Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back. Welcome back. Just me and Takei today. No guests. We are back and we got a good episode. We're going to jump right back into it. and A lot of people have told us that they, they enjoy the podcast. We have code names for our properties, JLux, TBC, CLUX, KK20. And we recognize it is a little bit difficult to keep all of that straight in people's heads. What are these?
Speaker: Which property is this? What's the monetization strategy? What's the business plan? Where is it, et cetera. So we're going to do a 2024 recap.
Speaker: Buying a house in Japan wrapped. Buying a house in Japan wrapped. Inspired by Spotify wrapped, but buying house in Japan wrapped. so Exactly. What we've been up to for the past 12 months regarding our property purchases in Japan. And at the same time, we're going to hit you guys with some new names about the properties so that you're not left guessing what is JLUX. We will Let's start rattling them off before we do. So we have four properties and we actually at the very end of the podcast, we're going to talk about the fifth property work or teaser. But if you are new here, just a quick reintroduction. My name is Taki and you heard from Joey. We're both friends back from college. We stayed friends about.
Speaker: 10 years later, we decided to buy a house in Japan. We had heard about all these akiya crazes and we decided to take a leap of faith. And that was almost one year ago, Joey. Congrats. Lots happened in this past year. November, 2023 to November, 2024 has been an epic year to say the least. I feel like so much has happened. Yeah. Four properties we're going to start off with first. Do we want to list them all first and then go back or you want to just go down the line?
Speaker: Let's go down the line. Property number one, as may some of you guys may have known and heard, is our Bepoo property. This is what got the whole but adventure started. We've been calling this place Gisto G. Lux. We've been calling it Bepoo Hot Spring something, but at this point, what are we naming it, Joey? We've also thrown out the name J. Lux. So this property, we're going to call, going forward, Bepoo Hot Spring Short -Term Rental.
Speaker: As the name suggests, this is located in Kyushu down in Bepu. Bepu is really famous for their hot springs and we are trying to make it an Airbnb. We're trying to simplify the nomenclature of this the naming here. So it's easier for us. Again, we were just doing this on the fly and just like coming up with cool names that we can remember, but acknowledge that absolutely no one remembers them except for us. Okay, Taki. Bepu hot spring short -term rental. When did we buy it and for how much? We bought it back about, again,
Speaker: Honestly, a full year ago, so end of October, early November, 2023, we bought this house at the time for 42 ,000 US dollars. um The house itself was built in 1977, about a thousand square feet. So pretty, from our perspective, a really good deal. There were some trials and tribulations in getting it, but once we got it, we learned a lot and Yeah. And this is our business strategy for this property is going to be an Airbnb. So we're working to get that license at the moment. We've got some fire lighting installed already. So hopefully that will happen soon before February. So the goal is to get it up and running around February ish, maybe March.
Speaker: So this was again, property Akia number one for us. Uh, condition wise, we had a lovely squatty toilet. If you listened to one of our original podcasts, I think we honestly thought we made a mistake when we first got here. Right. This was the one we showed up at midnight after.
Speaker: Day three of a road trip, nine hour drive each day. At the end of it, we showed up at midnight, saw the place and yeah, we were, this was again, our first property we'd ever purchased in Japan. We were frightened. I feel like we both went back to the hotel that night. Didn't really say much to each other and both in our own thoughts. And yeah, I thought we made a mistake.
Speaker: Yeah, we thought it was more Far Gone than it was, but really, again, what makes it worth it is once you get the place cleaned up, like we fumigate it for bed bugs and the tatami, we clean the place up. Once you get new lighting and like a chair, like it's ah all of a sudden it starts to feel cozy. Yeah, absolutely. The good thing about these truly abandoned nakias and you going in for the first time, you can see like the tangible improvements of like small efforts you make.
Speaker: Every single thing we made increased the quality of comfort. We want to acknowledge that it felt very much like camping for the first two weeks. Had we done things again, we should have got it professionally cleaned like before we got there. I think that would have baseline made things a lot easier. We decided to just like just raw dog and just go straight in and and figure out what it was like.
