Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back everybody to another episode of buying a house in Japan. Today is the day after Christmas. Christmas edition. Christmas edition, exactly. Merikuri, Joey. Merikuri is the short form for Merry Christmas in Japanese. Aki ome. Aki mashite omerito gozaimasu. Mele kalikimaka. Let's go. In Hawaiian, yeah.
Speaker: Did you eat any KFC? I never understood that. Did you ever do that when you were in Japan? No, I saw a headline the other day. It was like, why Japanese eat KFC on Christmas? I didn't click the headline. I just figured it was kind of like how Coca -Cola started the whole of Santa Claus and red thing in America. I feel like somehow KFC got intertwined with Christmas in Japan.
Speaker: Yeah. It's like Amazon prime day. These companies are just like making their own holiday, which is interesting. Christmas is also, it's more of a Valentine's day in Japan. It's for couples. They don't do Christmas the way we do. It's like you go on a date on Christmas. Well, anyways, hopefully we can someday insert ourselves into a holiday. Maybe we could do like Aki Mart Easter egg hunting. Cinco de Aki Mart.
Speaker: Speaking of we hosted a party. What was that? I thought it was earlier, but it was like first week of June or something. First week of June, we threw a party in Tokyo. I think we're going to throw another one in February. Joey, what are you thinking?
Speaker: Yeah, so we're heading back to Japan sometime in February. That was a good party. We just invited everybody that we had met along our journey up until that point, our accountants, real estate agents we had worked with, our friend who runs a Mexican restaurant in Higashi Nakano. We rented out the space there. It was pretty good.
Speaker: Shout out to Kuma Cantina. We're coming back for you. All right, Joey, what are we talking about today? I think this is going to be another Dear Diary series episode here. A little bit random, I'd say, but a lot of interesting updates over the past couple of weeks, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I do think like past couple of weeks, we have focused a little bit more on the business side. So not too many updates regarding the houses, but there are a few. First one on the top of my head is the Keaton Kyushu property, Keaton Kyushu long -term rental. As a reminder to everyone, this was a interesting property we got for $3 ,500. We had worked with someone named Keaton, who unfortunately, I'm not sure his health situation, but we have not heard from him for a long time.
Speaker: So we are a little bit on our own and we've been navigating how to find a long -term tenant. It has been going okay, right Joey? Yeah. Again, our friend Fumi who's been helping us with the Bepu property, Bepu Hot Spring short -term rental. She's also been helping us with the Kitakyushu property now as well, helping us find a long -term tenant. So again, very valuable to have a Japanese speaker on the ground, close -ish to the house to help you out with different things. For example, like finding a long -term tenant.
Speaker: Yeah, the real estate agent that we're working with does not speak any English and I can tell they're very hesitant to work with us. So using Fumi as that go between is absolutely crucial. Yeah. The deal was Keaton was going to be there for up until we get our first tenants and then he pulls out, but yeah, he had some health issues and and he left quite abruptly early on in this process, but we saw through to the end.
