Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Buying a House in Japan podcast episode. Today I am recording solo because Joey messed up his flights and realized he's got to get ready to go to the airport. But I'm here alone with a special guest, Matt Guy. Welcome back on the pod. are you doing, dude? I'm doing well. I'm sitting down on my tatami floor as we're recording this. In your new house? Old house? In my original house.
Speaker: Right on. We recorded our last podcast, think maybe like six months ago. But Matt, for the new listeners here, tell us a little bit about yourself. I've been in and out of Japan for the last 15 years. and I've lived here for more than eight or nine years, but very early on with my Japan journey, I knew that I'd be moving across to Japan at some point. And that happened about 10 or 15 years later on down the track. It was quite a long search for me to find a property. I managed to settle in after years of studying Japanese, working, study visas, English teacher, all that stuff. And finally ended up in the countryside, Japan, in my now two properties.
Speaker: Okay, so you've increased 100% your property since the last time we saw you. So congratulations. Exactly. Yeah. And you're Myoko, right? Where are you in the world in Japan? I'm in Niigata Prefecture in Myoko City, which is around two to two and a half hours by Shinkansen, the fast train from Tokyo. So it's actually not too far from the big capital.
Speaker: Me and Joey were talking about it. So our Tama house feels like it's two hours away from central Tokyo. And then we had talked to you at the party and we had invited you, I think that day of or something like that. You're like, hey, I headed out. And I was like, what? Matt's coming? And when I saw you you're like, yeah, it took me two and a half hours. like, Joey, what are we doing, dude?
Speaker: And you guys are looking at getting another place there or something's going on with the Tokyo stuff? Yeah, Tokyo House, we have it rented out, which is awesome. But it's just a little bit too far from where we need to go. We find ourselves taking cabs more so now because it's so inconvenient. So Myoko two and a half hours to Tokyo. That's great, dude. It's not too bad. It's great for me. Tokyo isn't necessarily where I want to be right now. I tried to transition into the mountains for now. That might change at some point.
Speaker: But for now, I wanted to set myself up on the mountains. It's not inconvenient. I don't need to right now spend too much time in Tokyo. So yeah, it's a good life setup. When you picked Miyoko, was there hype around it yet? It's now like the next Niseko, it feels like. But what was it like when you first decided to buy?
Speaker: It wasn't necessarily my main focus at the time of trying get a gold mine of a place, which it is honestly, but it wasn't my focus to invest. My focus was to, you could say, invest in a community, or invest in my life in Japan and and what I like to do, which is being in the mountains.
Speaker: Initially, I wanted to be in Hakuba. That was my goal for 10 years plus, but it shifted and changed and it ended up more of timing and luck and other things that I ended up in Myoko, but it wasn't the goal initially.
Speaker: Looking back, though, you made the right choice. Would you say that's true? Yeah, I would. It's one of those things that Miyoko has ended up becoming probably the next biggest trend. And maybe I don't want to say it's dominoed into Miyoko. I think Miyoko actually might be different to Hakuba. I think there's a different element to it. So yeah, it's a special place for sure.
Speaker: All right. So the real question, how is the snow this year? We completely missed all the snow, but give us the snow recap of 2024. I've been skiing, snowboarding for quite a long time now, 20 years or something. And it's definitely been the best snow I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker: Not to try to hype it or say, like I don't know what's going to be next year, but... The previous ski season, I cleared my roof once, one full clear of my roof for the snow. For last season, 2024, 2025, I cleared my roof four times in two weeks.
Speaker: It was nuts. So about eight times I cleared my roof over the season. That's a good indication of what the snow was like. And if I didn't go out the back and clear the window area regularly, it would have been up to the second floor of my house without a doubt.
Speaker: Damn. I remember you told me like first time you cleared your roof, you fell off your roof or something. Is that right? That was a learning experience. Yeah. Were you okay after that? Of course you were, but I guess what happened? I was, and it's like a first time for me for any of this stuff, like having to do any snowman, having to do any house maintenance. This is the first house I bought in my life. And it happened to be in in snow country, Japan. And that summer before the winter kicked off, I painted my roof with this high gloss silicon paint to help shed the snow was the idea, but also helped shed me off the roof when I stepped on it and I slid down. So I went down with a ton of snow and I landed on that. And i I came off with no injuries, but it was so weird walking through the front door of the house.
