Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back. Welcome back. I'm Joey Stockerman's joined with my host co -host Taki. Uh, we just bought a house. We didn't just buy a house. We bought a house last summer in a Beppu. And this is podcast about our journey.
Speaker: Dang, we're, we're vets now. It's been a year since we started this journey, Joey. And we're looking for property number two. Yeah, we're property on number two, a little bit veterans. I feel like every day since this time last year, we've been like thinking or researching about Japanese real estate.
Speaker: Pretty much single day that goes by that we don't text each other something about Japanese real estate. We have like at least, I would say we have at least 30 ,000 back and forth messages on WhatsApp about Japanese real estate. What do you, what's your estimate?
Speaker: I agree. We tried to move that conversation to Slack, but I don't know. I think we'll get back to Slack, but anyways, yeah, it's good that we do. We, when we do our consultations, we do a disclaimer. We tell everyone we're not Japanese real estate agents, but we are enthusiasts in the space. So I think we're, if you're listening for the first time, you're following us as we, we learn ourselves, but I do say we, we have a pretty good grasp of the space, even though we are not boots on ground all the time.
Speaker: Yeah. And I remember like maybe about this time last year, I was watching some stuff back when the website was much smaller and I was still trying to invest some time in blog content. Someone was saying like, if you're trying to run a blogging website that like you don't even need to be an expert in the space. You just need to have the tone that you're someone that's.
Speaker: at that time when we were talking about products, like you've bought this product before, maybe you've tried two or three different products of the same kind of thing and you have an opinion on it. You don't need to be an expert. You just need to be, they described it as like the neighbor that had done the process once before and people come to you as if they're coming to their neighbor. So that gave me more confidence in the podcast that we don't need to be experts here. We have done it once before and we're just trying to show people a way.
Speaker: I will say that we have probably looked at, yeah, honestly, we've looked at more Japanese listings houses and thought about this for probably most people in the world. So I feel like we're okay, qualified to talk about some stuff, but yeah. Yeah. I also think on that note, so many Japanese homes, at least in the like under $50 ,000 US price range, they look like the home he bought. Like it's the same flooring materials. You see the same bathtubs, the same kitchen. So.
Speaker: We like, we bought a very generic home in Japan, which is a good thing because a lot of people will come to us interested in similar homes. And we're like, we know all the pitfalls. It feels like we know the squishy floors. Yep. So carry on from our last episode, we left you guys all on the cliffhanger. We were trying to buy a house in Tokyo. We were calling it endearingly Crow Lux or Crow Mountain. I forgot what we call it because the area was, it was a Karasuyama Crow, Crow Mountain was what it's called.
Speaker: Joey, did we get the house? No, we did not get the house seller. We offered, it was listed for 15 million yen and we offered 90K.
Speaker: Yeah. And as we mentioned in the last episodes, house had a lot of problems, mostly around moisture and we had some, and the seller it seen was trying to hide that a little bit. So we offered 10, we spoke to some other people and got their opinion decided on 10 offering 10 million. The seller, I believe they said.
Speaker: The quote of the seller through Yoshi, a real estate agent was, it is impossible to accept that offer. Yeah. So yeah, they weren't happy with that. What's the difference between, what is 5 million yen? What's the difference between 10 million, 15 million and 5 million? I think it came out to about like 67K or 70K or something like that. 20K drop in price or 25K drop in price? 30 ,000.
Speaker: Okay. Yeah. So we offered 90K, or sorry, it was listed at 90K, dropped down to 60K. The exchange rates are fluctuating. And to echo what Joey said, it seems like we pissed off the agents. So this is something we've heard a couple of times and we're not trying to be low ballers, but what works in the United States of low balling out properties could burn bridges. So we actually apologized to our real estate agent and I actually asked him like, Hey, were they pissed about that? And he was like, what do you say? He's like, yes, but it's my job.