Speaker: and now through this Fumi Nakano -san, the real estate agent, and now someone new, Ishimatsu -san, who I believe also works at, what's the name of it? yeah Answer and Club. Answer Club is the name of the brokerage of where Nakano -san, the real estate agent that helped us buy the property, works Answer Club, Ishimatsu -san is the one taking over to help us find long -term tenants. Now we're working on this chain of us to Fumi, Fumi to Ishimatsu -san. Yeah, I guess shout out to Keaton though. He did help set us up for the renovation. So there was like a quick reit renovation where they redid the tatami mats and
Speaker: and We have a video, I'm not sure if we posted it yet, but the Kita Kyushu property is probably the best condition and cheapest property we've bought. We learned a lot through the experience, especially when Keaton was still helping us. We got on a call with him and he gave us like wisdom dumps, everything we need to know about how to get a cheap renovation in Japan in an hour long session meeting we had with him. But then he had to leave for health reasons very shortly after that me and Takei work on our own. But we did figure out a lot, we did learn a lot about renovation. Like you can just resurface to Tommy Matt's, for example, you can find a company that will just come in and just repair certain areas of wallpaper, right? You don't have to hire one big construction company that's going to do the entire renovation for you. That might be a good option. I'm not saying it's not a good option, but in terms of doing things cheaply, you can find these very targeted companies that will resurface to Tommy Matt's by the square meter or
Speaker: put up new wallpaper by the square meter. And that is really the cheapest way to do this kind of thing. Keaton did put us in touch with that company and gave them the lowdown. So we didn't have to do that work, but it was still a ah pretty good learning experience to see how a very cheap renovation happens in Japan. Yeah, this was our most efficient, quote unquote turnaround. Like they came in, they chopped the garden down, they cleaned it, they resurfaced everything with them. I think Two weeks and it cost us maybe a thousand bucks if i'm thinking back correctly so cheap yeah and they even took care of some of the garden we pulled weeds cut down some rogue bamboo. Did the rest Tommy Matt resurfacing a little bit of wallpaper and i think that was more or less it.
Speaker: Yeah. Meanwhile, our bet boot place is still ongoing, which we'll, we'll give updates later. But anyways, with this key to Q shoe property, we are, have it on market air horn. booper brown We suspect this was going to be our first property to make a dollar for us, but we'll talk to him again. tvcs in there We actually came close with the key to Q shoe.
Speaker: long -term rental recently, we had a bite. So Answer Club put up a listing on their website, listing's still up, maybe we can link it in the show notes, and we got one bite so far. So, yeah, before. Before you go to that, we listed it for about Yeoman, I think, or maybe Gohman, how much? I think Yeoman, right? I was just looking at it this morning, yeah, five Mon. Oh, five Mon, okay, maybe we gotta lower that price, but anyway. Which is 50 ,000 yen.
Speaker: um Which translates to $300 -ish, $350 US dollars. So very cheap. If anyone's listening to this and wants to rent out our Keetakushi long -term rental property, let us know. On top of that, there's other benefits too of renting our property. Although I'm going to pull it up in the background when I got it here. so I'll send it to you, Taka, so you can look look at it at the same time. Shikikin Reikin are two things to be aware of in Japan.
Speaker: when you're renting a house and i don't claim to be a full expert on this i've got like a seventy five percent confidence in what i'm talking about here but she became raking we've waived both of those for this property roughly i believe she became is the security deposit and raking is Some sort of historic artifact from after the World War II period, they were trying to encourage something in the housing market, and they allowed landlords to force that the new tenant pays them a gift, and that's the reikin, or key money. Basically, hey, we don't give you the key until you give me this gift money. So sometimes you'll hear it called gift money in English, and usually both of those are one month's rent.
Speaker: So it seems like when you renting an apartment in Japan or renting a house, you pay first month's rent, shiki -kin, which is a security deposit, which is one month's rent. And then you pay re -kin, which is non -refundable. You don't get this money back like a security deposit and that's the gift money to the landlord. So it's confusing, huh? and Yeah.
Speaker: But we have it listed right now. I'm looking at these photos. Man, they took photos on like literally ah the rainiest day. You can see it. It looks dark in these rooms. They could definitely have done a better job with photos. Actually, I'm looking at this listing now. There's one more fee I forgot. So there's three fees. And then I can see the brokerage introduction fee here, which is 1 .1 months rent. So basically 4x rent to move in for a month. And ah only one of those you get back. One is rent, one is security deposit, and then the other two are literally just fees that you have to pay. What is the Zenkankyo fee?
Speaker: You know what? Non -life insurance. Do you see that? It's a little further down. It says they need to have a guarantor and they also need a zen kangkyo fee, which is non -life insurance. Oh, whoa, you're right. Okay. There's more fees here, everybody. There's a fee to change the locks, which is what I believe that is. 1 .7 man. And then there's exactly what Takei. Oh yeah. Zen kangkyo.
