Transcript
Speaker: If you pull up a chart of the US dollar heading into elections, it was very strong. Interest rates in the US s are strong and there was capital coming into the US. s Now you're seeing that in complete reverse. Now we have higher interest rates in the US due to economic weakness or perceived economic weakness via tariffs, the AI boom busting.
Speaker: I teach a course where when the semester started, I said, this is the part where we are going to correct and They didn't believe it. We were at the S&P 6200 and they were like, no, no, we can do no wrong. Well, I've seen that movie before, right?
Speaker: Welcome back everybody to another exciting episode of buying a house in Japan. I'm your host, Joey joined today by Take and like most episodes recently, we have another very special guest, Nin. Welcome to the show. Nin, maybe you don't even know this. You were one of our very first clients that we helped purchase in Japan, if not our very first client. Welcome to the show. Nin has been on absolute tear, has bought some fantastic properties in Japan, not just one.
Speaker: He's picked up a few and has done a really fantastic job with interior design as well. So we'll put that all in the show notes. Nin, welcome to the pod. Thank you for having me, guys. Appreciate it. And then like Joey said, you are probably our most successful customer to date. You're actually Yo's first kind of pilot customer and boy, you have been on a tear.
Speaker: and then Thank you for taking a chance on us as well. Like I said, you well one of the very, very first. So we were figuring it out as Taki likes to say, putting the plane together as we're flying it.
Speaker: ah How many houses have you bought within the past couple months? Three. oh my gosh. Two of them or all of them have been beach coastal property. Oh, well, at least all of them that I've been like, hey, Ro, can you send me more info on this? And that looks good. And let's put an offer on that.
Speaker: They've all been mostly beach coastal. What I realized is a lot of people who are local to the area, they want to escape the big city center. And I kind of more or less want to cater to that. And then people who travel for a second time or a third time.
Speaker: they don't want to do the same touristy things. And that's kind of where I got that idea. Yeah. tell Tell us a little bit about yourself. I know before we jump in, you have such a colorful background. I know you've been an investor, you've done a lot of things, but can you give us a quick spark note of version? Who are you, Nin?
Speaker: I actually have spent the greater part of 24-ish years, 25 years teaching economics at San Jose State University. I've always been entrepreneurial. My wife was self-employed for about 22 years. She retired last year.
Speaker: Congratulations. From dentistry. She, were at the peak of her dental empire, she had three offices. And then after we had children, we lost an office. And then and then she had the second child, we lost another office. We sold them systematically. And then I have invested in Airbnbs, commercial real estate.
Speaker: I'm also a bank holding company, or at least one of my firms are bank holding company. It's kind of what I sent you guys. And kind of like my benchmark returns profile that I'm looking for. so I'm pretty well diversified.
Speaker: across the spectrum. I use kind of a tops down regime segmentation model that biases me in a systematic way to invest the way I invest. I could literally do the same thing in Hawaii, Turkey, parts of the US.
Speaker: It's more like wherever the data pushes me towards, then that's where I'm going. Could you explain what that is, the systematic regime model, and how did that push you towards Japan? We look at the rate of change of GDP.
Speaker: If the rate of change of GDP goes up, oh, the business cycle is super good. And if it goes down in rate of change terms, oh, the business cycle is really bad. But it's the interaction that most economists, I think, miss is the size sequence scope and interaction between GDP and CPI.
Speaker: I mean, GDP and CPI can go up together, go down together, or one goes up, one goes down, or the other one goes up or down. So there's only four possible quadrants or regimes that the economy can be in.
Speaker: And if you just at a basic level are very macro aware, depending on which of the four outcomes will bias what type of investments you do. Anytime we're in deflation, that's the rate of change of GDP and CPI dropping. And if they're both dropping at the same time, that is horrible for people who are levered long.
Speaker: Those are horrible for people that invest in duration that have their capital tied up and they're levered. And that regime, that bottom left quadrant called deflation presents huge amounts of opportunity for us as investors, because typically i don't want to be dramatic, but that's like a reset cycle.
Speaker: That is where stock market crashes happen. If I showed you the same chart in USA, In 08, you'll see that we were firmly in quadrant deflation, bottom left quadrant, leading into 08. Like we saw it a year out in advance.
Speaker: And that sets up how we should bias our investments. This gives us the general direction, the foundational analysis. And then you have other models that then peer into that. Like last time we were in deflation or the last time we were in disinflation or the last time we were in stagflation, what were the asset classes that did well?