Speaker: Yeah, he said something like that, but honest. Okay. I feel a little bit bad for Yoshi. He's the one caught in the crossfire here, but I feel like this seller agent was a little bit of a slime ball. A little deceptive. Yep. Yep. So I don't feel bad, but just know if you are offering on property, you do keep in consideration that your middleman or intermediary or real estate agent is doing some of the
Speaker: uncomfortable work and be mindful of that. So we apologize to him and, but he agreed with us. I believe that he's like, wasn't a good idea to buy this for that price with that much damage and liability. Yeah, I think so too. We're moving on at least. And actually Joey, like looking back, we had accelerated a timeline. So backing up a little bit, we had just opened up our business, our business in Japan, which is called her KK, Takamori KK is the name of our business. And we had just opened up a bank account. So
Speaker: It took us a while even to prepare the deposit, which was going to be 10%. So I don't know if we would even got it in time. There was like a lot of hiccups and describe the joy. What's our banking process? We did test transfer, right? Yeah. So we just did a test transfer. So we got the bank account here. Interesting. Okay. So here's what it looks like to open a bank account. Okay. Yeah. Okay. All right. Congratulations to us. We got the bank account. Um,
Speaker: It's a long process to get a bank account in Japan. And just because we have the bank account, we don't have a debit card. We don't have a credit card associated with it. And we don't have access to online banking. We have a little banking booklet. If anyone's familiar with a bank account in Japan, you get this little booklet. I can't even remember. I think you actually put it in the ATM when you're using it and it prints something. Anyways, it's a booklet. It functions as a debit card, but it's not a debit card.
Speaker: You need to apply for each one of these things separately. So we're applying for online banking next so that we can have access to the funds and double check balances and stuff like that. Deposits when we're not physically in Japan, we're applying for that next, hopefully a debit card as well, and maybe a credit card. But what was I going to say? Oh, SeaLux, Curlux, it's still listed though. So I don't know if we say we had gone through, I still think we maybe would have been able to buy it, but
Speaker: Yeah. But it's just good to know if you are listening to this and you're like, I want to buy that property. Just know there's a lot of friction and a lot of hoops to jump through to transfer your money. It's weird. This is our bank account and we have to... For anything above, what was it? A million yen, which is about $8 ,000. The bank will physically call the phone number on your bank account to verify that's not money laundering.
Speaker: because Joe and I both don't have a bank or cell phone number. Oh, can you hear that barking in the background, Jerry? Sorry. Tiny bit. Okay. All right. Because we don't have a cell phone number. They're calling our delegate. We have someone on our like business who has to answer the call and verify the funds transfer. So we did a test run. We got it through. I think now I'm going to send over the deposit via OFX. And so OFX takes what? Day or two to transfer.
Speaker: OFX business is pretty fast. Yeah. But one business day. Okay. So we might've missed the peak exchange rate. I think exchange rates like $1 to 155 yen. Funny story. My dad, unfortunately got fell down, hit his head, was going to the ER. And my dad is one of the sponsors of our friends and family round to buy this Tokyo place. And he was like texting me on his ER bed, send the money right now. The exchange rates good. We enjoy your laughing about it.
Speaker: Yeah, that's when it was like 163. He did time it right there. Like it's, he did, he would have got us 10 % more, but no, we weren't ready to transfer that amount yet. Yeah. The other thing I like, I don't know how much we can take advantage of exchange rates like that because OFX takes their there. So OFX makes their money through the exchange rates. I feel like we, I've never seen an OFX fee every time we've transferred money. They just give you a slightly worse exchange rate and then that's how they make their money. So.
Speaker: Who knows if we would have really got the good exchange rate. Maybe there's a lag in their system or something, but. Yeah. One sector. I'm gonna close this window. No problem.
Speaker: Yeah, so on the bank account note, so we did a test transfer. I can't remember how much we sent a hundred bucks or something like that from an American bank account to this Japanese bank account. And we couldn't even verify when the money landed. We have to email this company that's been helping us set up the bank account and hey, let us know when the bank calls you for money laundering verification.
Speaker: About our $100 deposit so that so that we know that the money has at least Made it to the account or has made it but it's still frozen But seems like it did make it the SMBC. That's our bank me Tomo Did call the company that is helping us set up the main account in the money. They don't know how interesting even for the hundred dollars
Speaker: I tried to ask, maybe I'll follow up with them a little bit because, yeah, for a hundred dollars, yeah, they did call. But I was trying to get information because eventually we're going to transfer the phone number to a phone that we physically have. And I want to be able to handle those conversations with the bank. So I just asked them, what did the bank ask?