Speaker: fee. No idea what that is. Never heard of it before. 1 .8 mon. The gist of it is we don't even, this is our property. We don't even need ah know all these fees that we're, maybe we're charging these, maybe answer club is just going to pocket them. We're not sure.
Speaker: But if you were trying to rent a place in Japan, I think the gist of it is there's lots of fees just to move in. Yeah. Almost prohibitively. I think we should actually reach out to answer club and just be like, Hey, let's take this off. I like in the recommended points, the house is equipped with large closet and designed consideration for those with a lot of luggage and women. That's what they call it. A rare property that allows pets. You can spend time with your precious family, Jerry. All right. Tell us about the first candidate we had reached out to us.
Speaker: okay the dog lady so ishi matszian reached out to us through fumi saying hey we got to bite but it's a dog breeder and she has fifteen dogs that's all we knew obtain oh yeah if fifteen dogs a lot but it could just be like Two liters of puppies. Yeah. So maybe i don't know three dogs and then the rest are puppies. We're not sure. At first, I think talking to me and you were, ah, no, it's going to destroy the house. But again, this is a little bit of our throwaway property in the sense that a lot of the reason why we bought this property was just to explore the long -term rental market.
Speaker: and learn about buying for cheap, renovating for cheap, and then getting a cheap renter in there as well. Cheap tenant. I had a discussion. We're like, okay, as long as this person doesn't seem like there's any red, like real red flags. Okay. $15 is definitely a red flag, but let's assume this is a very responsible person. The house will likely have some damage as a result of $15, but if it is a responsible person, it could be minimal still. And so we're like, all right, it's, it is a funny story. The 15 dogs, there is a slight chance that this person is a responsible person. So we asked Ishimatsu -san to show the person the house and.
Speaker: And we asked him like, Hey, is this lady crazy and out? Yeah. Is this person crazy or not? Feel the person out and let us know how it goes. She also offered Hachiman, which is like double of what we were asking. So we're like, what? So Ishi Matsusan said he can probably get Hachiman, eight man a month out of her. If we wanted to proceed with her.
Speaker: Okay. Okay. So it sounds like it's interesting. Dog friendly house rentals are not common, understandably. Dog friendly houses for 15 dogs is definitely very uncommon. Good to know if we ever need to make a, it's a good lever to pull on, I believe. But either way, fast forwarding a little bit. Fumi came back to us, I think two weeks ago and said like, the lady failed to show up. Maybe she showed up like 40 minutes late. She started complaining about real estate agent and the real estate agent is like, F this, I'm not going to work with her. Exactly. So we are back on the market. Unfortunately, our first bite was unsuccessful, but Joey, I think looking at this listing, there's a lot to optimize here. I want to be like photos, price. I'm happy to pay the key fee and stuff if it means getting someone in here. I agree. I think there's too many fees, like just us going over this listing together and trying to explain it in real time. There's a lot of fees here, junk fees,
Speaker: Yeah, whatever that key thing is, the Zen Kankyo, whatever that is. Yeah. Let's see if we can waive these. This route really might be a move to make profit. Again, we have a couple properties in our names. None of them are really making us money. This might be the move. What do you think, Joey? I think from a pure ah ROI numbers, I think it is like.
Speaker: A lot of smart people in the Japan real estate space right now, they're buying these kind of properties and getting long -term rental or renters in them. Maybe not as cheap as this one we got, but a lot of people in the kind of Kanagawa area, a lot of people listening to Ziv's podcasting, many of them are interested in the investment per long -term investments.
Speaker: Okay. So if we do rent this out again, this is back in napkin numbers here. We rent this out for 50 ,000 yen or gold mine that roughly equates to around $300. Let's see. Do you got a calculator? That's about $4 ,000 gross. We would be making per year. ah We paid about that much for the property after fees and all it probably take two years to recoup our money. Right. Not bad, but again, we're not making any money on it yet. So.