Speaker: um Yeah, some more learnings from this property before we move on with our the rest of the properties we want to talk about. I think one of the learnings here is around the the rise and fall of Sato -san, our contractor. We had big expectations at the start. He came in relatively cheap, I think 40 ,000 total. He quoted us.
Speaker: but What I do want to say is we've had a lot of drama with Sato -san over the time that we've been working with him and listeners of the podcast have heard all about that. But the one thing I do want to highlight here is that he came in, we we chose him because he want he was okay with a bunch of custom stuff that we wanted to do, our sunken table in the main living room, for example, the shower room, we were doing custom instead of unit shower. The thing I want to highlight here is that I would have gone with a more kind of the cookie cutter style contractor to do it again, especially for the main rooms. There was some sata -san sloppiness in a lot of the finishes. Absolutely. So it's like we're recording this again a year from when we got the place. It's still not done. We hope and really think it will be done in February. It's 90 % of the way there. But again, we're making this an Airbnb short -term rental.
Speaker: We are having someone help us navigate the hoops of going and getting a short -term rental license. So stay tuned here. Our first property is honestly going to be the last one that makes us money, but this is what it got it started with. We wouldn't be here without it. And if you are thinking about this kind of project, just know it's a lot harder than you initially think, but it's a lot of fun. And so I think patience is probably one of the biggest things I would recommend people thinking about when buying a property and trying to make it in Airbnb.
Speaker: All right. Fair last thing. What's your favorite thing about this house? Oh, yeah okay. Yeah. Favorite thing about the house is it's walking distance to the hot springs in that booth. So yeah, if anybody wants to Airbnb this property come to springtime 15 minutes walk from a three Michelin star, Michelin hot spring. And there's, there's other hot springs you can walk to as well. Just know. Yeah. That's my favorite thing about it. Is it walkable to the hot springs?
Speaker: This is the property we've spent the most time in, I believe. We had the whole Squatty toilet. We used it for two, three months. Joey's done some electrical work. I think we feel most emotionally connected to this property because we put the most effort into it. My favorite thing on this property is not only is the hot springs, but it's also just, it's not crowded feeling, but it's also still very city feeling. It's the right mix. I feel like Tokyo is getting way too crowded. Kyoto, some of these places are just getting over touristed.
Speaker: Bepu, I think, is still a diamond in the rough and is an emerging market. But we didn't know that when we first bought it. we just Not arbitrarily, but a little bit arbitrarily picked Bepu as a starting point. Yeah, 50 % dirt on a map. 50%. Yeah. First property again, Bepu Hot Springs Short -Term Rental. That's what we're calling it from now on.
Speaker: Property number two, formerly known as TBC, Tama Basecamp, we are renaming it for clarity to Tokyo suburb midterm rental.
Speaker: That's a mouthful. We might change that, but I think it makes sense in the title, Tokyo Suburb Midterm Rental. This house is located in obviously a Tokyo suburb. It's in a city called Tama Midterm Rental. We are trying to make this a midterm rental. So monthly rentals for digital nomads. We acknowledge it's not in the hottest spot for short -term rentals or tourists coming in and out of Tokyo, but we think it's very, very comfortable for those who are trying to spend more time in Tokyo long -term.
Speaker: Quick details about the property. We bought this for about $114K USD. We did take out a friends and family loan here to try to fuel this project. I think it's definitely paid off. We've learned a ton here. Joey, tell me a little bit about the property here. Yeah, I just want to set the context a little bit. So if we got the keys for Beppu Hot Springs Short -Term Rental in October, 2023, we purchased Tokyo suburb midterm rental eight months later in June. So just timeline wise, BEPU was in October and then Tokyo suburb midterm rental was in June of the following year. So eight months later.
Speaker: yeah The property itself, again again, we bought it because it was bigger and we found we spent we needed to spend more time in Tokyo. We have this side project called Aki Marten, which hopefully got you to come and listen to this podcast. But this property is about 2 ,000 square feet lot, so quite big for Tokyo. We're perched up on a hill, a little bit further from neighbors, have some good privacy. The house itself though, very different than what we bought in Beppu.