Speaker: They just said that, Oh, the bank just asked what the money is going to be used for. So I don't know if there's anything more to that conversation or not, but I'll ask sometime. So if we had decided to move forward and our offer was accepted, the next step would be like a 10 % deposit. So that was what we were trying to hustle and get ready. But either way, Joe, I say we start sending some cash over now just so we're ready. We're still determined to hopefully get a spot by end of June. I'm going to Tokyo.
Speaker: I don't know if that's possible. It sounded like with our real estate agent Yoshi, he seemed pretty confident in a month turnaround time, which was... I think so. Yoshi's fast. Yeah. I think maybe it's helped because we have a Japanese bank account or we've done it before, but it sounds like it's a pretty... Oh, actually it also helps that we have someone in Japan that can sign for us. I think all those things are the perfect storm to get us a property quick.
Speaker: Okay, so we're back to the drawing board, Joey. We talked a little bit about AccuMart itself. We'd love for email notifications on when new things come up. I've personally been looking at Tokyo and new listings. If you are not familiar with the filters, there's a days on market filter.
Speaker: Might be blowing up our spot here, Joey, but I checked the days on market. What's new to list? We're hopefully looking at a couple more spots. Excited about Nippori. Nippori is an area where the Skyliner from Nari to Station crosses. Again, main purpose of this Tokyo spot is so we don't have to sleep on a freaking hotel in hotels or floors or couches and that we have a home base to build this business.
Speaker: Yeah, I, I, when I was just there last month, booked everything a little bit last minute and yeah, just only thing available that was still somewhat affordable were pretty bad hotel rooms and bad neighborhoods. And yeah, it was stressful. And I was splitting, I was sharing the room with someone else. So it was just tiny hotel rooms. So it was, yeah, not a comfortable situation. So it would be really nice. Nippori is right off the Skyliner. So you land in Narita and then you take the, the Keo Keise, I don't remember Skyliner train.
Speaker: And I think the first stop is Nippori. So kind of, I don't know why we didn't think of that before, but that, that, that would be a very nice entrance after a 12, 15 hour flight. It's all part of the process. This is our going to be our, so we've looked at two houses in person. We'll probably do a remote viewing for the next one. But speaking of remote viewing, we've talked about in our past, we were doing Akiyama research. So.
Speaker: As we are making Akiemart, we've noticed that there's a lot of people that are like, Hey, what are our next steps? And we're slowly building some processes there. But we had piloted this program called Akiemart Research, where we would help people do virtual viewings. We've now shifted that. I think the button's actually been taken off, Joey. Yeah. What was our experience with the pilot?
Speaker: Yeah. So it's like I said, yeah, this problem statement here was people, people look at these properties, but how do they, Oh, wow. $5 ,000 property, $15 ,000 property. How do I actually buy it? Like what are next steps?
Speaker: So Aki and my research was, our idea was we did a virtual viewing thought it was great and really decided to dive in after these virtual viewings. What if we provided that as a service? So calling up real estate agents in Japan and asking them to go to the onsite to the property in question, whip out their phone and then jump on a call with us. We partnered with two buddies of ours that we went to college with in Tokyo. We speak both English and Japanese fluently.
Speaker: So they were really doing live translation and they were also setting up, you coordinating the whole thing. So yeah, a lot of work on their part, not the most exciting or fun work, I would say. We had, we hit a few snags though.
Speaker: Yeah. Some of those snacks were every agent, every listing agent is different. So we've interacted with younger agents, older agents, people who spoke English, people who have never spoke English. And each Akiyama research pilot was very different. So some worked really well. Some require the, some of the agents like require in person, like you have to come in person to buy it. So we're like thinking about, can we make a liability by as is,
Speaker: legal statement or legal letter that people sign, but I think ultimately it came down to them just not wanting to one, do Zoom tours. Maybe they're not technically, they don't feel like technically able to do it or two, they're still worried about the foreigners buying with the liabilities. I'd say 50 % of them were hit with that snag and it just became a drag for our friends to like, they were getting caught up in, I feel like a lot of mud
Speaker: trying to convince people to do it. It was muddier than we expected. I think it was good to get that experience though to see what it really is like speaking to a range of Japanese real estate agents across Japan, not Tokyo, but all over Japan. More resistance than we expected initially.