Speaker: And then that's your go-to's. And then of course we track it for all the different countries to see where we should invest. And that's why i had that small window where via email or in email with Ro and you guys are copied. It's like, hey, he seems like he's like super in a rush. yeah ah to buy things and he has to close before a certain day Yeah, because it was like, I think the BOJ rose rates and then the markets kind of sold off and I'm like, okay.
Speaker: For any listeners on the pod too, we will be sharing these screen grabs. Nin graciously made us a couple screen grabs of his internal ah charts here, which is awesome. and And again, really thank you for taking the time. Nick, could you break it down like maybe one more step simply here? So you're saying that at the time, this window of opportunity you were looking at, you were saying Japan was in this deflation. So the bottom left quadrant, I think it's heading into there right now. Let's start with the dark blue lines, that's actually history. That's actually what actually happened already. So if we look at the dark blue lines, notice all the dates on on each of those balls or nodes is 2020, like two and three and four.
Speaker: That was the reopening boom of Japan, right? Japan was one of the last countries to reopen. And when it reopened, I think everyone went, which was CPI Yeah, CPI up and GDP up.
Speaker: In other words, if the economic boom was so good, people can kind of overlook the price increases, right? People, the locals, as well as the travelers can overlook the CPI impact.
Speaker: But then when we transitioned mid 2024 into 2025, we headed into stagflation. That's when you started to see headlines where Japanese rice prices went up a lot. Cost of living went up a lot.
Speaker: It's because in that bottom right quadrant, GDP is actually slowing on a rate of change basis. So then that pickup where people said, yeah, it costs a lot to live now, but that's okay because I'm gainfully employed. Oh, I have positive aspects of the future. But as soon as GDP slows, you lose your job or one person in the family loses their job, they're then the pain starts to set in. You think about from the investor's perspective, if GDP slows, people start fleeing. Investor money starts to flee, which means the currency weakens.
Speaker: But then price also adjusts, doesn't it? Houses start to adjust in price. When I started to look at Tokyo, I looked at all the touristy places to buy, right? Like Asakusa. And then also i looked at Sakonjaya. And if you look at anywhere close to the station, all of the purple dots on Akiyamara started to disappear.
Speaker: all of the low price points started to disappear. And like, oh, someone's beating me to it. I think like every morning I would wake up and I just see maybe four or five emails between you and Joe like being on it. And I think that's definitely a huge reason for your success. then I guess, first off, are you done buying homes or still buying based the current? I've committed probably when all said and done on with over the three properties, are probably committed with minor renovations. So they're not heavy renovations.
Speaker: When all said and done, i'll probably be spent, probably spent 1.1 million USD. This would be the first swath. But then go back to my picture here. As we head into that bottom left quadrant, notice the date is in 2025. So if we look at April, May, June of 2025, which is near my green arrow there, I'm thinking, okay, that's the perfect moment to buy.
Speaker: But then I'm stuck in USD. I'm stuck in the American dollar. So in a deflation in the bottom left quadrant, where both GDP and CPI basically suck, the currency gets stronger.
Speaker: And that's what we're feeling as Westerners wanting to come in. It's like, that's the right price point to get in. So then for me as an investor, then I'm looking at the weird, you yeah unusual or different investments in Japan, which would be If you notice the email communication lately with Roe is I'm now looking at hotels or I'm looking at a fourplex in Mishku, which is in Setagaya.
Speaker: So now if we're heading into deflation and I want to capitalize on the fact that those prices for those certain properties are getting lower, I'm screwed on the currency to a degree.
Speaker: because now their currency, the yen is getting stronger in that bottom left quadrant. One last question about the charts. It sounds like there's sort of three variables here. One is CPI, the other is GDP, rate of change in both of those. But then also you've mentioned a lot of your timing depends on the exchange rate as well. yes I'm just curious, how does the rate of change of GDP factor into your decision making?
Speaker: Typically speaking, when GDP goes up in rate of change terms, we're either in disinflation, which is the dark green upper left quadrant, and or reflation, which is the upper right quadrant. I wanted to buy property.
Speaker: when GDP was declining. Because you think about the sequence of how people behave, they're anchored on the last business cycle, which was reflation. They think, oh, we can do no wrong.
Speaker: Everything's going up. They're thinking linearly. They're not seeing that turn. That turn is what hurt people. Seemingly to us, that window of perfect opportunity was the economy was slowing there in Japan.
Speaker: while our currency in the West was strengthening. If you pull up a chart the US dollar heading into elections, it was very strong. Interest rates in the US s are strong and there was capital coming into the US. Now you're seeing that in complete reverse.