Speaker: Yeah, this was, as I mentioned, the like the cookie cutter contractors before, this is what this was. We we purchased a flip. So another company bought an Acia that had been abandoned for 10 years, renovated it and then sold it to us. And they did a lot of things that I would previously have described as cookie cutter, which is the unit shower, unit kitchen, cheap final flooring, cheap wallpaper. And that's the extent of the renovation.
Speaker: But if we were to do it all over again, we got this advice from from some folks, it was raising your budget. Had we, for example, with Betboo, just raised our budget by 40K and bought an 80K spot in the beginning, we'd probably save ourselves a lot of headache and a lot of just uncomfortable experiences. We applied that mentality with Tokyo Suburban Mid -Turn Rental. We spent a little bit more and more money. It was fully renovated, minus we quickly learned it had no insulation, but it had unit showers, unit bathrooms, prefab kind of stuff.
Speaker: That made it very comfortable from day one when we lived there. Yeah. We stayed there that first night, whereas Bepu Hot Springs short -term rental, we maybe two nights we spent in a hotel. Yeah. Another thing about Tokyo is we learned a lot about the kind of like buying competitiveness in the area. Tokyo and Bepu were night and day from a competition perspective. We had actually previously to actually getting this house.
Speaker: We looked at a couple others. We called one like Sea Lux. We called another one Mitaka we were looking for. We had try to a shot a shot at a couple properties. We burned some bridges because we lowballed too far after home inspections and finding all this stuff wrong with these properties. But ultimately, when we offered for Tokyo Suburban Rental, we were actually number two in line.
Speaker: We had tried to outbid the person in front of us. We had learned that it was someone who had taken out a loan, I believe, and wanted to finance this place while we were coming in with straight cash. um But overall, we got lucky. we are Eventually, I think that first person dropped out. So we all then asked, hey, can we do a home inspection? We had done home inspections and we we recommend people do home inspections or structural inspections before they buy. Joey, what was their answer? They told us that I'm mixing it up with C -lux, but I believe it was the same as C -lux. They said if you do a home inspection...
Speaker: you Either, was it, don't tell us the results or was it, you're going to miss your opportunity to purchase the house? It was, I think this one was going to, you're going to miss your opportunity to purchase the house. Most flippers and like a lot of people don't love you doing a home inspection. So especially if it's, if they know they can find another buyer, the price is right. Honestly, a hundred, 114 K for a pretty good spot in Tokyo was very competitive. So we forego the home inspection, but we have our retroactively still going to be doing it. but I think I'm so happy with this property. I think we really scored here. Yeah. So one call out though that I do want to make, I spent the months of July and August here, 2024 and it was hot. Tokyo was hot this summer and this house has no insulation and you really feel it. I almost cannot stress.
Speaker: Enough how hot the house was I was hiding in one room at a time with the AC on full blast and Basically would spend all my time in one room and then when it was time to go to sleep I would turn that AC off turn the AC on in the bedroom and like I've only lived in those two rooms um Very hot without insulation So I do think it should be on top of everybody's mind is getting insulation in the walls when you purchase a house here You've probably, if you listen to our podcast, you've heard this like a thousand times, but I think our learning from the Tokyo suburb mid -term rental is house can look good, but you need to have insulation. We have five air conditions installed and we had our breaker upgraded, but it still was not enough to combat the summer heat. Right.
Speaker: Yeah, really factor the price of getting installation put into the walls, like into your purchase here. if If you're planning to be here over the summer of the winter, I would say. Part of the X factor of this property is we wanted something that had a car. So we actually have a garage, which is pretty sweet. And we have a pretty.
Speaker: Bitchin' car, I would say. We have a minivan, a Toyota minivan. What's it called? Previa or Estima, which I think is the Previa. Yeah. So our friend Ken helped us purchase this car. We are trying to figure out the car purchasing process if you're listening to this. So this was our first stab at it. Getting an ETC car, which is the equivalent of like a car that lets you go on the highway. um We've learned a lot from this. I think we've actually maybe learned the most from this property. We learned a lot, right?
Speaker: Yeah, we definitely learned a lot and maybe now this is a good time to talk about our purchasing process. We also have a purchasing process. If anybody is thinking about embarking on this journey themselves, we've put it together. Check it out on Akimark .com slash buy.