Speaker: But yeah, we learned a lot and we, we recognize demand is there. Someone else wants to take on this project. You go for it. There, there is demand for something like this, but we're thinking about shifting gears a little bit on the project and still in line with figuring out how to give people like a clear next step. I think I can, my research just ran into a little bit too muddy.
Speaker: Yeah, I think we could still consider doing it. I think the real solution there would be getting a representative in each prefecture. It seems like if we had someone representing the customer, like physically go and do hold up the camera and do the zoom tour themselves, that would be appropriate.
Speaker: But yeah, we just don't have people in these rural areas, but maybe we might someday. So for now we are taking the button is officially down. We're back to consultations and we actually think this is a better process flow. Again, like our main purpose here is trying to figure out how do we help people buy? It's going to take a while, but we do think that starting with a consultation with Joey and I just to like
Speaker: level set, hey, this is how it was for us, making sure there's no big deal breakers for people. It seems like all our consults, especially since we put a small fee on it, have been very good, Joey. It shows people are interested, they ask good questions, and the quality of them have definitely gone up, I would say.
Speaker: I agree better conversations, people that there's still a lot of people I feel like that have not been to Japan. And that is maybe not a lot of people, but there's still people that book the consults that have not been in Japan. And that's really our first piece of advice. They are like rural Japan, Tokyo, maybe you can under expect and understand what Tokyo is like, but rural Japan is a different ball game. And really you should go to Japan, plan a vacation, go to Japan.
Speaker: See if you spend a lot of time in a different area outside of Tokyo and then see what you think. But yeah, really a lot, you see a lot of motivation and a lot of excitement in the people that are booking that consultations.
Speaker: Yeah, so our current flow right now, so if you're looking at an Akimart listing and you're like, hey, I want to buy that, I'd say book a consultation. Everyone we've talked to has found value in it. I think it's been really, we actually have provided, I think, very helpful advice to them and pointing them at least the right direction. If there's a property, after talking to us and we feel like, hey, this is, you're serious, you want to buy the right fit, we will pass you off to one of our partners. So at this point, Joey and I have been doing a lot of networking.
Speaker: I feel like we have some good real estate agents or intermediaries depending on what the right fit is. I think Joey, we're shifting to a Tinder matchmaking type role here in that there's people that can speak some Japanese. There's people that have lived there. There's people who want a snowboarding spot. We're starting to come up with the right agents to connect these people with, which I think is ultimately the better model.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm just thinking about ourselves if we had something like this. Yeah, I think just having like a trusted, hopefully people trust us from the podcast, but someone like us saying, Hey, the right agent, that's going to get the job done for you. I would have appreciated that too. NTI did a great job, by the way. That was who we went with, but yeah, we have a lot of contacts in the space here. Been doing a lot of networking. I think we can act as a matchmaker.
Speaker: Yeah. So if you're an agent listening to this, we love to work with you too. So we have, we did an interview with Kendall who's up in Hokkaido. He's our guy now. So like people that are specialized for certain prefectures, I think is like the better fit. So if anyone wants a snowboarding spot, I think Kendall's probably specialize in that. We have folks in Tokyo, we have folks in Osaka, we have Ziv down in Fukuoka. So I think over time, Joey, again, we've only been in the game for about a year, but
Speaker: If we keep networking and finding these bilingual speakers, this is going to be hopefully a good matchmaking service. Yeah. And that's, that, that might be what Akiyama Research turns into. We still see a lot of value in doing these consults, understanding what people are looking for and then passing them off to the right person. So Akiyama Research did already do 75 % of that. Yeah. I think it'll be more of a transition from Akiyama Research to Akiyama, something else, but.
Speaker: Totally. And if you've already put out an Akiemart research form, and we still might send people out just to gather information. It looks like we got like close to 30 folks over the past two weeks. So definitely big demand. I think we will be reaching out to you. We will also try to be matchmaking you with some folks who can probably help you. So if you have already filled out the form, we're not going to leave you hanging. We do want to get to you, but we've been going slowly down the line of people, but
Speaker: It's good to see like Joey from a industry, what are we seeing? I think that's the question I get it quite often. Are we seeing more interest in the space? Are we, we have the numbers on Akiyamart. What's the overall sentiment of the, this Akiya space?