Speaker: Now we have higher interest rates in the US due to economic weakness or perceived economic weakness via tariffs, the AI boom busting. I teach a course where when the semester started, I said, this is the part where we are going to correct and they didn't believe it. We were at the S&P 6,200 and they're like, no, no, we can do no wrong. Well, I've seen that movie before, right?
Speaker: And then we then reverse. And then we as investors in Japanese real estate pick up that currency. So then if we were to sell today, right now, like we call up ROE like sell everything.
Speaker: Even if we sold it at the price we bought it for, we would actually buy more dollars now with the yen that we close escrow with. We would have more purchasing power in yen terms translated back to USD and there's our capital gain without actually increasing the price of our property. So that's the beautiful part of it. And then you're paid to wait.
Speaker: I think what most of your listeners want is, you know can I make a return on these things? The first property I bought was an Edo. That property turned out so well, Nin. I think I saw the photos on Airbnb and then Joey's like, our jaws dropped. We're holy crap. Yeah, you had someone do the interior design, right? Yeah, Atsumi, Emma Ina Interiors.
Speaker: Phenomenal work. I gave her free reign. I want my homes to look like these other homes I have on Maui. And then she's like, okay. but yeah And then when she made the plan, it was like so detailed. It was so much more detailed than than every plan I've seen from another interior designer. I really got lucky.
Speaker: Ninh, you're playing 4D chess here. I'm happy to know that, meanwhile, me and Joey are playing 1D chess, just kind of be like, oh, it feels good to buy. Ninh's in the background doing all this research. It's incredible.
Speaker: Definitely. Then let's analyze one your deals, actually. So you bought three properties at this point. Is there one you want to highlight? Would like to walk through the listener, like kind of purchasing process and and to where you are with it now.
Speaker: They're all about the same in terms of the process. Once we went through the Edo one, I'm like, okay, i got it. Let's go on the next one. A home opened up in Sanjaya and now but I've been looking there for a while.
Speaker: And then I picked up Edo only because I'm like, oh, that looks cool. but Let's talk about Ito actually. I think your Ito property was such a nice property. How much did you get it for? How long did it take to get it, you know, keys in hand?
Speaker: Ito is in the Shizoka prefecture. It's south of Atomi and it is more of a quiet travel destination. But I'm noticing that The messaging is, oh, this is our second time back and we want to go Ito and Atomi and the the entire Shizuoka prefecture area. you know They want to make their way down to Shimoda and whatnot, but they want to base out out of Ito.
Speaker: That's kind of why i want to get into those two places. Did you look up data there, Nin? Shizuoka is our top, most liked property in 2024, actually. Oh, okay. Yeah. How did you pick there?
Speaker: I picked there only because I wanted to get into the mindset when I look at YouTube vlogs. I mean, if you think about people who quote, I want to travel to Japan, they hit up Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka.
Speaker: That pretty much sum it up. Yeah. yeah by the time they realize there's a whole new side there's other areas that are not as touristy that are like fun so i would watch japanese vloggers speaking japanese put the captions on and they all do kind of the same thing they want to get out of the city and then go to the beach as a day trip as a week trip because you're living in the city i would assume that you kind of get sick of the city. So I found out that coastal cities in Japan, locals tend to frequent and frequent often just to get away, you know?
Speaker: And then that was a toss up between Atomi or Ito. And I wanted to do both. But in this window of opportunity, I just ended up doing Edo. Just looking at the listing, actually, and we'll put the, if you don't mind, we'll put the listing in the show notes, but okay really nice property. Tell us a little bit about your initial thoughts when looking through the photos and why did you pick this one?
Speaker: That one specifically, it it has phenomenal views. The listing photos themselves did not do the view justice at all. Only from dumb luck and experience. I'm like, okay, that view looks good in the listing, even though the listing did not present it in the best light.
Speaker: I'm sure that if you're there in person, it probably looks phenomenal. And then sure enough, when Ro ran around with his 360 camera and took photos, I'm like, yeah, yeah, the view is nice.
Speaker: Boom. um Oh my gosh. Yeah. we Joey and I, we just saw it. We were like, it's too hard to not drop your jaw at it. You didn't visit the property during the process, did you? No. I still haven't. You got to go spend some time there. But yeah, yeah I will.
Speaker: How did the Airbnb license process go? That seems like it was actually very, very smooth. That was very smooth only because I think there is a law set in place in 2013-14, specifically in the Shizoka prefecture, that tries to increase tourism in the area.
