Transcript
Speaker: right. What'd you drink in here? So this is a co ferment it's called. So actually a podcast listener put me on this. He came to visit me in my home Bay, uh, him and his girlfriend, big time podcast listener. Also thinking of purchasing property. I won't say the prefecture. He was like, don't popularize this prefecture. He wants to scoop up the houses there, but anyways,
Speaker: countryside Japan he's thinking I'm moving to but also he's a big coffee nerd as well and he told me about this roastery roasters in Montreal that's drinking right now so they do a co ferment so I googled this and so when before they roast the coffee bean one way to like remove the fiber of the coffee cherry and just get the bean out of it is through fermentation so basically they'll just kind of let the coffee cherries rot in a bucket or something like that. And then it's easier to take, take the stuff off, but it ferments a little bit in that process. And that puts a lot more of those, you know, kind of unique flavors into the coffee when you roast it. And so what a co ferment is, they throw a bunch of like fruit or other things in that bucket when the coffee cherry is fermenting and you get even wacky or funkier flavors as a result. So this one, I think they put in peanut butter, banana and jelly. Okay. Give the verdict out of 10.
Speaker: It's pretty good. I think it's pretty good though. It's pretty interesting. So again, this podcast listener, shout out. Thanks for coming to visit me. He described them all as funky and I would agree.
Speaker: Welcome back to the buying a house in Japan podcast. We are back from our summer vacations. It's good to be here. We're going to do a dear diary series today. Joey, how you doing, brother?
Speaker: Good. Good to be back. Had my brother's wedding last week, had a ton of family over here. The two, two sides of the family, you know, my dad's my mom's side, some of them had ah had met each other before for some people. it was first time meeting, but it was a lot of fun.
Speaker: I got confused a little bit from time to time who knew who, or like I thought, because I know both sides so well, like sometimes in my mind, it got jumbled that both these two sides don't know each other, but anyways, it was a lot of fun. it was a great wedding.
Speaker: That was the lobster cookout. I saw a photo of 40 lobsters and Stockerman's family gathering. It was a lot of lobsters. It was good. Two pounders. What else did we have? So my brother's wife is, or her family's from Mongolia. So we had also had her parents cooked a bunch of Mongolian kind of dumpling, like pancake-y kind of things. was really good.
Speaker: I remember we went on a road trip with Adam and we were in Sedona, I think in Arizona. And he's like, going to buy this. ah Was it Santa Fe? Where was he was either Sedona or Santa Fe where he like found this was not a rug blanket.
Speaker: I forgot what he called it, like a fire blanket or something. And he's like, I'm gonna buy this for this girl I'm dating. And that that was for Sam girl. Wow. I was that's my day that's my connection. with that was that Ask Adam if that was his first gift to her.
Speaker: Because I I don't think I was there in spirit at least. How was your trip to Serbia? 40-hour flight back, bro. That was terrible. like If we ever get enough money to buy business class seats, I'm like always going to buy business class seats, I feel like. Yeah, such a nice luxury.
Speaker: Novi Sad, Serbia, underrated. I actually do recommend if you are considering being a digital nomad somewhere, somewhere it's pretty pretty dope. So my my fiance, for context for listeners, ah is from Serbia, Montenegro kind of border.
Speaker: And um we went to go hang out with her friends and family. And yeah, they all remember you, Joey, from ah her sister's wedding. They're like, these two American dudes were making, set like making senvits is what we'd call them, sandwiches out of like everything.
Speaker: And they're like, you definitely were not supposed to do that. But I was like, God, it was awesome. We had a lot of fun. Yeah, had a lot of fun. That was us also like the sickest I've been in the long, long Was it from the Z-biotics? So Z-biotics is like a pre-alcohol drink thing. Or was it from the meat on the table that was sitting there for five hours?
Speaker: I honestly don't know. It could have been either. So Z-biotic, right, is supposed to be like a hangover cure. Put some enzymes and or good back healthy bacteria in your gut, and then that eats the alcohol.
Speaker: But I don't know what it was. Could have been the meat. Could have been the Z-biotic. So you like NoviSat? So they use the gyro there? or What do they use? They use the dinar, I think is what it is like.