Speaker: I think a lot of interesting, especially with the interest exchange rates, people just see it as a really exciting opportunity. These prices are unheard of. These prices are like, I don't know when prices were this low in America, but it's pretty exciting. Also, I just think that the other level of excitement is that Japan is so islandy, coastliney, mountainy that you get very interesting properties as well for these type of prices. I've seen a lot of demand.
Speaker: Good properties on it. I check out the IG someone that you got some good ones coming out
Speaker: Yeah, thank you. It's all due to the map on achimark .com. It's a real fun browse. What was I going to say? I do think that there is still a lot of the expectation that like people see a $5 ,000 property and they're like, Hey, can I, can I Venmo you the money right now? Kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. Unfortunately it's not, I wish it was that easy. It's trying to figure it out. We're trying to figure it out. We're trying to figure it out. Yeah. The best ends of flow right now.
Speaker: would be book a consultation with us. We can help set expectations about what the process is truly. And then we'll put you in touch with the right person to, to, to buy that $5 ,000 home on the Island in the middle of the Seto inland sea. Totally. Yeah. So it's, it's $60 for a consultation, but I a hundred percent in retrospect, I would pay that amount to talk to us just to like course correct and save us. I feel like we would save ourselves $60 of headache. How we like talk to ourselves a year ago, right?
Speaker: That'd be actually, yeah, I a hundred percent agree. And I, with our, for everyone that's been listening, we've been setting up businesses in America, businesses in Japan. We have about.
Speaker: a full year before tax season. So it's like, we're in the position where it's like, oh, maybe we need to pay for a consult for someone that understands how to set up cross border businesses. Totally. And going back to my own question of what are we seeing? I was actually, I was at a bar, I'm in Portugal right now in Porto. And I was like talking to some people at the bar and they were like, Oh yeah, I heard there's 9 million abandoned homes. And it's crazy that people are seeing these articles. And I think there's probably more and more coming out. So.
Speaker: I don't know. I've talked to you about this, Joey. It feels like there's a tidal wave coming. We get that question a lot. Should I buy now? Should I buy later? I'd say this is like a pretty prime time. It feels like with the exchange rate, it feels like there's a lot of people reaching out to us just by looking at our AccuMart visitors on a site, things are moving up into the right. People are really digging the space and becoming more passionate that if you're listening to this and you're on the fence, I would say like,
Speaker: Sooner the better probably just because I don't know. Yeah, we got that question a lot, Joey, right? There's going to be more Akiyas, but also at the same time, I really do think there's going to be more competition moving forward. Yeah. And just looking at what's happening in Japan with both tourism and immigration, it does seem like tourism is aggressive right now. When I was in Tokyo, it was crazy. It didn't used to be like that when I was last there in 2011.
Speaker: Yeah. But on the, so there's, there was something in the news recently that, that Kawaguchi co -loss ends with the view of Mount Fuji in the background. They're putting up a billboard or something to block the view. So it does seem like there's BPA, which is silly. They should have monetized that somehow instead of just destroying the view, but it does seem there's.
Speaker: There could be pushback against short -term tourism in Japan, but on the flip side, the government just came out with a six -month digital nomad visa. So maybe they're trying to harness this interest in Japan and direct it more towards mid -term, like medium length stays in Japan as opposed to short -term tourism.
Speaker: And if that's the case, yeah, I'm sure people staying in Japan for six months at a time might start getting really interested in Japanese real estate. It's interesting. I think Japanese local sentiment is like, it's low right now on everything. I've been watching some YouTube videos of this dude who's just like a 50 year old dude. He's just honestly being like, I'm worried about Japan. I have no friends, things like that. I think I sent it to you, Joey. Yeah, he sent it to me. That guy was a sad guy.
Speaker: And moral in Japan seems low with the depreciating yen. I think there's a lot of negative trends in Japan with aging populations, all these things that it's tough mentally. I think that coupled with
Speaker: Honestly, Japan doesn't let in immigrants as I'm in Portugal here where I see all the Portugal let in a ton of people. So I actually just learned also, Joey, that Portugal has a similar, maybe even more elderly people than Japan, like from an aging demographic. But I think that they really let in a lot of foreigners, which seems to turn out well. Unfortunately, Japan is an island and probably a little bit harder.