Speaker: I left from the window and I came through the front door. It's like a little dimension. Yeah. I heard that story and I told Joey, I'm never clearing our roof. So this season we weren't even there, but yeah, we had to get our snow removed from our roof maybe three times. That's not too bad. Yeah. Damn. We missed it by a year, but Matt excited to be your neighbor pretty soon for all the listeners. We bought a $3,500 cheap Akia, what 15 minute walk from you?
Speaker: You could get there in 15 minutes. It's not too far down, a little bit down the hill, really central. We're all very central to Myoko. It's a bit like maybe Myoko is a little bit different where you do need to take a short drive to get to the ski mountain rather than take a chairlift. So we're both like 10 minutes or less from the chairlift. Okay. I'm excited for a 2025, 2026 season. We should have a new build in. Hopefully this next winter though, we'll be shredding some powder with you.
Speaker: You're thinking about kicking something off for a new build in Myoko? Yeah. So we had another person come and inspect our old build and the foundation's cooked. It's rotten. And we were like, okay, can we renovate this? And it really came down to like, hey, let's try to do a new build. So one of our podcast listeners actually is going to be investing with us and we're going to be doing a prefab house made by Sekisu Chemicals.
Speaker: Appreciate you you. actually went over and measured some stuff for us just to make sure we could fit a house there. Yeah, the location's good, the property's good, but yeah, like you said, I think when you start inspecting it, you do find that you've got to rip it down. I mean, in that case, when you're looking at a house under a million yen, there's a pretty high chance that you either got lucky, and I think that percentage is low. I was one of the ones that got lucky. You scored.
Speaker: I did. My house is incredible for what I got. I think I set this i set the bar like i don't know too high, too low. I don't know how you would put that, but a lot of people expected to come in and find, especially in Myoko, it's crazy. People thought you can come and buy a house like this.
Speaker: I still get messages today, two years later after buying this house saying, hey, where can I get a $6,000 house in Myoko? I didn't even know how I got a $6,000 house in Myoko, in this condition. So with your house...
Speaker: As expected. as As expected. And like, it's a sweet deal to pay for what you paid to get into this location at this time. movie Okay, before going into your new house, how has Miyoko changed this season? We found from our customers, a ton of Australian people want to live and move to Miyoko and buy houses there. Has it changed significantly from the year or the year before that? It has.
Speaker: Yeah. I get the feeling now the whole market has shifted to in the whole buy a cheap house in Japan, buy a house in Japan. It's normalized in a way where those initial questions two years back, people would say, oh, wow, you can buy a house in Japan. Don't you have to be a resident? How can you do it as a foreigner? And so the questions have changed now. People know that.
Speaker: stuff a lot more. You probably get the same thing. People aren't asking those questions anymore. Now it's, how can I live there? What's the visa? What's like the finer details? Because I already understand I can get there. Now I've just got to connect the dots and find that cheap house or whatever in Japan. The conversation has changed a bit more to, i know that I can do it. yeah There's a lot more people that understand that. And i think that means there's a lot more people looking.
Speaker: So what was it like in Miyoko this year? So I met a bunch of people were like, hey, you're Mac guy. Guess what? We just bought a house. And I was shocked. At least 20 people who came up to me and said, I just bought a house. I just bought a house in Miyoko. I didn't even know There's places for sale still in Miyako because it's such a high demand, low supply kind of place, but people are still buying here. And the previous season, restaurants were really struggling up on the mountainside in specifically, it's called Akakura, the ski area, to be able to accommodate all of the tourists who are booking restaurants, making reservations. That has now spread to my area, which is not too far away, but it's a driveway. So this year I look out the window, I go out to my car and there's just crowds of people searching for food in my area. That didn't happen the year before. there's It's definitely growing. Do we make a restaurant, Matt? Let's just say we we got all this What restaurant do you think would just kill Miyoko around you?
Speaker: I'm not sure if it would kill, but I'd say what I want is tacos. Tacos. Okay. I want tacos. There's so much potential. and The easy thing to do is to come here to buy a property and make an Airbnb, especially as a foreign investor, as someone who wants to start a business in Japan. It's the easiest thing that people see. It's difficult to run a restaurant. The hospitality industry is pretty intense. And when you think you can rent a room for 40,000 yen a night, or you can sell a taco for 10 bucks,
Speaker: It's obvious what people are going to choose. I think it's going to continue just like other areas in Japan, Nisiko, Hakuba, Nozawa Onsen. There's going to be more accommodation than there is restaurants available. What will the shift be? It might be more luxurious style dining. Yeah.