Speaker: I forgot what it's called, actually. Serbian. Okay, their own money. But it is quite affordable. I think it was actually like from ah from a pretty big... It had like kind of Brooklyn vibes at some point, and everything was quite affordable.
Speaker: But then when we did our layover in Istanbul, man, Istanbul, the currency has gotten crazy. it's it's Shit's so expensive there. It was like $10 for Turkish coffee, which it was like really unusual.
Speaker: But... Oh no, and Turkish coffee. That's where they just boil it in the thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. that's I had a lot of Turkish coffee, but it's all good. Good to be back. Joey, what we got on the docket today? We got a lot of lot of things that have been happening the past month. I think it's good for us just at least to talk about it. Again, this is going to be a Dear Diary series episode.
Speaker: No real agenda, just us shooting the shit a little bit. Yeah, I think start off with, I think we don't have too much to talk about with our properties, but there have been a few, a little bit of movement with TBC. We're trying to get it insulated. So we found somebody who can do, we found someone who has found someone.
Speaker: who can do spray foam insulation. so we're going to try to get that in the walls and the floors and the attic. Hopefully that all works out. We haven't got one hundred percent confirmation that this is going to happen yet, but, um, we're, but the biggest issue is that the summer is just brutally hot, especially the upstairs.
Speaker: Um, the, we, we had someone come in to take a look and it is a steel framed home. And he was just like the steel framing in the attic is like crazy hot and there's no ventilation. So he recommended adding some sort of ventilation system in the attic. He also recommended, you know, if you can do more insulation, do more insulation. So we're exploring that option with them.
Speaker: And then the ventilation, he said, it isn't going to do too much in the winter when it's cold, but hopefully if we can get the spray foam insulation, we'll be able to temperature control that house. We should definitely make like a spray foam insulation company and just service all our customers. Cause like for people listening who have not purchased Nakia, like there's a 90% chance your house is not insulated. and It's going to be cold and hot.
Speaker: during the season. So I don't know. If you have $200,000 out there and want a business idea in Japan, spray foam insulation. Yeah, they just like kind of like they just cut little holes and spray between each kind of like beam, right?
Speaker: Yeah, from what I saw on YouTube, again, it was, I don't know, some guy in the U.S. s or Canada doing it. Yeah, they just cut in through the outside. They just drilled right in, shoved the thing in, filled up the cavity, and then I don't even remember if they patched up the hole or lifted that for the homeowner or somehow you patch it up.
Speaker: Okay, so fingers crossed. We're going to have this guy hopefully on the podcast when we see him in October. Hopefully the renovations for this installation will be done before we get there in October.
Speaker: But I'm optimistic. At least is this is good news. We really had to push hard for spray foam. I feel like we've talked to four contractors at this point and just be like, can we do spray foam insulation? All of them have been like, nah, can't do it.
Speaker: Or like, don't know how to do it. Or i don't know Yeah, but I don't remember four, but I remember one at least i was just like, no, no, no. Like, sorry, guys, you're out of luck. This house is uninsulatable. It's kind of like the response we got.
Speaker: all right, JLUX, a little bit of movement on JLUX. So we're still going forward with Mizota-san. So Mizota-san, new contractor after Sato-san. We should do a full one-hour length Sato-san episode, by the Our hundredth episode, we should do the legacy of Sato. We got ah someone who messaged us on Instagram.
Speaker: There was a guy, i don't know if you saw like he got a Japanese guy got lost in the woods and forgot his memory. And there's some first the podcast listener sent it to us like, is this Sato-san? Could be.
Speaker: Disappeared. Could Lost his memory. Mizoto-san, what has he been doing? so ah some Yeah, he moved the, our toilet wasn't centered in this bathroom. He moved that. I've been doing a lot of tiny fixes in the shower.
Speaker: But the big one was cleaning up the outside. So unfortunately the outside, me and Taki never really touched it. We did like one hour cleanup, like on our first trip to Japan, but really that didn't even put a dent in um the clean the work required outside. It really was still in its Akia state, the whole outside property, you know, kind of trash shoved behind the shed for, we don't even know what was there probably decades. People have been shoving trash back there, weeds everywhere, beer bottles, you know, underneath our Mikan tree.