Speaker: Sad. I see all these videos and I do think Japanese sentiment of what's happening locally is they're in low spirits, unfortunately. Yeah, it's tough. Like our friends in Beppu who husband's American and it's much harder for them to go back to America for summer vacation because of the exchange rate. Yeah. It's harder for Japanese people to travel at the moment, travel outside of Japan.
Speaker: I feel better that we're trying to help. Like we're trying to help people identify houses. I do think that this is one of the, at least solutions. If we weren't helping foreigners buy in Japan, they're not making more babies. These houses are going to be abandoned. The future of Japan is a little bleak in my opinion. Shishi will move in. But yeah, I think, yeah, hopefully we're getting closer. I feel like to figuring out and unlocking how do we help foreigners buy in Japan? Again, we're just two regular dudes, but I do feel Joey, we are, we're getting close. We got the search down.
Speaker: Now it's just like, how do we get people to buy? How do we get the banking together? How do we get elect utility set up? But we've unboxed a really interesting problem, I think. Yeah, there's definitely friction in the process. There's friction in a lot of processes in Japan. So I've come to notice, what was, I was telling you some funny, the, oh yeah, I was again with the banking sector in Japan. I had brought, I had $500 US and I went to a local bank in Beppu.
Speaker: to just exchange that to yen and they wanted a whole bunch of information and then they were like, it's going to take two weeks. Is that okay? Two weeks. Oh no. Anyways, there's a lot of friction in the Japanese economy, I think, and friction is opportunity. I'm not saying we're going to create a bank, but just in general.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to deal with Japanese paperwork. So whatever, like whatever we can do to try to streamline the process, I think that has to be the future, right? And Japan stuck in the 2000s, it feels like with everything that there's definitely an opportunity. And hopefully we start, we're trying to help facilitate maybe a couple of purchases too, but I think that's also been put on the back burner. We've
Speaker: We get a lot of, we get a lot of people reaching out about feature requests. And at the end of the day, we're two dudes. Joey's the main developer. I'm have a little less time to work on stuff here, but a lot of work to do. What are we excited about Joey? What kind of features, AccuMart? Do we have prioritized? I know we have a lot of brainstorming and whiteboarding to do, but what are you excited about working on?
Speaker: I think that the main technical focus for me at the moment is more of a product for real estate agents. So we're going to allow certain real estate agents to create original listings with us, which I think could be interesting. What are we calling that? Original listings? Original content? I haven't, in the code, I've been calling it native listings because the other reason.
Speaker: Yeah, like original content. Cause the other reason is we discussed before the conference about putting Easter eggs and Easter eggs hidden in the map somewhere just for fun. So in addition to giving Japanese real estate agents the ability to create a listing directly with us.
Speaker: We can make some, hide some Easter eggs in there. So that's the next project that I'm working on. But I would say something that I am excited about is a different project and that is something with our friends. So I went to grad school with two people that are now working as data scientists. They're working for the US government for a bit.
Speaker: But a lot of their focus was on geospatial and satellite imagery. So something I was trying to do, I was looking at Kotoku in Tokyo and I heard that, oh, someone had warned me. Oh, Kotoku, don't buy property there. It's man -made. They filled in part of Tokyo Harbor. So it's like a man -made piece of land.
Speaker: in the 70s and they're like, oh, there's lots of flooding there because of that. The ground shakes more during earthquakes. So I was trying to look at flood maps and earthquake maps for that specific area in Tokyo. And this is what my, these two data scientists, friends of mine, this is what they have been doing specifically earthquakes for the US government for past, I don't know, 10 years or so.
Speaker: I met up with them recently after my trip to Japan and they were really interested in collaborating with us. So I do think some sort of like landslide risk, flood map risk, earthquake risk, I think that could be really cool. And that's something that you don't see on any other Japanese websites.
Speaker: Dang, we got two PhDs from Cambridge University. Joe, you got your master's, right? And a master's from Cambridge University. I got a master's. Yeah. Oh, snaps. Okay. Exciting things coming. We don't know how it's going to work, but yeah, we're at the point where I think we have a base platform. It's like, how do we now really add?