Speaker: Let's see. I am bullish though. If we could just keep picking up properties like this and renting an them out to locals, that really is a ah feasible way to make money here. Yeah. And this is the the Keaton strategy. I feel like we've said that term before. Like this really is what Keaton was all about. Stacking properties like this, buy them for cheap, renovate them for cheap, and then just get a cheap tenant in there and keep stacking them. And the property will pay itself off in less than four years. And then you just keep stacking them like that.
Speaker: Question is how do we find properties like this? We don't have Keaton, unfortunately, on the ground. This is something we've been thinking about a lot. How do we find off market deals? Any ideas here for 2025, Jerry? Yeah. I believe Keaton was trying to show us the way. So at one point we were looking at properties in Bepu. This was all just.
Speaker: online through a WhatsApp group that we had. And he linked a bunch of properties. Some of the things he said, I remember was, look in the $20 ,000 to $30 ,000 US range, look for properties that seem like they don't have a driveway or don't have pictures of the inside or slightly undesirable. If you were looking at this as from a vacation home lens,
Speaker: yeah 23k looks great but let's see okay got the pit toilet for example or like i said doesn't have much something that where you pass on this property for whatever reason those are the ones where he believes you make a lowball offer and It'll likely get rejected off the bat, but you do that to 10 properties. You might get a win. Someone might sell. Let's see 2025. Hopefully the year of off market deals for us, but Joey, very worst case scenario. We could live here. Very livable, right?
Speaker: Yeah, very livable. So again, so this specific property, if I was Keaton looking at this on like at home or Sumo, this one is in a very hilly area. It's at the top of this very narrow streets, hilly area, San Francisco, like in a good way, actually good and bad way driving wise. Yeah. but Just imagine we're walking home from the train station up that hill every day. It's pretty, I understand why it's not, I wouldn't not call this a desirable area.
Speaker: Okay. I think it's like a little romantic. I'd say like Japanese anime, when we went to that, the stairway that goes down to the train station, it's pretty cool. I don't know. We haven't spent enough time. Yeah, we haven't spent enough time there. There were some cool spots. Yeah. Like that staircase. We did see, it was like this very long staircase and you get this view of key to Kyushu Harbor a little bit in the background. Phenomenal for what we paid for it. Yep.
Speaker: All right. So key to Kyushu a long -term rental. We are bullish. We are probably going to lower the rent a little bit. I don't think we need to be this high. It's been on a market for about two weeks, not too long, on not too worried yet, but all right, Joe, let's flip gears a little bit. Let's talk a little bit about our Tokyo suburban midterm rental. What's the deal there?
Speaker: Okay. Big news. We're getting the garden taken care of. So someone I met at Anton Worman had a little get together at one of his properties in Chiba. He's got a few in Chiba, I think now, but at one of his, one of the, it's a very large house there. He had a little bit of a get together with other Acia enthusiasts. And I met this guy, Josh. Josh is hoping to start a landscaping business in and around the Tokyo area, but seems willing to travel as well.
Speaker: He's a landscaper from the UK and very big into permaculture. So our property in Thomas city used to have a bunch of trees around it. And it looks like a little bit more greenery, probably very similar to what the neighbors have some trees and a little bit of a garden, but it was abandoned for 10 years and that probably turned into a jungle. So our art, the company that renovated it and flipped it to us, they just cut all the trees down, covered everything with a layer of gravel.
Speaker: And so we asked Josh to come take a look at the garden and give us a quote for make it a little bit nicer, build a plan, hopefully some sort of garden that maintains itself with the natural rain cycle. We're also trying to get a very cool rock there. Yeah, Josh is hard at work on the property right now.
Speaker: high impact rock rock. That's all I want. And our house is like a little bit um perched up on like a platform, so you might need a crane. I just keep telling Josh and I'm like, Josh, we need a high impact rock. and He keeps sending us this stuff. We have one candidate. Joey, what are your thoughts on the tall $1 ,000 pillar rock we're looking at?