Speaker: There was like seven beer bottles we never bothered to move. Do you think some neighbor was just coming in after they knew was an Akia or would you think it was the owner? It's it could have been both, you know, so I do think that, or the story we were told the owner moved out to move into like a care facility. And so maybe they just, you know, couldn't be bothered to handle the trash appropriately and just shoved it behind the shed.
Speaker: I kind of think it was the neighbors because it's hard to get back there behind the shed. Um, I kind of think it was the neighbors on that side of the property. The, our outside now is looking a hell of a lot better. Uh, we are now putting up like a little bamboo fence where are I think I don't know, man, we're never going be done with this, but it's it's looking pretty presentable at this point. Like I feel pretty good bringing friends over be like, okay, come stay at it. You know, but again, it's ah it's like whack-a-mole. We solve one thing and there's next is like, do we do redo the kitchen? like
Speaker: Yeah, i I think the fact kind of remains though that I think we see if JLUX is probably not in his final state just yet, but it's very close. Let's say 98% of the way there.
Speaker: Like we see the max good it can get. Like we see the ceiling, I think. And given the other, we've been toying with the idea of selling our properties and and going all in on like a flagship property, maybe probably keeping TBC. It's just so useful having the Tokyo property, um but maybe selling everything else and buying one flagship property that we're really stoked on.
Speaker: Like i think JLUX, like we see there's a limit to how good it can get. And maybe had we restarted, i think have we if we went in again,
Speaker: I think tearing up the floors and lower, like kind of going even harder in the beginning would have been the move versus like put band-aids. Uh, yeah, that was our only property at the time though, I guess. And you know,
Speaker: we we we We did throw a lot at Sato-san, and he did handle a lot, just kind of the last 20%. I feel like most contractors kind of like peter out the last 20%. Yeah, pretty happy, though. You know, I think that the state JLUX is in at this point, it's really comfortable. I think it's very, very worst case scenario if no one stays there we just go there once a year to like hit the hot springs. I think it's been ah mission success.
Speaker: I do think washer dryer, like with that. true So we have a guest room off the kitchen that we were kind of putting aside for a, uh, off office space. If we wanted to go for business manager visa back to tune it two years ago, before these changes, we are considering that, um, we walled it off, but there's no reason to keep it walled off. Now we could open it up, honestly, a washer, like to make it max comfortable, the washer dryer in TBC is really great.
Speaker: Oh, yeah. We just posted that but the podcast with Nick. From a business manager visa perspective, that walled-off office is kind of a moot point, right? Yeah. I mean, um we're not going for the business manager visa. But you know maybe someday Takamori, our corporation in Japan, will have $200,000 worth of capital in it. Who knows? Okay. Okay.
Speaker: Well, so I think JLUX is in a good spot. We're pretty happy with it, doing a couple more fine touches. And then I think it's pretty much cruising altitude. And as we get more funds, we just keep working on it.
Speaker: Or maybe sell it, as Joey mentioned. But Ketakushu, Joey, who we ran some numbers. Give some context on on the Ketakushu property for us. Ketakushu was like our...
Speaker: What's the right word? Least, what's that? One we were maybe least proud of. Investment focused, I would say. Or just mean like least excitement about Kitakisha for a very long time.
Speaker: But recently, you know, we've had a tenant, a long-term tenant in there for, I think, three paying months at least she's been paying us. And, ah you know, we're making Nimanen a month. So our rent is Sammanen, so $30,000.
Speaker: yen per month, which is like 200 bucks a month after fees. We have, uh, the, actually the real estate, the brokerage that helped us purchase it. They're being the guarantors and property managing it for us as well.
Speaker: They take a pretty large fee. They take about one mon, a little over one mon actually. So about 33% fee, um, which is steep, but it's completely hands off, like 100% hands off for me and Take.
Speaker: which is great. Hey, Niman in a month, 20,000 yen a month free. So given the price we purchased, I think we were all in, you did the calculation the other day, 8K. Yeah, somewhere around 8K US.
Speaker: ye So if we're making like 160 bucks on it, so 8K investment, 160 bucks a month, what's that of a year? At least a grand a year. You know, probably like six, seven years payback time.
Speaker: We've been calling this property KK20, Ketakushu 20, because I think we were like targeting a 20% return on this. Lo and behold, we ran the numbers. We are on track to make 20% ROI on this property. So KK20, we really manifested that... ah Percentage I'd say.