Speaker: You can look at our how to buy process and get one of these properties yourself. Yeah, our goal with this purchasing process is one that you don't fall through but have the same pitfalls that we've gone through and you've learned from our mistakes. And we're two regular dudes who have been doing this. but We figured there isn't there must be an easier way. So we've been working really closely with a lot of bilingual, local licensed agents to figure out how to navigate some of these tricky situations, especially with these cheaper Akiyas. A lot of times, most of these agents local agents don't want to deal with one foreigners, but also these kind of cheaper properties. So with Akiyama Direct, we're trying to help people buy. We've successfully helped quite a few people buy at this point. And we understand the process and we're continually getting better at it, I believe.
Speaker: Yeah. And our clients have had really great experiences too. So check out some of our podcasts as well, if you'd like to hear from some success stories. ah Before actually we go past the Tokyo Suburban Midterm Rental, we are trying to rent this as a midterm rental. So we just got some pro photos. It's fully ferment furnished. We are actually launching a new site called akya -stays .com where we're going to be hosting all the properties you listen to on this podcast on there if in case you do want to stay. Who's the right person to stay at Tokyo Suburban Midterm Rental? Joey.
Speaker: Yeah, I think someone that is curious about staying in Tokyo a little bit longer term, if you're just going to be there for a week and then Kyoto for a week, we are getting the Airbnb license for this property. But I honestly think that because it's in the suburbs of Tokyo, it does take about a 50 minute train ride to get to Shinjuku. It's probably best if you're looking to stay in Tokyo.
Speaker: one to three months time and are looking for a little bit more space. I've stayed in the cheap hotels in Tokyo. They're small and crowded. And if you'd like to experience what it's like to live in Tokyo and experience the grocery stores nearby, the hardware store nearby, have more space. Maybe if you're a digital nomad, I think would be perfect for this type of property. So someone staying for one to three months, maybe working while you're here in Tokyo, I think would be perfect.
Speaker: Yeah, I think this is absolutely perfect for a small family. I'd say if I had a large family or small family, I think this is a good spot to put people, put the family up far enough from Tokyo, close enough to Tokyo, enough space. ah So if you are looking to relocate to Tokyo, I think looking on the outskirts around this area of Tama is a really good idea.
Speaker: um Okay. So switching gears here, we have our, from the top, we have our Bepu hot spring, short -term rental. We have our Tokyo sub or midterm rental. Next Domino to fall here, Joey. Completing the evolution, a long -term rental. So our third property that we purchased in.
Speaker: When did we purchase this? Not too long ago, we closed maybe two months ago. This is November now, we close early October. So three months, four months after ah the Tokyo suburb midterm rental, we got Kita Kyushu long -term rental, which is completing the evolution short -term, midterm. This is the long -term rental property.
Speaker: We've completed almost the circles. Key to Kyushu. We've never been there. but We actually have not too much interest in using it personally, but this was a deal we just couldn't pass up. We had bought all these expensive properties and now someone approached us for a $3 ,500 property. The pictures looked awesome. The location looked good. The big proposition from this person who reached out to us was that this could get long -term rental good returns. and so Part of the whole thing, we didn't really know what we were getting ourselves into, honestly, but we wanted to experience what domestic investors are are thinking about, how they're going about buying these aqueous. This specific person buys up aqueous and rents them out for a low rate to folks locally. And so what he's doing is finding these deals and and getting them for cheap and then doing minimal renovation. Guy's name's Keaton. He gave us a lot of great tips here. Joe, you want to fill in any more context?
Speaker: ah Yep. Halfway through the process, Keaton had to leap end his contribution to the process, unfortunately, which wasn't part of our original deal with him, but he had some circumstances beyond his control. So that was a little bit unfortunate because we had entered into this deal where we were purchasing the property for cheap and then he was going to handle scheduling and organizing the renovation for us, and then also handling and and organizing, finding a long -term tenant for us. So we were left holding the bag halfway through the purchase process.