Speaker: The sequence of how that the coastal economy did Out of the early 80s into the 1989 top in the Nikkei stock market, condos in Atomy were at $1.550,000, $600,000 a condo. Yeah, right?
Speaker: But because of the 1989 top and then subsequent crash, due to debt or people being over levered, there's that turn in the cycle we're talking about. Then you saw condo prices in Atomy and Edo drop to $20,000.
Speaker: $15,000, $20,000. That could be fixed. But I think what broke is the mentality and the approach to leverage. And that's since 89 until now, you get the vibe that it's very difficult for loans to get approved for the the average family to buy a home.
Speaker: So that then creates almost three to four generations of home buyers or investors that just don't like debt. So they become very conservative.
Speaker: Which means without that ever inflating debt nonsense or debt and ah using debt as an investment tool, then prices just bleed out. And that's what we're seeing now, the aftermath of that era now.
Speaker: So then as an investor, when you're buying things for like $100,000 $200,000 whatever, wherever, depending on the location, I think you're being paid to wait. Ito cost me 20 million yen at the current time of the exchange rate. It turned out to be $130,000 or a little bit less than $130,000, somewhere around there.
Speaker: I'm curious, like what didn't go as planned? What were some of the leaps of faith you had to take? Or was it all pretty well calculated? On end, it was ah my enddo okay. It was just like, okay, now I'm just going to send this money into some black hole. Okay.
Speaker: And hopefully it closes. That's literally the only thing that was the scary part. But it's like, okay, that closed. You know, after a while of contacting Ro and how Ro operates, then it became process was very easy. In fact, there were times where the interior designer, I can sense in the email that it's very difficult for them to ask for payment.
Speaker: So then I went ahead and responded. I go, can you invoice me all this so I can get it off my plate? And that that lightened the load for them to actually send me an invoice, tell me that things are due.
Speaker: And then once that relationship with Ro was established, that's key is Atsumi over at the interior place. Atsumi is the person. Emma Ina Interiors is not a plug, is the decorator company.
Speaker: They could not accept payment from me from Weiss or OFX. So I had to send it to Roe and then Roe sent it to them. that made it a lot easier. Yeah. You highlighted a lot of friction that we feel in paying and invoicing Japanese contractors. We feel that same hesitation from them where me and Joey are always like, we want to pay fast. We want to be great customers. So we're always asking like, hey, invoice us. We'll pay you as soon as possible. That's something we've also tried to incorporate that has worked quite well.
Speaker: Yeah. Because you're going to be relying on these people. Like at Edo, I realized my wife is more in touch with what we actually need at an Airbnb. So she's like, do we have a pack and play?
Speaker: Or when kids show up and that, you know, and then do we get like kitty knives and forks and kitty plates and bowls so the kids don't just drop breakable plates. And then Ro inadvertently, when we got our first booking, you know, he's like, nin maybe we should buy a pack and play.
Speaker: i'm like Oh, we already got it. Atsumi already bought it. thing that we told them. but Wait, speaking of kids, ni did you not have a Hello Kitty themed room? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife wanted that. Holy moly. The home in Kukunuma, which is in Kukunuma Kaigen, which is like literally a minute from the beach.
Speaker: I was afraid because there's like a pole outside of the house, like tsunami warning. This is where the, how high the water could go. And I'm like, oh, it's super close to the beach. It's super walkable.
Speaker: And it's a six DK, no L six DK. And then my wife wanted a Hello Kitty room. Not because she's particularly into Hello Kitty. She just wants something Instagrammable.
Speaker: That's how she thinks. I don't think that way, but that's how she thinks. And then Atsumi's like, great, that's cool. You want a Hello Kitty themed room? Cool, we can get that done. And then later Atsumi hits me with, hey, you have six bedrooms.
Speaker: I don't think you need six bedrooms. Can we knock down a wall and make it an LDK as opposed to a six d k can we make it a 5L DK? So now I think that's- I like how she's thinking. Yeah, because there was no L in that house and it's a pretty big house.
Speaker: And so removing a wall to make like a living room, like a great room, and makes sense. Yep. Makes sense. Yeah. Question, our listeners are probably wondering, like, how is this guy finding all these Airbnbs? I thought the Airbnb rule was 180 days a year.
Speaker: For Ito, for example, like, how did you know the zoning? Did you work with Yo? Did you find it yourself? I know it was a little bit of an investigation, right? Yes, it was a little bit of investigation at the beginning. And I felt so bad because he's okay, I'll call the ward. Oh, I have an appointment at the ward. and I'm like, oh, I don't want him to go there because he's in Tokyo and it's a far distance.