Speaker: but Well, so Keaton for listeners, Keaton is another character in our saga here. Sato-san was a character. Keaton is a character and they both kind of happened at the same time. Keaton is not his real name. It's alias, but Keaton approached us and his whole idea was you buy these Akiya's.
Speaker: You find a long-term tenant and you make 20% year is what he was calling it, return on your Akia investment. He was like, my whole thing is buying for cheap, so good negotiation skills.
Speaker: And then the ability to find cheap but effective contractors to do a light renovation and then you get a tenant in. And yeah, you know maybe his strategy is right. Yeah, he he did it. And you know we say this a lot like,
Speaker: I don't know, Joey. Honestly, you and I are not good investors, I would say. And things just kind of work out for us. So don't take our advice on this. But this was our, again, our least exciting project, but truthfully the most successful if you're looking at it from a numbers perspective.
Speaker: We put very little energy into this and it it worked out. And don't know, there were points, you listened to previous pods, there were points where we like, are we getting scammed? You know, that that thought did cross our mind multiple times.
Speaker: Yeah, the whole Keaton story is a very similar story to Sato-san, a little bit of deception and who knows. And we're like, okay, anyone that – like Sato-san isn't his real name either. We're like, okay, any Japanese dude that uses a fake name, we're like, maybe we don't trust him.
Speaker: It is suspicious. Okay. I mean, that so those are three of our properties. Again, we actually, we'll just go over the other three real quick. Nagasaki, we have successfully sold ah to a great family check. This was our Akiyamart seal of approval.
Speaker: They are in there. They're dealing with the... The harshness of Japanese weather, would say. they They happen to go during a very, very hot time. And I think there's been a lot of storms. yeah But successfully, we have offloaded our first property. We made very little money off this, to be honest, and have put it towards it an espresso machine that is now ah going to be used in our Tama Base Camp house.
Speaker: Great profit. Yeah. Excited to to rig that up.
Speaker: Did we get, sorry, back on the Espresso, did we get the PID controller and that stuff? Yeah, go we got the full exact same setup. So it's just going to be like nothing different. It's just same setup.
Speaker: Even the tools, right? We sent. Yeah, I think it's the same. you know, our specialty is like, I don't know. I think we we keep things consistent, at least with some of our purchases.
Speaker: Okay, number five, our Miyoko property. I think we've talked about this. It stalled out a little bit. We probably missed the window to put a new build on it. So... But we are still going to use it. We're filming a video, quick teaser. We're working with a comedian named Danny Wilson.
Speaker: He's known on Instagram for his crude Japanese lessons, which I love. But we've we're taking a shot at a different form of marketing or content. Joey and I don't love being in front of camera, to be honest, and like being a content influencer. So we're trying to work with others. So comedian is one and he's going to be visiting our Miyoko property next week, actually, during this coming up.
Speaker: Sweet. The Miyoko property is... We don't have the key for the door, by the way. a good feel We're just going to break in now. Actually, go ahead. Go ahead and break in.
Speaker: They don't have the address. There's nothing... that you Please take stuff from the house. ah It's going to be looted, bro. Anyways, yeah, you got like like kick in one of the doors to get in. But yeah, please don't go and ah damage our property. But yeah, anyways, it's just funny that...
Speaker: the house is too far gone. We had a friend, um, go look at it. And a lot of the structural parts of the floor seemed like it was too far gone for even a renovation. So we've kind of,
Speaker: given up on the renovation idea behind it and we're just kind of letting it sit there but yeah we still got it clear the snow it's gonna be hard to dismantle if it's like in a collapsed state i think so i think we probably should still do the snow clearing okay yeah snow clearing okay number six our old tattoo property our boy ryo riosuke takamoto one akiamart exclusive agents now is up there working on renovations. We were hoping to get this done October, but realistically, I think it's going to be December now. But for a reminder, it this is a duplex kind of situation where bottom floor on the top floor are both the same layout.
Speaker: We are renovating it. We are going to be having this be our second Akiyamart seal of approval property. So excited, thankful that we have Dio quarterbacking this, but yeah.
Speaker: Did we miss one? No, we talked about, I think we got all them, right? Nagasaki. So six properties and the seventh project we have coming up, which we mentioned in our last podcast, and we'll segue to that, is the Tama Coin Laundry business, Akisha.