Speaker: more luxury style accommodation to price people out. I think that's definitely happened already and changing. There's definitely availability for more businesses beyond Airbnb and and accommodation. I've watched most of your YouTube videos at this point. and I know one of the recurring comments is like, Matt, give us a tour of the sushi restaurant near your house.
Speaker: Have you done a video tour of you going to that sushi restaurant yet? The answer is no. And it's pretty interesting, actually. So yeah, there's not really a reason why. But I guess until now, I've lied to myself and tried to give myself privacy. I have no privacy at all, because it's my next door neighbor.
Speaker: And I live here with my partner. Again, like going back to this year's escalated. I had people come to my house this year taking photos of my house. Really? Not to sound like a celebrity, but people know who I am in this small country. You're Miyoko celebrity for sure.
Speaker: To some extent, people know who I am. So know if you call that celebrity or people just know who i am, but I could hear people taking photos of my house. If I cleared snow this year, it was pretty common for people to come by and be like, hey, what's happening? I'm like, yo, I've just got to clear a lot of snow. Give me an hour and I'll have a chat with you. But a lot of people, not just internationals, but even Japanese came up to me and said, I'm here to try out the sushi because I've seen it in your videos on YouTube. So I came from Tokyo today. I took a train and I'm going back today. Yeah. Okay.
Speaker: I haven't done it yet, but funnily enough, talking about like a restaurant tour with a sushi place, they asked me about three weeks back. A lot of people watch my channel and even the locals. I'm scanning out like at the cash register. It's not normal in Japan to have a chat, but people are like, oh, I watch your videos on YouTube. So the sushi guys, they watch my videos as well. And they said, hey, we've been thinking we'd love for you to come over to the sushi restaurant and we want to teach you how to make sushi, put it on so YouTube. It's going to happen at some point. It's on the cards. It's exciting. Okay. Okay, I see the comments and I'm always thinking about it too because we walked by that sushi restaurant with you and I was like, I wonder how good it is because it's so close to you.
Speaker: It's incredible. And going into a bit deeper of that conversation I had with the owners of the sushi restaurant, I asked them how they feel about the development and the growth of Myoko. And there's like a 50-50, I think especially as an international.
Speaker: Usually you have this protection mode of keep Japan at what it is now. We love the old chairlifts. We love old Japan. And I do too. And I'm protective of that in some ways as well. And try to be aware of like those changes and try to retain the culture in Japan. But in saying all of this, the sushi place surprised me when I asked him, how do you feel about all the development, all of the people coming into Dubai, in international, domestic, whatever it is. And then he just said to me, i i grew up here. He's about 60-ish years old. And he said, my father created this sushi restaurant. he's been here for 57 years. Years ago, when I was a kid, I grew up in these streets.
Speaker: But he said, in these streets? So he started pointing around. That land there, that was a hotel. That was a hotel. That was a house. They'll just now land. And he said, we used to have geisha walking down the streets here. He said, this was a luxury area when I grew up. He said, it used to be full of Japanese business guys on the weekend that came here.
Speaker: he said, there was a lot of money in this area. So it's already been luxury. It's not a surprise to Miyoko. But then back in the 80s and the 90s, it went down like a lot of Japan with the economic fall. So yeah, I'm excited to see how this changes. And the surprising comment to me was If it wasn't for specifically the internationals, this wouldn't be happening right now. So I'm grateful that they're coming here to make this impact financially.
Speaker: Wow. Interesting to hear that. It's going in a cycle. I actually really didn't know Miyoko was a luxury spot. Yeah, I didn't know to that extent. You would walk around here and you wouldn't believe Geisha would be walking in the streets no here. Yeah, Geisha. Yeah, how cool is that?
Speaker: That's rad. Okay, Matt, I want to talk about this property because I saw you post this. I know you had told us, i think you had told us a couple months ago. I saw the video and I was floored. Tell us about your new property. Where is it? How much do you get it? And I guess to the audience, what kind of condition is it in?
