitely pay someone just to do this because it's just not fun it's not a pleasant real estate transaction process.
Speaker: Anything else to vent about, Yo, on the seller's side? yeah Any other complaints or or funny stories that you might have where you're like, why are things so like this? From the buyer's perspective, working with the seller's agent?
Speaker: We faced really weird listing agent in Atami while i' working with the Yes, Mr. T. Mr. T. All right, tell us about the situation, Neil. Yeah, so one of the clients was really interested in one property.
Speaker: And I made an inquiry as a buyer agent, and it's listed on reins. So usually, if the house is listed on reins, the listing agent is okay to work with other buyer agents. So I thought, okay, no problem. And I made a call to him, but yeah, he said like, ah It will take two, three weeks to so schedule a viewing.
Speaker: but Like a why? So yeah, like could we we got ah another offer to wait ah like a loan and they're waiting for a mortgage approval from Japanese bank. Yeah, it's understandable. But he didn't let us view the property. But the loan fell through. It didn't work. So okay, it's our turn. I was really motivated and excited.
Speaker: Then I made a call. Okay, now it's our turn. Okay, then we we can build a property. Let's schedule. Then on the day of the viewing, he told me, so we got ah like another offer from another- Day of the viewing?
Speaker: Come on. Didn't we schedule? Weren't we trying to see the property? And yeah, it's really weird. and yeah He had reviews online too. Wasn't there something with the like the Google reviews for his? It was like really bad.
Speaker: bad review in Google Maps. Like he was lying that he had cancer and he couldn't reach to the customer. Whoa. Okay. So you didn't get the property, right? Yeah, they didn't get the property. This was a real real deal is what you're assuming.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it was a realty deal. So he didn't want to share the commission. And even after we pay them the commission, like a buyer's commission, they say they prefer like a local buyers from Atami. Yeah, it's really weird. Speaking of that, have you had sellers ah or seller's agents just say like no foreign buyers?
Speaker: Yes. Sometimes yes. Maybe less than 5%. Interesting. So when we bought our Tama base camp house in Tokyo, we were in a similar situation where we were like, okay, let's put an offer on this place. And they're like, hey, sorry, someone's ahead of you.
Speaker: They're waiting for the loan. Me Joey were a little bit like, are we getting played here? do you think this is a seller's agent tactic that they rinse and repeat? Because we hear it often. And i' there's just so many houses. I'm a little bit surprised.
Speaker: and suspicious. They definitely use this as their tactics. We bought from a company too, not like a seller. We bought, it was like a company had flipped it. And I feel like maybe the company was a little bit more.
Speaker: Yeah, I think so. But it's really hard to tell if it's true, yeah, real offer or fake. So no way of verifying, but it could be a tactic that some agents use to be like someone's ahead of you. They hang out on an offer just to like, see if you're serious. Yeah, see if you're serious. And like so stop you from negotiating downwards. I think so too. That's as we fell into that trap with the Tokyo property. We're just like, no negotiation. Let's just go for it.
Speaker: Spend it. Yeah, it's really hard to tell. What would you be your guest, Leo? I want to poll our agents. like What percent of the time do you think the listing agent or seller's agent is lying about another offer being ahead of yours?
Speaker: I hope the 1020, but could be more than that. 1020 would be a good result. Yeah, I really hope the agents are honest in Japan.
Speaker: but yeah I've heard this in reference to rioate deals that the seller said they get lazy. And even though you're not technically representing the buyer, they still forcing you to create the paperwork to get the deal done. Has that been your experience? We mean that as the buyer agent, do I face the seller agent?
Speaker: Like technically you're no longer acting as the buyer's agent in a Ryotei deal setup, but there's so you have to do the buyer's agent paperwork. Yes, I do. wow I mean, paperwork for the buyer side, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker: I mean, they don't know like how to deal with those like affidavit or POS stuff. Yeah, such such a backwards thing. With a little bit of time left, I want to describe, i think, one of our unique customers and what has happened along their journey. Would like to highlight the Osaka Udon Shop situation. What was the situation with this Udon Shop we're trying to help these customers buy? We got a really charming client from the States looking to buy Osaka and we viewed one property running as a Udon restaurant in Osaka city and they really liked the house and they offered.
Speaker: And one week before signing the contract, the lady, the owner of the property went missing and I got a message from the seller agent and she's missing. and then i they can't reach to her. And then the family of the owner reached out to the seller agent and she's in the hospital.
Speaker: But it was really suspicious. They don't even know which hospital she's in and the when she will be back. Yeah, it was really suspicious. So we were talking about Takejoy and hiring an investigator. We missed our opportunity.
Speaker: ah but Private eye. Yeah, private eye. And then they came back around, though, just recently in the past month. So there were some new developments. Oh, yeah. She came out from the hospital and we signed the contract eventually. And the customers are going to close soon, right?
Speaker: Yes. The handover will be by the end of May. Yeah. I remember talking to this customer and he maybe listens to the podcast, but like he was so heartbroken and we were so stoked for him because the shop is awesome. It's like an udon shop below and two floors of living space.
Speaker: And we're like, wow, this is such a cool property. So we felt the pain when like this whole drama went through and we were like checking with Dio every week. Dio, okay, what do you think? Can you walk by the house and see if the lights are on or like what's happening? Yeah, I stopped by the restaurant at night and I also almost walked into the hospital nearby. Really? there Sign the papers.