Speaker: After Ito, you guys had additional tools that allowed me to know generally where the hotel zones are. Because if you're spending $350,000, $500,000, or whatever the amount is, you want to make sure it's hotelable, right? As opposed to being stuck with Minpaku, which is 180 days, which changes all of your return metrics big time. Even if you have a ROCON license, you can operate 365 days a year, you're not going to rent it for 365. So the usual is anywhere from to occupancy, even at the ROCON level.
Speaker: So I think 65, 70% is a fair assumption, depending where you are. So when I run my projections, I just plug in like 60, 65, something low in the area. And you can double check that with AirDNA and just casually look at your competition and look at their calendar.
Speaker: and And then you find out that the inexpensive ones, yeah, they're booked. So in the decision calculus, of the average traveler, if all the inexpensive ones or the basically the cheaper ones are all booked all the time and they don't have a week or two week opening, that's not even in your choice, right? Because if you log into Airbnb, you're like, I'm going to spend two weeks or a week in Edo and all the cheap ones are gone because they're always booked. You're not going to get that full week. So who's left? It's all of the luxury home looking ones.
Speaker: that are charging anywhere from 250 to 400 at night. I think the last booking we did after the discount was like 380 a night or something like that. It was something that's crazy. That's awesome. So you looked at zoning maps. thanks for being our beta tester for something we're launching on Acumart publicly soon.
Speaker: But also did you have to call for every single or like you would send them a property you think was zoned? What was that kind of process and iterative back and forth? So once I knew what website to go to, which is Japanese, then I had to know exactly where the house is, which is different than US listings. US listings like here's the address, come drive by.
Speaker: This one is like they tell you where the house is, generally speaking in the neighborhood. So then I would have to find out what the face of the house looks like, go into Google Street View and then like literally search street by street to find it.
Speaker: Once I found the exact address, go to IMAP or MapReady or whatever it was, and then see if it's zoned in the hotel zone. And then you would see emails from me in October, November that said, hey, look at this house. And it would be like the Google map.
Speaker: And then like next to it would be the screen cap of the hotel zoning. And that way I would tell Roe, hey, it is hotel zoned. let's go ahead and put an offer in after you go view the property. We've learned a lot from you, Nin. I think you've opened our eyes on like how a savvy investor tries to not only communicate speed-wise, but also what kind of things you're looking. So I know we weren't involved on all the chains, but we were reading them all. was just like, man, Nin's that next level right here.
Speaker: I do want to ask you about future predictions and what you're excited about maybe in the next year or so, investment-wise in Japan. You at all interested in buying Japanese businesses, small businesses? Yeah.
Speaker: Small businesses, no, because I feel like I have to be there to operate. That's different. That opens up a different can of worms. I think if there's a VAT tax law that if you make on a net basis per business entity of over, what is it, 10 million yen, works out to be like 70 grand net, is you have to file VAT taxes, collect VAT taxes,
Speaker: I don't think I'll have a problem with Edo. I will have a problem with Kukunuma and Sangha Jaya. That's like a sales tax? Value added tax. Yeah, it's 10%. I have to collect it The law is very generous in the sense that you can't pay the VAT taxes if you haven't hit the threshold to then register your business as VAT taxable, if that makes sense.
Speaker: So the year you go over the threshold, they give you two years after that to the set up the LLC or the S-Corps or the KKs or the GKs or however you're set up to pay VAT tax and collect VAT tax. Yeah, it's like a sales tax. Yeah.
Speaker: I see. So you're sweet spot zoned, multifamily units, types of businesses, running the hotel, running the Airbnbs, stuff that you can manage from abroad. you know We've got Rio on the ground.
Speaker: We've got other people in the network. Should we need them? I see. That's the that's the zone that you're thinking about. Okay. Yeah. I figured if I purchase the right investments in the right zoning, in the right areas, there's enough meat on the bones. There's enough return on capital.
Speaker: So I could pay everyone generously, really, because you're relying on these people, right? I could pay everyone generously and then I can make a return. And for that return, I understand that I'm managing from afar. I understand that I'm a little more hands off.
Speaker: I mean, if Edo is netting roughly 25 to 27 percent and it looks like we're on track to do that, it's only been four bookings in a relatively short period of time and it's a new listing. But six months from now, 10 months from now, a year from now, I don't think that will be an issue for me.