Speaker: Joey, give us the updates on that. Okay, things we finally got all, okay, the website that we're using to find these properties, it's even worse than Japanese real estate listings websites. One, it's like unusable in the same way that Japanese real estate listings websites are like, you know, just very clunky for a Western user. So it's like that a little bit more than also like more kind of technical lingo on there.
Speaker: then Japanese real estate. But on top of that, I would say the bigger issue is the amount of verification that you need to go through. Like we have a Japanese representative director now on our company and without him, like this would have been impossible. I tried myself months ago and got caught with needing a Japanese phone number to, you know, get some sort of, you know, they're doing a two factor authentication or something like that. I do have a Japanese phone number, but the SIM card can't connect to the cell towers in Canada. So I could never get those messages.
Speaker: Um, but then on top of that, it was just kind of documents and documents and documents. And even once we got through that and then became a paying user of the site, and then we tried to message a seller, there was like a final, but I don't even know what the final verification step was, but that got held up by a little bit. And yeah, honestly, it's probably been a full month ah of just trying to get fully signed up on this website.
Speaker: i think they needed to see like our ink on Shome or something like that, that our representative director was on there. But yeah, a lot of KYC, which I think is fair. It's fair though, too. You know, if you're, you don't want bad, unverified users messaging like, hey, I want to buy your property or something or buy your business.
Speaker: So ah again, the advice out there for anyone that like, It's got, it really does want to start business in Japan. Like, first of all, it's going to very expensive. And second of all, business manager visa makes it even tougher to be the manager of your own business in Japan. But after that, the, let's say you have all that figured out somehow after that, the advice I would say is get a Japanese speaking national on your company as representative director. It has been night and day, moving our business forward.
Speaker: Yeah. yeah Like if you had told us this is how much money you would have spent when we made our company, I think like, I really don't. How much money have we spent just like an admin, like getting to this functional point where we can use our company and bank account? Like it must be like thirty k maybe 40, maybe 50 over the past year.
Speaker: over the past year I think the good, I could be wrong here. I think the good thing about admin is admin costs is like when you're starting your business, they are high, like because you're not making a lot of money yet when you're just starting your business.
Speaker: Admin costs are very high and that kind of scares people away. But I believe, and this is where I could be wrong, at some point you reach terminal escape velocity and then that's just a fixed cost on your business. But but it doesn't like grow with the revenue that you're making. So hopefully someday this business ends up in a place like that where the admin costs are just like,
Speaker: cost of doing business, but not something that we worry about. who Someone gave us advice. It was just like, this doesn't matter if you just make a shit ton of money. so Someone in Japan said that, right? like That was Grant Thornton once. Yeah, was talking back again when we first started the Akiyamire business. I was trying to figure out, because the business is in America and I'm in Canada, and that was one of the advice he gave. He was like, you know all these problems that you're having, you're trying to think of this strategy, that strategy. he's like this you know He's like, it it just all you pay someone to deal.
Speaker: with this situation for you. He's like, it goes away with money. These kind of admin tax related issues that are expensive and time consuming when your business is small. But I think once your business grows and has the money to just pay someone to deal with it, like then you're cruising.
Speaker: Yep. Going back to the coin laundry. So yeah, the TLDR is like making a company in Japan has been honestly a bitch for for us here. It's been a tough, but it's also kind of like our moat to some degree. We talk about this as just like This is not easy. And maybe we did it the hard way or stupid way. you know Maybe there's a better way, but it took us a lot of effort.
Speaker: We're actually procrastinating. Recording this podcast, we were supposed to go through some receipts for a Japanese company, which we'll do later. We'll do a whole episode on that. and Oh, yeah. In a nutshell, every single business expense, you need that receipt. It's not like, ah oh, if you get audited, it's good to have these receipts to to do it. I think it's like you don't get the, there's something to do with consumption tax. You can't actually get this consumption tax back or you can't call it a business expense in Japan unless you have that. Or this is at least what our bookkeepers doing. Maybe they're just playing extra safe, but that's what she said.
Speaker: Every single transaction. And it's not a, if you get audited, it's like, she she's going to do our books differently if we don't have the receipts. And with this, we are trying to buy this coin laundry business in Tama.