Speaker: I think it's going to have to go on its side. so no One, it's interesting that it's like Canadian rock. like It looks like it was sourced in cant Canada or something, so not sure. Can't get it from Japan. So the idea with the rock is some kind of big impactful rock in the garden with a little bench and maybe more of a Japanese style garden. and in that area, a lot of the rest of the garden is going to be more like local plants and stuff that'll survive with the natural rain cycle. So the other concern is that this is right over our garage. Our garage is a empty concrete box and then on top of that is the yard. It's like the property is
Speaker: elevated off the street level. So then putting a big rock onto our on top of our concrete garage, which is the concrete is already cracked to begin with, none on the ceiling or the roof of it. But I do have some weight concerns there. And also Josh mentioned that if you want to stick a rock straight up like a pillar, a lot of that rock, I can't remember if he said 50 percent of it needs to be below grade as well for safety reasons. So the rock doesn't fall over onto somebody.
Speaker: And I don't know if he can go that deep with the garage there as well as mother rock might have to lay on its side. Dan. All right. Well, thank you, Josh, for handling fruit stuff. He's been sending us photos of ah him, like digging up giant roots from ah the old trees. Great work, Josh. Yeah. We'll put some pictures on the Instagram account of the garden progress too, but also if anybody needs a gardener reach out and we can put you in touch with Josh.
Speaker: Yep. So this is his pilot project with us. We do hope to drive his business. So let's see how he does. He's actually manning down the fort in our rental there, living it and being our customer zero or customer one. So good feedback from him and Josh, if you're listening to this, thank you. Speaking of that property, we found a property manager through this process, right? Yeah, we did someone in the neighborhood, Belgian family moved into the neighborhood. They speak English. They also seem to speak a little bit of Japanese or at least have ah Japanese friends.
Speaker: that they can connect with. I thought they were much newer in the neighborhood. So either they're very friendly and are making friends very quickly, or they've actually been around for a while. i think It's funny. Hadasan was like, Hey, Joey, you got to meet this other foreigner in the neighborhood. Or like, how did you guys meet? So actually, I was at the house and Josh had came over to do some measuring of the garden. So me and Josh are just standing outside with measuring tapes and that kind of stuff. And Hadasan, our immediate neighbor, Japanese elder, retired couple,
Speaker: comes up, he said, oh, there's a community barbecue happening at one of the local parks here. You should come. And I said, I would love to come, but i me and Josh are measuring the garden. Don't know when anyways, just said, Oh, I would love to come, but sorry, I can't make it. And then later on that day, he comes walking back up with this family.
Speaker: to parents and a kid and he was like, Hey, Joe. Yeah. Basically, as you said, like, Hey, there's some other foreigners. Here's some other guy, Gene. Yeah. You guys, you guys should hang out. So yeah. Met them really nice family. They're scientists or something is what they told us and husbands working somewhere in Tokyo. And they decided to move here as a family and a wife. We asked her if she wanted to help out with the property management.
Speaker: super, super helpful. And I think this may be one of our top questions for people we're helping through the buying process is like property management. What do I do once I get the property? I think this is like a top priority. Find someone on the ground. Luckily, this family is very close in our neighborhood and can walk over. and Hey, Linda, can you check our car and see the battery's dead? And she went over there and handled. So this would have been honestly a bitch for us to organize with one of our friends because Tom was a little far. So feeling really good that we have someone at least in the neighborhood that can help us. And again, everyone we've interviewed through our AccuMart Direct Buyer's Club has said the same thing. You need to find someone.
Speaker: And it it's not as hard as you think it is to find someone in the neighborhood to help you. Yeah. Everybody's asking, Hey, what about property management? Do you guys have anything set up? The unfortunate answer is we don't, especially say you're buying on an island in the middle of the Seto inland sea. We just don't have any connections in that area. And it's hard for people to travel to. The best thing you can do is get in there and start meeting your neighbors, you bring them in a little bit of some omiyage or a little present or something, some mikan.
Speaker: And finding someone local on the ground, especially someone that can speak English. That's, that's the way to do it. In fact, so much so that me and Taka, sort we're talking to each other, we're like buying in an area where we know somebody is really the move here.