Speaker: For the listeners who have not bought their Akia yet, from your prediction, when's the next best time to buy? So the market now is going to be that deflation. That means prices in yen terms could come down, could, but we are not like a US market. In the US, the typical behavior is we take 20% down and we mortgage the rest.
Speaker: In Japan, that's not the case, right? No one uses debt as often. So if you're stepping into the market now moving forward, you're hoping that there is some form of price concession and the people that are selling need to sell.
Speaker: So then you're only now looking at the prices possibly coming down 10 15%. which is sizable. That's a big chunk. That's a huge discount. But if you're going to step into Sanginjaya to Kome, 10% off 900 grand is still a lot of money, right? But that's what you're faced with. you know Maybe your returns profile is going to be lower because after that, after 2026, let's say we got Osaka's tourism thing. Japan wants to double tourism by 2030. Okay. Okay.
Speaker: ok But if you look at their land use at all of the touristy areas, it's really just Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka. You don't think about anywhere else is all of the land has been used. All the hotels have already been built.
Speaker: So the release valve for that pressure heading into 2030, the release valve is going to be prices going up. That's the only release valve is how can we shut out the number of tourists coming in?
Speaker: Or what you already see now floated as an idea, i don't know if it's implemented yet, is there another two-tier pricing. There's locals pricing at these touristy places, and then there's tourist prices at these touristy places.
Speaker: So that means hotels are going to be a little more expensive. Airbnbs will be a little more expensive. So if you want to be participating in that, the potential of that future happening where the release valve for the tourism that Japan wants by 2030 is to get to those higher daily rates, the higher ADRs, is maybe you got the second best alternative, which is, okay, maybe I have a concession on price.
Speaker: And then maybe I don't have a great ROI now. But if you look out to 2023 as tourism doubles, that's five years from now. That'll go in the blink of an eye. then maybe your net returns in that possible future, in that future, in 2020, call it seven, eight, leading into 2030.
Speaker: Because if you're walking into 2030 after tourism's doubled and you're like, let me get my hands on some property, now you're faced with even lower net returns. Because everyone's doing the same thing, right? I mean, this information is not secretive. It's highly democratized. I'm i'm sure everyone can get GDP and CPI data and map it out the same way I did.
Speaker: Then the issue is who has enough faith and capital set aside to execute. Nin, we're about at time. I just want to ask one final question for anyone else thinking about embarking on this journey or investing in Japanese real estate. What would be your biggest piece of advice?
Speaker: You got to find your market niche. I think that's very important. You can't just buy willy nilly just because the price point is low. And there's plenty of them that low, like, oh, there's this property over here that's 49,000. Let me chuck 49,000 at it and see what sticks. No, I think you do your due diligence. You have to. If you're risking capital, you have to look at what your next best alternative is.
Speaker: If your next best alternative is sticking it in index funds, you're going to probably net out on average after inflation, 8% to 9%. So if you cannot beat that, and this is risk capital and it's tied up in illiquid assets. Like if I needed money, I could just hit the sell button on a brokerage account somewhere and I have money now.
Speaker: But think about this. You're tying it up in real estate, whether you're here in the US or there in Japan, you have to do your due diligence. You have to make sure you've accounted for almost all the scenarios that you can think of. And a lot of this is experience. Yes, I understand that. But I think reaching out to you guys, reaching out to Ro, he's been phenomenal. I get a sense when I show him a property, he's like, hmm, maybe that's not good. I'm like, okay, got it.
Speaker: He's got a great sense of the market. I agree. I trust Rio as well. Yeah, he does. He does. So you build relationship relationships with these people, you trust them, you more or less give them free reign because they're more of an expert on it than you are.
Speaker: All you are is you're providing the capital, right? Answer your emails quick, pay people quick. Yeah, exactly. And then if people want to sign up your lectures or contact you, what's the best way for people to reach out?
Speaker: but You guys have my email. They can just send me an email, reach out, and I can point them in the right direction. I mean, the rabbit hole goes pretty deep if we want to really talk about a systematic framework because you're deploying capital, man. Whether you're investing a thousand or a million or 10, you still got to do that due diligence. You don't want to be stepping into something and then being stuck.
Speaker: You have to cater to what that exit looks like. Nin, we need to do a second pod with a deep dive on your investment strategy because I personally find it fascinating. And you said that you apply to different countries as well. We will invite you on for a second podcast all about investing.
Speaker: Great. Thank you. Okay. You'll probably see emails from me. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks so much.
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. Thanks again for listening and we'll see you next week.