Speaker: He had figured out a little bit of the renovation process he had at least got it started for us we were left pulling the bag having to get that communication and and get that finished over the finish line so it was a little bit unfortunate given him the benefit of the doubt he did have some circumstances beyond his own control here but We were excited about this property too, I just want to say because of the price point. So our first property, 42 ,000, second property, 114 ,000. This was $3 ,500, like crazy to pick up a property for that price. Absolutely. And I think we learned a lot. We definitely learned more than $3 ,500 worth of experience from this. We learned a lot about the light renovation. We had always gone kind of.
Speaker: balls out, let's make this a dope place for all the places we've done before. But this one was just like, what do we really need to do to get a renter in here? We learned about omote gai, which is like not replacing the tatami, but like resurfing it, redoing wallpapers, starting to think more from an investor mindset of if this room is six tatami, how much is it going to cost for the entire room to be renovated? Thinking much more investor wise and like minimal, I think was a very good awakening for us on how we look at investing in these Japanese properties.
Speaker: Yeah, seeing the way Keaton described how he thinks about a renovation when he goes into it and just comparing that to our experience with Betboo, we were, Betboo, hot spring, short term rental. We were just like, we wanted to look nice. We had just stayed at a really nice hotel. We wanted to emulate. So we were, we got a very expensive monkey pod wooden slab table. so Which costs more than this entire execution. Which costs more than the Kita Kyushu house. So we were just, we wanted to look special, the Beppu hot spring short -term rental property. Whereas with Kita Kyushu, Keaton was really pushing us, like you don't think about this as an investment property. You need to think about square footage, how much wallpaper is going to cost for that, how much ah flooring is going to cost for that. Tatami, Omote Gai. So a little bit more, yeah, thinking about it from ah ROI perspective. is Yeah. We did learn a lot from Keaton, even though unfortunately.
Speaker: We couldn't, his time with us had to end quicker than we expected. And we actually went to go visit this property a couple of weeks back. And I'm very surprised before even the Renault, it looked better than all our other properties. Honestly, it might've, Tokyo Suburban Midterm Rental was pretty, pretty well done. But for $3 ,500 that we like absolutely scored on this in my opinion. Yeah. Okay. Biggest learning for me from this Q2Q long -term rental is Yeah, I think just the men and investment mentality, but also how to negotiate when working with sellers, making sure that you create a narrative and we're going to segue into the next property with it. But how did he get this for so cheap? That was something we really try to dig in.
Speaker: That's a mystery because we saw on acchiamart .com, but we saw it listed for $46 ,000, $47 ,000, somewhere around there. So we fiercely got it for less than 10 % of list price. um We didn't get too deep in the weeds with Keaton on how it went, but his general overarching advice was when negotiating with some of these properties, one, you want to make sure that they don't worry that you're going to come back and sue them for something that wasn't right. You need to emphasize that.
Speaker: Hey, I'm here to take this property as is, I will not be a problem. You got to really give that impression to the seller's agent and the seller. But more so, don't highlight the negative things of the property. Don't go around pointing like, ah, that's messed up or ooh, that's going to cost a lot to fix versus switch that paradigm a little bit and go, hey, this is an opportunity. like I really like this entrance way, but with a little bit of renovation, I think I can make it perfect. like That kind of positive mindset, I think the the sellers really like because they're obviously emotionally attached to this property and they don't want to sell it for cheap, but if they know it's going or they think it's going to a good owner who's going to use it, I think that lends a lot of leeway sometimes with negotiation.
Speaker: Exactly. And we use the strategy for the next property we're going to talk about, but yeah, just to reiterate the strategy, it's don't harp on the negatives. It's really play up the positives, why you love the property, but renovation will be expensive.
Speaker: yeah Okay, so ironically, this property is probably going to make us money first. It's fully renovated now at this point. We are looking for a long -term tenant. So again, we bought it for $3 ,500 after all said and done, honestly with fees, it it gets closer to the 8K, 7K range. we' We'll post exactly how much stuff costs in the blog post in the future. but This, we're hoping to rent out for probably Samman to Gohman, which might be ambitious, but we're going to learn about the long -term rental process. So again, all our properties, I think we're really learning about a different rental asset class, which is going to be interesting and people may call us stupid, but whatever. We're having fun while we do it. Yeah, just funny that the property we care the least about is going to be the most profitable one first.