Speaker: That's really hard situation. Some odd things happen on the seller's side from time to time it seems. All right, yo you're a trooper, man. You've probably dealt with, again, the most customers, widest range of different situations. We're really appreciative of your help here. Most of our listeners at this point are just trying to buy Nokia. Give us one piece of advice you want the customers to know before starting this process, now that you've been through so many repetitions. One thing you want them to know before they like go like, yes, let's book a consult and get this show on the road. Yeah, just talk to someone local or someone actually in Japan. In many cases, local people have much more knowledge. Like even local normal carpenters know about the houses in the area. So sometimes it's really impressive and inspiring to see the, for example, international buyers like Take and Joy experienced the situation. Then
Speaker: It's really helpful and we can learn so much stuff from their podcast and YouTube. But added it to that, it's not easy, but to find someone local, like in in Japan, who can help you or who can advise you even after you purchase the house. So it's not the end, it's a start when you can buy a house.
Speaker: Got it. Yeah. And I think, and maybe I'm interpreting this incorrectly, but I think having a connection to the area you're buying before you buy is important um during i went the other way where we bought and then we found someone which is okay but i agree since our first property we've just been following people a little bit more so than location if someone says hey you should buy here we're like hey can you help us and then we do buy there so i hear you and i think we've done the opposite but joey what do you think I definitely think we're leaning more into buying where we know somebody, less from the side of, oh, we'll talk to the local carpenter in the area and get his opinion on the house before we purchase. Although I do think that was a good idea if you've got the Japanese ability to do that. But we're purchasing more because me and Taki have realized once a month, probably for each of our properties, there's something that needs to happen at the
Speaker: at the house. And if you're planning to live abroad for however many, most of the year, and then just use the house as a vacation home, you will need that help on the ground. And Ty and i are just like, let's just buy where we know somebody that can do small errands for us from time to time. So that's another reason to buy or get to know somebody in the area.
Speaker: Or even if you don't know anyone beforehand, for example, I help you or the clients to find someone in the area. Yeah. Cool. The final million dollar question here. If you had a million dollars right now, where in Japan would you buy a property?
Speaker: Million goes a long way. Okay. Okay. So millions a lot. Let's go $100,000. Okay. would you invest that money at this point? fifteen to twenty million ye where would you invest that money at this point Yeah, it's really a good question. 15 million.
Speaker: To buy ah like a new or a good house in Tokyo, Osaka, it's a little bit less. So I would consider somewhere outside of Tokyo or Osaka, Kitakyushu.
Speaker: It's close to... Kitakyushu? Okay. Or Kamano at Okaama. It's just opposite of Naoshima, which has a strong tourism. One of my clients bought a beautiful Japanese house in Tamano and it's Yokoyama. The house is very affordable too.
Speaker: Can I go back to Kitakyushu? Why Kitakyushu? I actually, me and Tanya own a We're Kitakyushu haters on the park. But who we're haters on Kitakyushu. but we have had clients come and they're like, you know, you guys got that like all wrong, Kitakyushu is great. I'd love to know why you can be convinced. can be convinced yeah i need to go deeper about Kitakyushu is like promoting like a tourism.
Speaker: But since I'm doing like Airbnb business too. Special Mimpaku zone. Yeah, Special mi Impact Zone. And it's so close from Korea and China and Southeast Asia. So we need to... Interesting. I wonder if they've got a ferry there to different places. Maybe I guess Fukuoka Airport is close too, but... Kitakyushu to Tokyo. They got a ferry, George. It's 24 hours. We should... Oh, that's right. Yokosuka. Yeah. So Kitakyushu and Tamano in Okeyama, right? They're two draft picks. Yeah, I think so. Awokayama...
Speaker: What do you think about Otaru? I know we've sent you up to Otaru recently. Give us the pulse check. Yeah, I think it comes. Yeah, I should add to this list. There's a stack rank here. Otaru, Tamano, or Kitakyushu. What would you put as me and Joey want to buy another Akio? Where should we look? you Okay, for you, I'd recommend Otaru. Really? Yeah, it's a kind of, yeah. Hokkaido is new continent to you. yeah Interesting play, actually. Today, i went to JIC, this accelerator thing in Palo Alto. yeah I met someone who wants me to meet someone nearby where I live right now.
Speaker: And she's the owner of a UNESCO World Heritage Site in Otaru. Yeah, I just visited Otaru for one number of my clients last week. He offered that and the seller accepted So we are working on the contract. They had so many beautiful houses, like at an affordable price. It's also close to Niseko, which is one of the most luxury area in Japan.
Speaker: There it is, Joey. Ryo, master of Ryo-tei, thank you so much for being on our podcast again. we will put your information in the show notes and a plug again for Ryo. He's one of our main Akiyama Direct agents. So when you work with us, you will be working with Ryo.
Speaker: Any final words for anyone? Thank you for inviting this podcast. I hope it helps you to have this journey somehow. Thanks for being part of it. We you will talk to you again soon. Great.
Speaker: Yeah. Thank you.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Buying a House in Japan. If you find the show helpful or at least entertaining, give us a five-star rating. Takes five seconds and really goes a long way. If you or someone you know is looking for a Japanese home, check out Akiyamart.com, our English-friendly site that lets you browse over half a million listings.
Speaker: That's A-K-I-Y-A-M-A-R-T.com to find your dream home in Japan. If you've got questions or feedback, drop us a line, email contact at akiamart.com.
Speaker: You can also find us on Instagram as well as TikTok, where we post properties, tips on the home buying process, and updates on our own purchases and renovations. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.