Speaker: it's ah So we have gotten access to this website after a couple hoops. But now, next hurdle what's what's the hurdle, Joey? We sent him some messages. We figured it out where the prop where the you business was.
Speaker: Took two weeks. Yeah. Okay. So i want to hear your thoughts on this, actually, Take. So long story short, We finally were able to message the seller and seller goes, Oh, sorry. Someone just made an offer last night. Like two, sorry boys, like better luck next time So we got the same kind of message actually when we were buying TBC.
Speaker: ah can't remember how that ended. We, cause we, we eventually got TBC, but we tried to offer over asking price. And i want to know, you so twice we've, we, so this once on an Akiya in Tokyo and second time recently on a business in Tokyo, we've tried to muscle, you know, elbow our way to the front of the line and offer over asking because they've told us, Hey, there's someone in line in front of you.
Speaker: And both times we've been told no.
Speaker: And that's Japanese culture. I think in a nutshell, right? Is this like a, yeah, culture, cultural norms, Trump's like cold, hard cash. Definitely. Right. I think it's more of like an honor or culture doesn't like, you know, maybe I don't know business owner perspective. If we double the price, there is a limit though.
Speaker: I'm sure if we like went double the price or something like that, that's where the needle moves. And maybe we just didn't hit that escape velocity. The second question, I agree with you. I think it's, we probably didn't offer enough over asking where they're like, what's going on here? Like, you know, but,
Speaker: Second question relates to that is, is this just a tactic to get us to not try to negotiate a discount? My gut feeling is yes. Like, I feel like we we've helped a lot of people. Just a quick plug, Akimart Direct, we can help you purchase a property any price anywhere in Japan.
Speaker: A lot of our customers do make this offer. Then all of a sudden it's like, oh, there's another offer from a Japanese local who who has a loan and we'll let you know. And like, it just falls through. So I do think It could be just like a ah sales tactic to, one, see if you're serious, but two, to prevent you from negotiating.
Speaker: Because like, hey, I got this other dude offered me. ah But I don't know how. We'll never know, right? What happened with TBC? They came back and they're like, deal fell through. You guys want it?
Speaker: and Exactly. The loan fell through. So I think that seems to be... It could be a real thing too, just like as we deal with the Japanese... admin process of making a company. it could We haven't even touched loans. I imagine loans are very similar.
Speaker: We're like, why would a bank give you this personal loan on a barely, barely in the profitable zone coin laundry, which is the laundry we're looking at, right? like Fingers crossed. If I was a bank, I don't know if I would really loan my money.
Speaker: Cause we're looking at this and we're like, this is probably a bad idea, but we really want this experience and we think it'll be fun. We're not, I don't think me and I would put it in Bitcoin or something if I really just wanted to make money on an investment.
Speaker: Yeah, so I think it could be a strategy we'll never know. But i let's keep let's keep this bookmarked. you know I think it's an interesting trend that we're seeing is that it just happens.
Speaker: you know How long has this listing been up? It's been up for at least a month, right? A while, yeah. And and just the like, sorry, boys, something came in last night. like I feel like the that wording felt a little off to me.
Speaker: Yeah, but I think we have now hardened our determination to get a coin laundry whether it be this one or another one or actually ah another swerve could be the automatic golf like self-serve golf practice business out i think that list thing's still up too in fact there's i mean there's actually we can talk about it later there's lots of interesting businesses that pharmacies i would say seems kind of interesting to me pharmacy hire mitch as a mitch is my old roommate's dad he's a funny guy
Speaker: um But I guess with the it seems like this coin laundry that we picked out, though, just like the signals are right, where it's so close to our Tama house. We have Linda who can maybe help us operate it.
Speaker: ah We freaking made t-shirts with the top with the coin laundry on that. like We used a random address, but we could just change that address. And then all a sudden, the shirt becomes so so relevant.
Speaker: Yeah. and Anyways, actually, part of... Actually, no, I don't think it was part of it. I was going to say part of the, if we did like, if the seller story is true and we just barely made the cutoff part of that, I'm i'm not assigning blame here. I just want to illustrate that stuff moves slow with the Japanese business.
Speaker: Part of it was we, you know, we need to get these documents hanko by person a, and then like signed off by person B and a bunch of like kind of documents moving around and, you know, moving part, just Japanese bureaucracy, maybe slow down this process here. We missed our window. So again, just.