Speaker: Yeah, that's really what we've done. We have not actively sought out new cities. It's been like people have been coming to us and be like, hey, are you interested in buying this property? And we're like, yeah, it's been interesting. I never thought we'd buy where we have at this point. Yeah, I think we did a teaser for the Nagasaki property. One of the agents that we're partnering with is her grandparents' home. And so we're thinking like one of the criteria for purchasing this property is, hey, does she know anybody that lives around there?
Speaker: that speaks English that might be interested in property managing this property. That's a real factor that we're considering when we're thinking about buying this house. our tokyo suburban midstay is' what we're calling again is ready to go ninety percent the way we actually have our first renter two renters actually one in march and one and April timeframe. Awesome. If you are listening to this and you're interested, we put up a site called acia -stay dot .com where we're putting all our rentals. We do hope to house actually other people's rentals at some point. I think the purpose of this site will be more for midterm rentals. So if you're interested in booking acia -stay .com for Tama base camp or Tokyo suburban midterm rental, I'm glad we have a property manager in place, someone in the neighborhood, we have a car, we're gonna have a sweet garden soon too.
Speaker: the Tokyo suburb midterm rental is almost ready. I would say yeah Josh can be working on the garden. The garden doesn't need to be finished for us to start renting that place out. So I would say it's very close to being done. The one other consideration with that property is insulation. So yeah again, Linda, property manager and in the neighborhood.
Speaker: has actually she has been great she's been quite proactive she's the one that told us about this installation company where they go underneath the floor so usually in Japanese homes usually in the kitchen there's a it's almost like a little storage under the floor you lift up the floorboards and then there's a little kind of plastic big Tupperware container there that you can store root vegetables and potatoes and that kind of stuff and But you lift that up and then you get access to the crawl space underneath the floor. And she said they go in through there with these spray foam, spray insulation tubes, and then shove that up into the wall cavity.
Speaker: And that's how they ah spray foam insulation into the walls. And I've also seen just on YouTube, sometimes they'll drill a hole. if If they can't access an area, they'll drill a hole through a wall from the outside into the house and then stick the tube in there as well. That's something that we're thinking of getting done sooner than later.
Speaker: Uh, when I was there in the summer, pretty brutal being inside with the heat. And now Josh, the landscaper who is staying in the house right now ish, December 26 in the winter. He's talking about the same thing, but the opposite problem. It's the same temperature inside as outside.
Speaker: And Linda found this one company, it's like a Danetsu, which is an installation company in Japan that she recommended. I'm looking at their website right now, Joey. It's quite reasonable, like 2 .5 to 3 million yen, which is what, like 20K US to insulate the entire house. They're going to replace the windows with double ping.
Speaker: yeah Last two. If this is real, I do think this is worth it. This is like an unreal price compared to the States in my opinion, to, insulate the walls and double pane the windows. I do think that the sweet spot time zones in Japan, like at least around Tokyo kind of Honshu area spring, like maybe March, April, May.
Speaker: And then fall, September, October, November, I think those are the sweet spots temperature wise. If you're thinking of spending time in Japan outside of those timeframe, so summer and winter, and you're buying a house there, I really think you need to consider installation. Yep. Yep.
Speaker: Let's see if this company does a good job because if they do, I think we just do this with every one of our houses. I'm excited to hear from some of the customers we've helped purchase Akias and I'm curious what their thoughts on installation. We've helped recently a couple of people buy a Nagano area where it's cold is where they are right now. I'm sure they're going to be feeling the need for installation as well. Yeah, we talked to Eric, but Eric was actually there during the perfect October, November. So Eric was there during the sweet spot months. Speaking of cold, Joey, what's the Myoko snow cabin update?