Speaker: The new house is about 25 minutes north of where I'm at in Myoko. So it's still addressed. The address is Myoko City. It's about 15 minutes to Lotte Rai ski resort. Last year, Lotte Rai had the most snow in the world, any ski resort.
Speaker: Yeah. Really? That's the area that we live in. So more than eight meters of snow. So around like 50 feet of snow. It was nonstop last year in Lotte-Rae where the house is.
Speaker: If you travel 15 minutes in these kind of ski areas, you come down the ski hill. As you would know, the geography of Japan, it quickly shoots up. It's volcanic, it's tectonic movement. So I'm at roughly sea level where the house is.
Speaker: Even then we do get a lot of snow, but it's a big difference in 15 minutes. So the new house, one of the benefits, one of the things I was looking at for that house was I couldn't do the snow shoveling at two houses. It's just not possible for me unless I employed somebody.
Speaker: Strategically, that's why I chose that location. It's close to the skiing areas, but it's also 25 minutes to the ocean of Japan that has surfing, the beaches. So that's the location. I'm a snow noob here, so sorry if these questions are real basic. So I'm looking at the map right now, Myoko kind of up North City here.
Speaker: It gets a significant reduced amount of snow where you bought your second property. Is that right? Yeah, in comparison. And I visited it during the winter as well. It's Lotte Rai area. And as soon as you start driving towards the mountain, it's the same here. Even if I drive, I'm at about 800 meters elevation where my current house is in Myoko, Kogan area.
Speaker: If I drive five minutes up the hill and just gain another 150 meter elevation, it's a completely different world. The snow walls are higher. It's not double, but it's sometimes close in just five, 10 minutes.
Speaker: Why did you buy this property? So I bought it for expanding my own business. So I run tours during the winter for Orija for my business, Original Japan, where I do my best to try to showcase, obviously with the snow and the powder is incredible. And that's part of the reason I moved here, but into Japan in general.
Speaker: But I also moved to Japan because I love the culture. And I think what I try to do in my business without trying to give too much as an advertisement here, what's missing in Japan is I think the link between people who travel here to enjoy the snow and the cultural side.
Speaker: That's what I've always found in Japan. It's great to go out skiing for a week, come here and go skiing. But there's so much to see culturally in Japan and even beyond Kyoto. But even go deeper into what is snow country Japan? What's the culture of snow and the and just the mountains? Japan's 75% mountains. And with that, there's a huge amount of culture and how traditions have been shaped in Japan.
Speaker: So what I try to do in my tours is take you out to some great powder snow. But let's also discover some of the culture in Japan. So the whole purpose of buying the house was I just couldn't fit so many people come and stay at my place in Myokkohogen.
Speaker: And I had to limit that to four people. It's also a smaller space to have people wake up and we're in the same kitchen and whatnot. So I wanted to expand that and be able to have larger groups in my trips. So that's been successful. Odija has been super successful. But the other thing that's been successful is my YouTube.
Speaker: And having a second property, i had such a great time renovating. to My background is construction and management and hands-on stuff. And it was always my dream to renovate property. My family never owned property. We can never afford it.
Speaker: So I mean, $6,000 house is pretty insane. I can afford that after working all these years. But My YouTube channel had so much success that I also had the idea of just renovating it, documenting it properly this time. The last one was like, I moved into this property. It was a beautiful property, but it was still a mess and it was stressful in the summer, full of stuff. It was uncomfortable. This one, I can actually document it on YouTube and ultimately sell it.
Speaker: Potentially, I haven't decided, but I'm 50-50 about, is this going to be in my tours or is this going to be something that I just renovate, enjoy that, document it, and maybe sell it at the end? as the perfect house in Japan for what I believe is the perfect house.
Speaker: And we talked about the location, saying that it's in this great mountain area, but it's also just 10 minutes to a Shinkansen to Tokyo. That's so good. Yeah, it's nuts. So the location is pretty key. And I haven't even mentioned like the condition of the house at this point.
Speaker: Oh boy, I feel bad. if we We got a piece of crap from But anyways, okay, give me the price point. The price was about 18,000 US dollars or around 3 million yen. And it's a steal for not just the location as a convenience because most people, including myself, when I first wanted to buy property in Hockerbaugh,
Speaker: I wanted to be like one minute away from the chairlift. And I probably wouldn't do that again unless things really lined up for me and I had a crew to clear the snow and whatnot. But I realized it's not too bad. I'm either spending an hour in the morning clearing snow or I'm just driving 20 minutes to the ski resort.