Speaker: what investors want. And I think that's one of our top questions, like Japan gets earthquakes, is this an earthquake zone? And if our friends can help there, I think that'd be a really interesting product. I don't know if it's going to make us money, Joey, on the short term, but I think money will come if we make a good product is my kind of gut feeling here.
Speaker: Yeah, my, my good feeling is that initially I don't see it as a one -off. I don't really see much money. And so we also discussed like a zestimate type thing. And that's what my friends were also interested in helping us build. But potentially we loop this all into a larger project that we can, a larger product that we can sell like real estate analytics for Japan. And if you subscribe to that product, you get all of this stuff you get.
Speaker: Market analytics, we integrate with Airbnb related data. You get all the risk factors, the natural disaster risk factors. So potentially there's something there as that larger product where you subscribe and you just get all this additional information about the real estate.
Speaker: Yep. I think that's going to be, it's going to be game changing or differentiating. I don't think any Japanese real estate sites are going to be embracing the data science AI as much as we will be. So let's see, fingers crossed that's going to kill it long -term. But going back to actually those native listings, we have two more podcasts coming up actually. We have two, excited to share, we have two people that are trusting us to help sell their properties. So one in Shizuoka, we have a really cool cabin there, took a lot of
Speaker: photos, took a lot of videos. I think that's going to be our first pilot native listing where we're trying to directly sell or help this person sell a property. And the second one is going to be with Kendall Barathe. He's the guy in Hokkaido who's the real estate agent. He has some interesting cheaper properties that we're also going to feature. So I think we're going to change some of the podcast episodes to talk about those listings. And I think it'll be interesting. Get deep dives into what the property is and hopefully we can find a buyer for them.
Speaker: Kendall's the man. Kendall has been so helpful. So we interviewed him. That episode was great. And I refer people to that when they ask us questions about closing costs, taxes, insurance, that type of thing. But also just off the podcast, just texting him whenever we have questions about Japanese real estate. Extremely helpful guy, knows Japanese real estate really well.
Speaker: Highly recommend him if anyone's looking for property, especially in Hokkaido, get in touch with Kendall. Yep. So two, two new podcasts coming out pretty soon. We're going to interview him next week, but other than that, Joey, I'm tired. I'm excited to go back to California. I'm in Portugal right now. You're back. How's home.
Speaker: Feeling good to be back. Yeah, it could be back. It's only been less than a week since I've been back, but yeah, that's good. I was gone for a while. I was going for five weeks. All right. I'm taking the next tour duty. I'm going to Tokyo at the end of June. So if you're listening to this and you're around, I'd love to meet up. We're hopefully going to get keys to a property by then fingers crossed. So I'm sure we'll do another podcast with more properties. We put an offer on. Unfortunately, Crow Lux, Crow Mountain is a no go, but Joey, it's probably for the better.
Speaker: And if that listing's still up in a couple weeks, should we try to make an offer again? Or is that like inappropriate? Doesn't hurt, right? It doesn't hurt. We'll see what Yoshi thinks, but I don't think it doesn't hurt. And no informed buyer. You have to be a sucker to buy that. And that's exactly what they're waiting for.
Speaker: I'm bullish on Nippori Lux. I've sent the listing over to Yoshisan and it only has one photo at the outside, but let's take a look at it. I think Nippori Lux. Skyliner Lux.
Speaker: Skyline, Skyliner and Luxica. I think that it would actually be a really comfortable spot for people to like after a long trip, you take the train, it gets you directly there. Just rest. I don't know the areas too well, but I do like that area. I think general area. So yeah, it's true. So I stayed two different places. Uh, Kabukicho and then Akasaka and both of them landing in Narita.
Speaker: You got to take the Skyliner and then both times it was like a half hour cab ride because I had, I had two large suitcases actually with a bunch of t -shirts for the conference. So yeah, it was just like, uh, and then the cab ride kind of thing. Do you think I'm excited about anything near Nipori, which is I think the first stop on the Skyliner.
Speaker: Cool. Hey, we'll keep everyone up to date. Hopefully we'll have an Airbnb soon. Our bet. We spot should be ready. What's the prediction? September, October. I got it. I got it. I'm betting September, but I will. I'm going to reach out to Sato Sun this week. All right. Cool. All right. Done. We'll see you guys later. See ya.