Speaker: Ooh, we got our first snowfall where the snow removal company said, yup, time to remove the snow from the roof. So we got dumped on apparently 1 .5 meters at least. I've seen it in some of Mac guy's videos too. They are getting a lot of snow. Yeah, this is my first house I've owned in a snowy area. So I have no idea, but I'm fearful of the house caving in. This is a lot of snow. This isn't just like your your first house in the snow area. You've got to be extreme here. Let's go. I was watching that guy's videos and just seeing like how much snow was dumping. I was like, ah, we we have our, we have this buddy who's helping us out, coordinate the snow rule. And I'm just like, yo, dude, is this okay? And he's like, yeah, don't worry. It's not 1 .5 meters.
Speaker: But yeah, I'll post it. I'll make this the podcast cover. It's it's a cool shot. I really like how much snow is on our house. Yep. It's a good shot. What are we paying for? So removal, like 300 bucks a pop to remove snow. Yeah, we're definitely way in roof. We're getting the foreigner price. I'm pretty sure. Let's see. so Just know if you are buying in the snowy areas and you need to get as a foreigner, it's no removed. Let's see. How much did he charge us? to Actually, we did also check with Matt guy, YouTube guy. If this was reasonable, he said.
Speaker: Yeah, over 1 .5 meter snowfall, it's going to be 44 ,000 yen, which is 300 US dollars. Expensive, huh? Yeah, I wonder how many times we're going to have this throughout the year. What is it? About a few days ago. So first time December. Maybe once a month, maybe. I'm thinking it could be more, but we'll see how it goes. I'm guessing twice a month.
Speaker: Damn. Honestly though, even if I was there, I would still pay someone to do this. I think we're definitely trying to go up on the roof and figure it out. So this is like a necessary cost, but actually we're swerving our plans on Miyoko snow cabin. We are looking at potentially getting a new build. We're talking to a company called Sekisui chemical who make a home called Sekisui Haim. We might be there. One of their first foreign customers trying to but buy a new build. So we're navigating that space. Hopefully this time.
Speaker: Next year, Jerry, we have a new build home in Yoko. I think that'd be nice. I didn't love the Milko house kind of layout, very low ceiling and the felt dark in there a little bit. So no, no love lost bulldozing that house.
Speaker: What do we do with all this stuff inside though? So I was talking to my brothers for the Christmas in Nova Scotia and he was like, people would pay, you remember that show? so I don't know if you saw it, but storage wars on discovery channel where people would buy abandoned storage units for all the stuff in there. There is some excitement there for, especially for Japanese kind of like storage units. It it is interesting. It's a Japanese house. So it's got interesting stuff in there. I just don't know.
Speaker: If there's money in the space, I think people will be interested in buying it, but to make money off of business doing that, I just don't know if there's um enough money there, but potentially you take everything out of the house, put it in a storage container and then auction it.
Speaker: I would pay money for people to take our stuff. And that's the flip side. Just to get it removed from the house and thrown in the dump, is it's like a thousand bucks, two thousand bucks. Eric did say in our last podcast that he found pearl necklace. So that's cool. I guess, Jerry, we should go through the house one more time in depth. By the way, are utilities in our name yet? We got to figure that out. Is there electricity? It was weird that the house had electricity on. I don't know anything about utilities there, but I don't think we're paying for it unless Yoshi hooks something up. It doesn't feel like these houses are ours. Even though they are, it's really funny. I'm just like, yeah Oh, we have a house in myoko right now. Yeah, does it doesn't feel right. Jay Lux, the Bepu hot spring short term rental and Tokyo suburb midterm rental. Those do seem more like they're ours. The other two don't. It's true.
Speaker: Okay. At this point, congratulations, Joey, you went from owning zero homes to four homes, five home, maybe six homes soon within a year. So it's been a whirlwind of a 2024, right? It has. And I was thinking about the podcast as well. Did we do 52 episodes in 52 weeks this year? Let's see. We've done 59 episodes. Our first podcast was posted December. too we We did it. We did one podcast a week for this entire year.
Speaker: Congratulations. Whew. And a shout out and thank you for our listeners. We have 234 people, according to the Spotify wrapped that are top listeners of the podcast. Who would have thought Joey? Yeah, it's all thanks to you guys.