Speaker: And I prefer the drive. The drive is good. That's the location. The property itself is a 1993 build. And I think that tells a story. Wait, wait, 1993? 1993 house. 93? Oh goodness. Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, so that's that's already a jump in the standards. I think it was 1981 that the new earthquake standards, or like you could say the actual earthquake standards started in Japan for a building property. And it was a huge jump. It's the most significant jump in Japan for earthquake standards.
Speaker: And I can see that when I start like revealing, taking away some of the ceiling and looking into the the roof space, I can see the connections are different. We have these different types of bolt systems for shifting where the structure moves around. And I can see that the base of the house is concrete for first floor.
Speaker: I saw that. yes I was like, wow, that's so cool. It's incredible. The storage is good. The main purpose is for storing a snow machine and like the winter stuff. So in Japan, you do have, it's normal to have a lot of space for storing winter stuff, like setting up your trees, your garden, you would tie all that into position for when the heavy snow falls. And you also have snow clearing machines.
Speaker: So that's what the first floor is really for, but you can also store a car in this house, which is really cool. And then the rest of the house, it really just needs a paint job. And then any additions, to be honest, if you look at a Western country, when you move into a house, that's what you, I think, are most commonly looking at doing. You buy a house and you just want to paint it and put your furniture in.
Speaker: And this is the kind of property you can do that, which is not normal for an Akiya. Yeah, i saw your video. So first off, your concrete, is it a basement or a foundation or what do you call that? It's a funny one because it's about five feet high where the beams come down. So you do bend when you go in there, but you you can feel like a sedan car or, okay for example, a Toyota Prius, which was there previously. So it is ah it's a basement.
Speaker: I'm going to shift my laundry down there so I have more space upstairs. So there's a lot of space under there. It's huge. It is a huge space. We're helping a couple people buy Myoko, Joetsu kind of area. And I see this is pretty common, right? Maybe starting the 90s that they did a lot of these kind of concrete basement foundations, right?
Speaker: It's for the snow. It's to wipe out that first level. So you don't have to go down snow clear all the time. So the snow is not against your steel structure or wooden structure walls that can crush that because it will just crush your walls and the house will have issues. So that foundation is to prevent...
Speaker: One, snow damage. Two, improve your lifestyle. And three, to help with termite and white ant prevention as well. I'm going to link the YouTube video for listeners to be amazed at the quality of this house. This is definitely by far the best condition, aki way better than any of our Akios. So hats off to you, Matt. It's incredible. Yeah.
Speaker: Before we go into how you found it, like, does it have insulation, anything wrong inside? Or was it like pretty good to go when you bought it? There is insulation in the ceilings and in the walls. I couldn't believe it. So good. Jeez, you scored. It is insane. The walls, I won't touch it. And the insulation is good enough for what I want it for. The ceiling space and the roof space, I will definitely upgrade that. It doesn't matter whether you're in Canada, or Australia, the US, it's good to upgrade your insulation as standards change. And also at just the loft for the type of insulation, it's the fiberglass insulation.
Speaker: It does reduce over time. So I will change that for like, don't know, less than 500 bucks. I'll get up there and just change it. So the the good points, it's endless. like It's a unit shower, unit bath type for Japan. It's just key, one of those things. I would say as a Westerner, we love to decorate the kitchen and the bathroom. And the unit style bath in Japan kind of wipes out that, that being able to redecorate because you have this kind of plastic basically bath. But it just makes life in Japan make sense. It's a location thing for mold issues. Japan is crazy for mold. It's easy to clean because of the type of construction.
Speaker: It's also a good spot for say earthquakes, which is also, I don't know many people know that, but it's a great place for safety if there's an earthquake to go into the unit style shower. And some of them in some apartments are designed as the space that you would go for safety.
Speaker: Fun fact. Okay. So if there's a big earthquake, go run into the unit shower. Yes. Yeah, exactly. So that lined up, the bathroom lined up. The kitchen is pretty decent. It could be replaced and upgraded like any house around the world, an older house. But the floors are good. The walls are good. The ceilings are good. The external is good. Internally, there's like a Japanese room. And really, all I would need to do is replace the tatami. I will shikui the walls and go over that again. But it's just like any old house. It just needs a bit of love and care.