Speaker: Yeah. All right, Joey. Property number four. So we have again, Bepu Hot Spring Short -Term Rental, Tokyo Suburban Mid -Term Rental, Kitakushu Long -Term Rental, and then what is our number fourth property?
Speaker: Number four property is Myoko Snow Cabin. This property we just closed on this week. Actually, we're officially settling on the 27th. In a few days, we're officially settling on this property. This property has some real uniqueness to it, mainly its location. Myoko is a very up and coming ski resort town.
Speaker: And not only that, they get dumped on SnowWise. The 60 to 90 feet a year is what we were told. But yeah, rewinding the clock. Taki, this came ah through an agent, right? An off -market deal. Yeah. So whenever agents approached us and said, hey, we have this deal. And I think this is a result of a lot of trust built and relationship built with the agent.
Speaker: He knows that we're not going to badger for all the small things. where He knows we're not going to be a problem. So I think and a big lesson here is like it takes time to build these relationships with agents, but once they trust you, once you trust them, they will be handing you these deals because Japan is obviously just going to get more and more of these abandoned homes. So he approached us and for the price of I believe $15 ,000 was the initial quote.
Speaker: We applied the Kita Kyushu Keaton strategy here and shot a shot, I believe. Played up the positives. I sent a ah message back to our agents and said, man, i we love this place. We just bought three properties in the past year. We don't have money. We would like to offer this amount. And I think I went out at the same price at Kita Kyushu, roughly. And to our surprise, it was accepted. And we're like, holy shit.
Speaker: this this this works. Not to say if you're listening to this, it's going to work immediately for you, but we basically just said that we love Miyoko. We want to ski place. I want to bring my fiance there to go snowboarding or skiing this winter. We won't be a problem. We understand it is as is. So Joey, tell us a little bit about the property itself.
Speaker: I was hesitant. I was hesitant with key to queue. I was hesitant with Tokyo suburb midterm rental as well. I just felt like we were purchasing really quickly, but I'm pushing Joey off the ledge every time. It's come on joey it's been fun and it for better, for worse, it gets easier each time. But sorry, what was the question? Unique aspects and what is, what is the milcos note? We're like, where is it size? And what, where, what is it? I don't have any of that stuff memorized. Okay. House itself, I think is built in the seventies. We are still waiting on it.
Speaker: The kicker here is it's fully abandoned. It's been abandoned for a couple of years. All the stuff is in there. We recorded a video that actually we're going to publish soon and we, Matt Guy, one of the YouTube influencers in the space has already published it. The other quote unquote, bad things about this property, but in my mind, a good thing. It's next to a cemetery with this sweet temple. So we're very close to cemetery, but.
Speaker: For Japanese people, that definitely is a big note, but I felt like there were really good vibes there. It was really beautiful. It backed up to some cedar trees. This house is two stories, I think about 1 ,500 square feet, so pretty large. And overall, I think it was in, it felt like it was in pretty good condition, but it had a lot of shit.
Speaker: sound of running water too. I remember like lots of kind of creek sized, I don't want to say river, but like creeks around the house, but like with a lot of water flowing through them at once. So really nice kind of water sounds around the house too. Yeah, I think renovation, we could make it really nice. There's some, as I can mention, the cemetery is pretty nice to look at maintained. There's beautiful cedar forest behind the house. So having some nice big windows there looking out over it could be really nice. We're going to sit on this for now this season. It might already be snowing there. I'm not sure, but yeah, nothing we can do this season. We don't have the money either.
Speaker: So sit on it for now, just make sure we clear the snow off the roof. And then probably in the spring, we will be understand where we are more financially at that time and make a plan for Myoko. But I believe right now the plan is to renovate it. Flip. Flip, Takei, is that the plan? Could could flip. Myoko Niigata is probably our most asked for, top three most asked for.