Speaker: Give us smash the like button and we have some likes now. i'm I'm pumped. This is taking off the ground here. Send the gift of Acia to your friends this season. Send the gift of Acia to your friends. What's coming in 2025, Jerry? We have a podcast editor that might be adding a couple episodes. So hopefully leveling up here. What are you excited for? 2025 predictions in the market and also 25 predictions on how many Acias are we going to buy? I think one thing that's going to happen in 2025 is we're going to get explore a mortgage a little bit of a, not a roundabout way, but we can't get a loan directly from a Japanese bank, but there isn't an option we're exploring with the Japanese loan officer who's based in Berkeley though. And that's where the Myoko property comes into play. So I think 2025 new mortgage, new build Myoko, I do predict that.
Speaker: Okay. I agree with you. I also do predict we will have Airbnb in Beppu ready to go. So we're going to get a little deeper in the mean pocket or Airbnb side. We'll do a full other episode. Joey's been a deep in the weeds on the Airbnb rules and zoning laws more to come there. So I do hope we get Airbnb up and running the barrier to entry. Just so high, Joey, that I do think we can figure this out. And once we get a couple of Airbnb is running, I think there's a ah road to profitability.
Speaker: I'm excited to get the Beppu hot spring, short -term rental property painted. Get the outside painted. Let's see. Sato -san, no word from him. I saw a video recently. He did put some insulation in, which is good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There we go. I feel like we're a really broken record. I have a video of us on our first boot tour saying the property is going to be done January, 2024. Boy, were we fools.
Speaker: January, 20,
Speaker: 25. Yeah. Lesson lesson learned there. What else? How many, if you had to guess talking, how many random of the heat, the QT long -term rental property, myoko snow cabin, like in the sub $5 ,000 properties are we going to pick up in 2025? I'm shooting high 10.
Speaker: whoa I was gonna say I was thinking definite two are on a radar right now and Nagasaki but could be more in all honesty could be more i'm thing, if I had to guess, we're going to try another key to Kyushu long -term rental style as well. Just in case the key to Kyushu property starts turning a profit, like if it's our first property to turn a profit and it's consistent, then pretty smart, right? Pretty smart. Yeah. I'm really interested in 2025 on a little bit like arbitrage flipping, but kind of the AccuMart seal of approval. We have, we have our ear to the ground. We're getting some of these deals. They're good deals too. You know, I think.
Speaker: we We've talked to over 400 people this year on what people want. And it seems like someone wants us to go and verify that, Hey, this property is legit. It's not haunted, structurally sound, set it up with utilities, set it up with a property manager, set up with a car. So I think there's a lot of service we can provide and maybe not flip these properties, but get them ready and resell them to foreigners and package them as, like Hey, this property is done. You don't need to do anything to it.
Speaker: Yeah, it's a little bit of a a risk on our part there because we kind of need to read the tea leaves like, Hey, we find this property. We think it's good. Say for example, in Nagasaki near a beach and we think it's good, but then we purchase it, do a light renovations, building inspection, get the main pocket license, and then slap our stamp Aki Marti of approval on top of it. But is anybody else interested in this area? I do feel like a lot of buyers.
Speaker: Come to us in the like myoko or it's gotta be within an hour's drive to Tokyo or something like that. Like people do have specifics. Location wise, criteria is location wise that they're looking for.
Speaker: Let's see, we might just end up with a whole bunch of empty houses over Japan, but I don't know either way. I think it's fun and it's, we are customer zero here where I like to think trailblazing where people don't really want to go. I do think if we see value in a property and we verify and sign off, like this is a legit property, someone will want it, especially if we keep the price low. Yeah. Let us know if anybody thinks this is a good idea, let us know. If you think it's a bad idea, let us know too.
Speaker: Yep. Cool, Joey. It's been a great year. I think we're going to take a break from the podcast for a couple of weeks. I'm going to go to Vegas and gamble a little bit. Any New Year's Eve plans for you? No, I'll be hanging out in Nova Scotia here. No real plans, but you enjoy Vegas. Okay. Cool, man. We'll catch you later.