Speaker: only reason I'm saying that is like, again, just Japanese business moves slow, you know, a lot of paperwork, difficult, just difficult in general. We got some actual numbers from the business, which is actually, was quite interesting. So the coin laundry business is it like,
Speaker: Joey had found on Google Maps and confirmed that this was the right one. So nice job, Joey. But it was it's for sale for 5 million yen, which is like $30,000. 5.5, yeah. 5.5. We tried to offer 6 million, which is pretty negligible amount up. So maybe we needed to go higher on our bid, Joey, but...
Speaker: the actual monthly numbers were pretty bleak or lukewarm. What would you say? It's yeah it's making basically like 1.2 million a year profit.
Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And 1.2 million yen per year, which is like 6,000 bucks. So it's not something that, you know, this has got to be like a side hustle for someone. I can't believe someone's living off as their sole income.
Speaker: I've had multiple messages to Joey and our representative director, his name's Ryan. We're like, are we stupid for trying to buy this? And he was just like, you guys are way more YOLO than me.
Speaker: But it could work, you know? So this is, do not follow our advice here and buy coin laundry. We'll but navigate it for you. We're doing this for you guys, is what what we're saying.
Speaker: but What i think is interesting is the 5X multiplier. So again, I'm very new to buying small businesses, but I've been following some Instagram accounts about it. And they talk about the multiplier. So they take, remember what they call it, cash flow, they call it, which is really owner's private. So When you buy a small business, it seems like one of the metrics they use to evaluate it is or there's revenue and then there's the cash flow or can't remember the other term they used it, but it's basically profit plus whatever the owner puts in their pocket. So the owner pays himself a salary or the owner takes profits, it's business profits. And then whatever the owner takes basically profit.
Speaker: And there's a multiplier of that to the selling price. And so for this business, it's five X basically, you know, it's making 1 million and it's selling for 5 million. So five X multiplier on.
Speaker: profits or cash flow, which is interesting. Looking at some of the other businesses or laundromats out there, so another one that's on the market, triple the price or the next cheapest laundromat I'm seeing on this website is for $16 million, but it's only making $2 million profit.
Speaker: So that's like, I don't know, 8x multiplier. How are we going to make this profitable, Joey? I think that's the goal. We need to make this. We can't be bleeding money But I mean, right now the laundromat is retro, like I think it's retro machines.
Speaker: It looks like. It won't lose us money in its current state. if it was If we just maintain whatever level it's at, paying the leases, cleaning once every so other day or something like that. But we got to hire an operator.
Speaker: Is a someone going be down to for, and we give them yeah the full profits almost, right? I think we'd have to maybe for the first year or something, you know, basically, but, um, hard to make it profitable. We, so I think that's an interesting challenge. I think that's what maybe me and you were a little bit interested in yeah as well with the, that's the fun. It's like, all right, how do we turn around this business?
Speaker: Rollercoaster Tycoon. Do you ever play that as a kid? It's like where you try to optimize. Yeah, same deal. Like how do we get more people in here? Like memberships? Do we get a coffee machine? Do we give free laundry for a month? I think there's a lot of cool things here where we're ah Most of our business has been focused on like, let's say US or Australian folks and how they want to look at the Akiya market.
Speaker: But we've never really worked on like, how do we market to Japanese domestic people? Like to how do we increase foot traffic? lot of fun, fun ideas here.
Speaker: Yeah, I think that a lot of the our better ideas are maybe a little difficult to implement without us, you know, being if if we're staying remote without or without someone full time operating. Like, for example, a membership, let's say we change it so that, hey, you pay this monthly. We change to a recurring revenue model where, hey, you pay this monthly membership, but then unlimited laundry.
Speaker: The idea of being like, no one's really going to use it too much, you know, or we just price it to where it it makes sense for the business. How do you? make sure that people don't are like, how do you enforce that?
Speaker: I guess it's the the hard part. The good thing about Tama and this laundry spot is it's a pretty highly populated area where people don't have washing machines in their apartments usually, especially for bigger things like sheets and stuff. So, um,
Speaker: Let's see. We're going to be talking to a couple of folks who have ah owned and operated coin laundries, both in the US and actually someone from Thailand just got in touch with me. They did in Thailand. Your LinkedIn post popped off. I made an Instagram post, but that didn't really go anywhere.