Speaker: Okay, Matt, you crushed it here. Now the million dollar question, how the hell did you find this property? I know you found it on Aki Mart, maybe, but no, i'm just kidding. How did you find this property? So I wasn't necessarily actively searching ah just as the winter kind of closed out. I guess because my life revolves around people contacting me as well for property searches. And I do dream of having additional properties for different lifestyle reasons. Basically, I want to go and live at the beach. This one's closer to the beach.
Speaker: So I do keep an eye on property. And for that reason, I do regularly search just as part of my day-to-day life. I'm looking at, yes, like Akiyamara is a good place because it sources like Sumo, it sources at home and a bunch of other websites. So it just brings them all together. I think this one came from an at-home listing, which is the second. My other property was at home as well.
Speaker: I heard that other people were inspecting this. People have messaged me and said, hey, I was looking at that property too, but I didn't buy it. I bought another one. And I don't really understand why they didn't go through with it because it is incredible for what it is. And I think, again, maybe people have this idea of being closer to the ski resorts and like to reinforce my advice from anyone you just save money firstly and you save time and you save effort of like maintenance on a property so it is okay to look further away from the ski resorts i found it through at home i just contacted the agent more or less the day i saw it listed and the next day had the inspection the same day i made an offer on the property the the agent was like doing the sales pitch to me in a way saying I mean, I already decided at the end of the inspection and I took a video for that and that's what you're my YouTube, but I already decided at the end, I want this property.
Speaker: I've never seen anything like this in this condition because this was Akio. I look at Akio and the condition was good. The location was not just good. The condition was incredible. The location is incredible. And when I say location, I'm talking about for someone who lives here and wants to set up a business the way I do, but also someone who might be an international or a Japanese person who lives in Tokyo and wants a getaway, who wants like low maintenance on a property.
Speaker: So everything was lined up instantly, made the offer, and it just went from there. Wow. Okay. So the property was listed and you got it the day it was listed or like how long was it on market? I honestly don't know. And I didn't ask that question, but I think it had been there for a while. And i think it came up later on in the ski season because I think if it was earlier and someone was here in Myoko, serious buyer, I would be surprised they didn't go and visit that and yeah and buy it and purchase it the way I did.
Speaker: But there was a slight preference for the buyer from the seller. It's not necessarily the legal requirement, it's the preference of the seller as an Akiya. And the preference of the seller for this property was that they were a local, that they were living close by. i don't know the full reason why, that's the personal confidentiality reason for the seller. But the real estate agent just showed me, he's like, hey, here are five other people. Here are five emails from people. There's some people in Tokyo. There's some people in Osaka. He didn't show me the names, but these people want to buy this place. But because you're local, the seller wants to go with you. He's prioritizing you because you're here. And that might be because he wants to expedite the sale, the speed. He doesn't want to have people coming to visit.
Speaker: And that's important, I think, for people who are listening, who are buyers, who are overseas, people that want to buy. This stuff moves fast and the sellers want it to move fast. In my case, I think I was chosen and prioritized because they wanted a quick sale. They wanted to get through it, get it done. They don't want people to come in even from Tokyo because it's a train right away. They've got to organize their schedule. It's just a time constraint for the seller. They don't want it anymore. You want done. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: Dang, all the lights turning green for you. That's great, Matt. And it makes sense. They have emotional ties to their old house and they want to make sure it goes to someone who's contributing to this a community like yourself. So I think you're the perfect buyer.
Speaker: Yeah, I think it lined up well. It's very community focused. I don't want to down that too much. But yeah, even even then real estate agent introduced me to the neighbors. And I asked him during the sale, hey, do people get profiled? Do you guys choose who moves into these places? And he said, yeah, of course. like We think about the neighbors. We think about the community. Even he said we had someone that came to check out the place and they were international before me. They came to check it out and they're interested in buying. But he said, oh, I don't think that they're a good buyer because they're too tall. And Yeah, and the ceiling heights are low in Japan. And we have these cross beam areas where the shoji, the sliding doors go in. And he's like, oh, I just don't think he's going to enjoy living here. So I'm not going to sell it to him.