Speaker: location. We're helping quite a few people actually in the process right now buy places in Myoko. Singapore just invested like a buttload of money there. We've had a lot of podcast listeners actually reach out and be like, we love so skiing or snowboarding there. So a lot of positive signal from the world just being like, okay, you guys should buy this. and I've never lived in a snowy area, so this could be a tough learning, but I think we're learning a lot from this. of I guess the upcoming learning is like, what do we do with the house, the stuff inside with it? How do we deal with snow? We might even consider demolishing and putting a new build on it. So there's a lot of excitement here. We're buying this more as an investment for the future and hoping that we can flip it.
Speaker: Yeah. And also for the experience as well, we're we're we're trying to do the short -term rental, the midterm rental, long -term rental, and perhaps a flip as well. so we would we We're doing this for this experience so that we can figure out what works in the Japan real estate market and let ah everyone listening what's working. It's interesting. Our buying has accelerated. So I will say.
Speaker: but if If you've already bought something in Japan, it's a drug. I feel like we are on hockey mart every day, just being like, oh shit, do you see this property, Joey? It is such a good deal. It's up by the water. So in a short span of 12 months, we have purchased 12 properties once again. Four properties, not 12. Four properties. Bepu hot spring, short term rental. Tokyo suburb, midterm rental.
Speaker: Kitakushu long -term rental. And then number four, Myoko Snow cabin. We don't have a rental, wildcard rental. yes maybe flip maybe rent Maybe flip, maybe rental. we Here's funny, Joey and I, we were talking like literally two weeks ago, we're like, okay, man, we cannot do any more properties. like there's Honestly, we were were spending more money than we were making and I'm trying to figure out, we're trying to figure out how we're making this a full -time business.
Speaker: And then lo and behold, Joy, we stumbled upon property doubled across property number five. Property number five, back to Kyushu actually. Three in Kyushu, two in Honshu. Can't take the Kyushu out of us. So we're Kyushu boys. We have, we're onboarding a new agent who's actually from a city in Nagasaki. When we were talking with her, she was like,
Speaker: Hey, do you want to buy my grandma's house? like wow now We're we had literally had a conversation an hour before like, all right, no, we're looking at our finances. We owe a bunch of people money and and we're getting ready for tax season. So just a lot of like financial things we need, you know, people we need to pay at the moment. And we literally just had a conversation and we're like, all right, no more houses. And then we get on a phone call with this new agent to onboard her and she offers us her grandmother's property.
Speaker: So this property, I think Joey and I, we're going about this smart. We really spent, honestly yesterday night, just like whiteboarding. Okay. How much exactly is it going to cost? What is our plan here? Again, we're in a bit of a unique situation because we are doing this kind of as customer zero. We're trying to figure out stuff. If you guys go through the Akimar Direct Program or you're on our site, we're trying to just simplify a lot of this stuff for you. That's my.
Speaker: reasoning on why we're buying so many properties. One side of it. Okay, property itself, Nagasaki, about 30 minutes from Nagasaki, two minutes walk from beach. I have no idea how nice this beach is. Google Maps, I saw some conflicting photos there. It actually reminds me of Some of the beaches around New Madze City when I grew up, when I went to high school, like very dependent on what part of the coastline. There could be two right beside each other. And one has unfortunately filled with trash. And then the other one is looks very nice for swimming. So could be hit or miss, but yeah, like 30 second walk from the beach. Um, price doing how much are we buying this for price? Still negotiating. We haven't made a formal offer or anything yet, but I believe it's going to be around the $2 ,000, $3 ,000 mark.
Speaker: Quite cheap. I don't think any average person would buy here, but we're trying something new here. And this is just brainstorming. This could definitely change, but we're going to buy this. We're going to try to put like an AccuMart seal of approval. Yeah. And also helping us along with this purchase is that the house is in great condition. Absolutely. Yeah. We saw photos. It's typical like 1970s build. Yeah. This is not like Beppu hot spring short -term rental. Previous owners took like really good care of it. Nothing wrong with the house.
Speaker: The only downside, it doesn't have a parking spot. So we'll figure out the parking spot. And second, it's also in the city. That's quite old. Don't know how that's going to be. The last time I went to Nagasaki was maybe like 10 years ago, but I do love Nagasaki Champland, Joey. Never had it. Never had it. Nagasaki Champland is a ramen specific to Nagasaki. I would go get it with my dad every Saturday at Ringer Hut. So a little bit of nostalgia. So Nagasaki Champland.