Speaker: Yeah, people are interested. you know we've We've shouted this a couple times. like When we did that event in Palo Alto, we were like, hey guys, we're looking for an investor in in a surf house and a coin laundry. I'd say we had a lot of lot of interest in the cash business. so again We're not going to be making money from this, at least initially, but I look at it from a macro view that like this is a... I don't know anybody else who's doing this. I think this could open up a market for even Akia buyers who...
Speaker: want to buy a business in Japan, although it is, it's pretty dang hard. I don't know. It's hard. I wish we could muscle our way through with a little bit more money, but we'll see where it goes. Maybe the seller comes back like, Hey guys, that, you know, 6 million offers still on the table. Who knows?
Speaker: This is so... Anyway, we'll go check it out. Let's go do laundry there. We'll be in Japan in a couple of weeks. We're spending most of October. We should go do laundry there, actually. Definitely. We'll assess. It has seven parking spots, I think. Let's see. I do believe that if we set our mind to it, this will happen.
Speaker: If any listeners have experience with coin laundries, let us know. But... Joey, let's talk about the Japan trip. We're it's coming up soon. What are you most excited about? We have a couple big initiatives that we're focusing on, but you know, what are you, what are you looking forward to?
Speaker: I think the Kumano Kodo hike is going to be a lot of fun. Actually. Oh, we got to make reservations for that still. Oh yeah. I meant to call them. Oops. I got to buy hiking boots and everything like that. Yeah. I think that'll be really fun.
Speaker: Five days, right? Five days. I say we go no phone, but we bring the podcast recorder and do the Kumano Kumano Kodo series. You got the portable one. That's cool.
Speaker: You got the portable one Kumano Kodo series. I don't know what we record. Not sure. But I think, I don't know. After going to Serbia this time, like everyone around the world is like so addicted to their phones.
Speaker: like I go to parks and, you know, see everyone on their phone and like this nature is awesome. But, you know, I'm guilty. We're both guilty of it, too. So I'm looking forward to disconnect. Okay. Detox hike.
Speaker: Yeah, we definitely should do a detox hike. But okay, on my end, man, I'm excited to check out Tokushima. We've been talking about the surf house. um It's not looking great that we're going to get this property, but I think us showing up and looking at the property, making relationships will help.
Speaker: Joey, I'm to bring two mid-length boards for us to surf. I don't know if we're going to surf this time, but at least we'll bring it. Where do we leave these boards? Tama, probably? Probably Tama.
Speaker: Yeah. Okay. But other than that, I think we are going all over Japan. We're doing another kind of whirlwind trip. We are shooting a hero image photo for our website too, which I think will be interesting. We might be going, might go hang out with Anton actually on this new waterfall house. That looks pretty cool.
Speaker: Still in the works. Yeah, but i will be in we'll be in Tokyo in October. I don't think we're going to be hosting a party this time, but the next party we host is going to be in our coin laundry business grand opening.
Speaker: Okay, laundry party. Yeah, laundry party. That'll be fun, actually. Yeah, but for sure. Free laundry. Everyone bring your dirty laundry. yeah Come wash it. Have some tequila shots with us and we'll have a good time.
Speaker: So, all right, Joey, this is episode 99. I'm surprised you did not ask at the beginning. Our next one is going to be recorded. Oh, 99. Number 100 is going to be recorded in Tama Base Camp.
Speaker: Don't know what we're going to talk about. Don't know who's going to be there, but we made it, bro. We made it. 99. ninety nine Let's go.
Speaker: Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Buying a House in Japan. If you find the show helpful or at least entertaining, give us a five-star rating. Takes five seconds and really goes a long way. If you or someone you know is looking for a Japanese home, check out Akiyamart.com, our English-friendly site that lets you browse over half a million listings.
Speaker: That's A-K-I-Y-A-M-A-R-T.com to find your dream home in Japan. If you've got questions or feedback, drop us a line, email contact at akiamart.com.
Speaker: You can also find us on Instagram as well as TikTok, where we post properties, tips on the home buying process, and updates on our own purchases and renovations. Thanks again for listening, and we'll see you next week.