Speaker: Oh, man. Height discrimination. Reverse height discrimination here. And I'm like, okay, you're saying I'm small? Hey, I'll be called small for a deal like that. That's interesting. We actually just listed our Nagasaki property. We blasted it to everyone. But we are...
Speaker: giving the owners the chance to interview whoever wants to buy it. So we're trying to like make sure that whoever we bring into the community is going to be the right fit. So if and when you are ready to sell this house, just give us a holler. We might be able to help. Sounds good. Sounds good.
Speaker: Yeah, Matt, we're running out of time here. But any advice for anyone who's searching in Miyoko? Sounds like living there gives you advantage. But any tips for someone who's looking for a really competitive market like Miyoko?
Speaker: Yeah, I sent three emails yesterday to people who want to buy property in Myoko asking the same thing, hey I want to buy a house. And you get an array of people saying, yeah, I'm okay to spend money. Or you get people saying, how do I get a $6,000 house just like yours?
Speaker: And I'll tell you what the challenges are. And the challenges are that the prices are not what people expect anymore. whatever the price listing is in this kind of radius. And I don't know what that radius is, it's extending and extending, but you could say that the prices have doubled or tripled and it doesn't even matter if they're doubled or tripled, there's only one or two houses for sale. So that seller can sell it for whatever the hell they want it to sell it for.
Speaker: They can ask for whatever and this week they can list it for a million bucks and next week they don't get it, they can just half the price. People are testing the market right now. That's a challenge, the pricing is a challenge. I don't want to just talk about the buyer and the seller as well, but locally for people that live here, that's going to change things because if you're fishing with a million dollar price tag on your property and that sells, that changes everything.
Speaker: Now other people are not going to list it below a certain price threshold. Is it negative or is it positive or is it neutral? It's all of the above. It's going to change things good and bad. And like I said, the sushi guy next door, he might be really happy about that. And then there's other people in town that are not so happy about that.
Speaker: Second thing, timing. If a property comes up for sale, I think there's one or two listed right now that's in the mainstream listings. There's other ones that are in more private listings, I think. For timing, if something appears and it's reasonable, like market value, it will sell within a couple of days.
Speaker: It's going to be listed. Someone's going to hear about it and it's going to be sold almost instantly. I had an email yesterday of someone saying... Yeah, if you can help find a property in Myoko and then once you find it, let us know the condition, do the inspection, I'll arrange a flight and during my next days off, there's no time.
Speaker: There's no time. You just got to buy it. You have to just buy it instantly. You guys did that with your property. I think you guys bought it with sight unseen and yeah you have no time. That's the next part of the challenge. That urgency has really picked up so much since we've joined this space maybe just a year or two years ago.
Speaker: As you said at the beginning this podcast, people are not asking the basic FAQs anymore. They know they can buy a house in Japan. I think this is really, really good advice. I'm looking at Akimart right now, Miyoko Kogen. There's only this one really beat up building for $70,000. So Matt, holy crap, you got a deal.
Speaker: If you find any other deals... Just saying, Joey and I are over here. We're selling our Nagasaki property. We might have some capital to toss around. But no, actually, we should buy a surf shack together.
Speaker: And that's one of my sounds good extremes. Okay. Sounds good. Kochi Prefecture, I'm thinking. i like Shimanto area. Kochi is good. Yeah, that's nice. Okay. Let's brainstorm on that a little bit more. But Matt, thank you so much for being on the pod today. Where can people find you if they don't already know you? Where can people contact you?
Speaker: I think for this crew of people, if you're looking for property, check out my website to start with, which is just my name, mattguy.net. And i think i point you in the direction of the stuff that I do, the services that I do. Check out my YouTube channel and it's im.mattguy. I'm Matt Guy.
Speaker: And I think that's a bit more focused on my DIY, my regular day-to-day life in countryside Japan. i do give a lot of tips and advice on there, how to buy a house in Japan, what my steps were and everything else that's related to property.
Speaker: Heck yeah. Cool, Matt. Thank you so much and see you soon.
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. That's A-K-I-Y-A-M-A-R-T.com to find your dream home in Japan.
Speaker: If you've got questions or feedback, drop us a line, email contact at akiamart.com. 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.
Speaker: Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.