Speaker: Ring your hat, Cupertino. Ring your hat, Cupertino, baby. So this property, we are trying to... By it, we are going to do a building inspection. We're going to do maybe some light renovation. We're going to feel it out ourselves, but ultimately we are planning to sell this. Seal of approval. So I think, yeah, the the marketing tactic for us here is to go in building inspection, light Renault, tee it up really. Probably the Renault is going to be closer to our Bepu hot spring short -term rental style a little bit.
Speaker: morgue style i yeah more than the Tokyo suburb midterm rental property, aiming to get nice pictures and then slap our seal of approval on it and say, Hey, this is we think this is a good property. Yup. And we one more wildcard, we are considering selling this for Bitcoin. its ah Bitcoin has been hot, as most of you guys have heard. We think there's an opportunity to maybe being the first Bitcoin transaction for real estate in Japan.
Speaker: Hopefully. We don't know all the specifics, but we are excited to try to figure out again, we're doing this for the learning. We we know you know most people are gonna be like, why are you investing in here? But we're doing it to learn. I think it's exciting. not Not a lot of people have ever done this, I believe. We hope to be trailblazers to some degree, but I also think we can make this Nagasaki spot really nice with the base level.
Speaker: I believe so too. And if anybody else out there is listening and thinking, Oh, it's a lot of work and then renovate these houses are far gone. I need to renovate like maybe this is the deal for you. So we are going to try to keep the price down. Again, this is for mostly our own experience to understand selling a property or.
Speaker: kind of thinking about a property with this investor mindset for a flip from the start. So we're doing it for the, for the experience. So if anybody's interested in kind of a teed up deal and you think Kyushu is nice and close to a beach, let us know. It'll have the Accumart seal of approval. We will do the home inspection. We will set up the utilities, the internet, the parking spot. We're really going to tee it up, source someone just to buy it and be pretty hands off. Hopefully we'll even get a property manager, but.
Speaker: Five properties, baby. We're hopefully closing on that last one next month, hopefully. Buying a house in Japan, rewind. All right. Top moment from you? Top moment for me and all this, man, I think when we got our Beppu spot and we got access to the first onsen in our neighborhood and like having, after not being able to shower or take a bath, like in our house or like the closest bath we had to drive to.
Speaker: I think that was a crazy moment where we could walk to a nearby, very nearby bath house and have nice hot spring in a very brutalist onsen that doesn't look great to people, but I absolutely love that Gisogioen sent in our neighborhood. Yeah, I agree. That was a great moment. what about What about for you? Top moment. I think top moments.
Speaker: One, I remember quite vividly, again, Bepu property, so Bepu Hotspur, short -term rental was we got the, so upstairs chill room, setting the setting the tone here. So the whole house is pretty much under construction downstairs. We had busted down some walls. Maybe Sato -san had been doing some work already. Upstairs, no, actually, sorry, this is before Sato -san, but upstairs we and focused on one room to make pleasant. And I think it was when you got that first low chair. Oh, yeah.
Speaker: The same day we got like a paper land and maybe we had a carpet by then like just to be able to sit down with not the fluorescent overhead lighting. And I think maybe we had home beanie ice cream or something at that time. That was, thing I remember thinking like this, this is why we're.
Speaker: playing this game. It's like for moments like this where you like, it just felt so, it went really like from the lowest of low, like you go up every small improvement. Like you go up to so much higher in your comfort level. And I remember thinking like, all right, this is this is why we're playing the game. This is fun. 2024. What a year. Five properties, Joey. Let's see what 2025 brings. Maybe another five, maybe another 10, maybe zero. Let's see.
Speaker: But thank you guys for listening. We're at probably close to episode 60. I didn't think we would get here. We've had a ah quite a good crew of followers. So we really appreciate you guys listening. Please smash that like button. We're actually number, we're in top 10 podcast on entrepreneurs entrepreneurial podcast in Kuwait. So we're all those Kuwait listeners who are listening. Shout out to our Kuwaiti Japanophiles out there. Oh yeah. All right. See you Joey.
