Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the buying a house in Japan podcast. My name is Take joined by my co-host Joey. Joey, where are we at right now? We're in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We're both suffering from allergies though. Maybe you can hear it in our voice. Hopefully not. I landed yesterday and I was like, whoa, I don't have allergies usually, but it's here, bro.
Speaker: Okay. So why are we in Santa Fe? I used to live here for about a year and a half, 2022-ish. was working at a remote job. I've got two good friends here from grad school and we're doing an offsite here this week just for a few days, but also talking to those friends. They're both data scientists, well-established in their careers, Cambridge University PhDs, and we're trying to get them to take a look at our real estate data.
Speaker: We haven't had time really to go through and tease some insights out. You know, we're kind of in build as fast as we can mode at the moment. So it is nice to stop, take a look at our data and pull some insights. TLDR, we're trying to recruit Joey's friends from Cambridge to make us a Zestimate, Jestimate.
Speaker: Name's still TBD, but again, we have all this data and we think we can start price estimating stuff. It was fun yesterday. We saw like some insights in our data for the first time. For example, price increases in Tokyo's 23 wards. you know Which wards are most expensive? Where are prices increasing the fastest? That was cool to see.
Speaker: Spoiler of alert, it's the main ones you're thinking of. Shibuya, Minato, Chiyota, etc. All right, we have a hot topic today. We're going to talk about what's the catch with buying some of these cheap Akias.
Speaker: With Acumart Direct, we are trying to market ourselves as we can help you buy any house at any price point, and that includes these $3,500 homes. We've helped, I think, maybe four people buy around 1 million yen or under, basically. I'd say it's like... a Truly, Akia Akia. I would even venture to say about $20,000 US and below seems to be the unoccupied, you know, abandoned for X months, X years Akias.
Speaker: So at this point, we have five Akias. Three of them are the $3,500 Akias. None are making us any money. They are kind of a thorn in our butt, but also there's some good and bad side. Just to go down the list, our first one we bought was Miyoko Ski Cabin.
Speaker: We bought this for $3,500 in October. We had got this from our agent. It's a really big lot. I'd say it's like 2,000 square foot lot. Property itself was built in 1950s, probably on 10, 15 minute drive from a lot of these slopes.
Speaker: We bought this one sight unseen just because we had enough signal from our website and people reaching out that Milko's hot right now with all the Singaporean investments and whatnot. So we bought this site unseen.
Speaker: Yoshi, our agent who helped us buy our Tama house was like, Hey, my boss has this deal. Are you guys interested? We took a chance on this one. i think just the land itself is valuable. Some of the catches here, location is good, but also next to a graveyard. I wouldn't say the location is walkable either. Very low walkability score.
Speaker: The structure itself is pretty much cooked. We went through it first and it looked pretty good. Yeah, we were considering still renovating up until like a week ago. We had a friend who knows something about construction go through and he took a peek under the floor and some of the like structural floor joists or whatever they're called were literally broken and rotten.
Speaker: Initially, that's one of the big catches. Like these structures that you're buying for, let's say, potentially $3,500, I would say is not livable, ah especially during in the winter. Yeah. With some exceptions, as we get into other properties, for example, the Kitakushu house is in good condition, but generally I would say not great condition structurally.
Speaker: I think some other catches that you need to be aware of is there's a lot of stuff in this house and to remove that stuff. Sometimes it's a little bit difficult to find someone to help you remove all the stuff in the house and it can be pricey, funky smell. You know, obviously these properties have been abandoned for a while and sometimes they're just not...
Speaker: renovationable. Jay, the guy who went and looked at underneath the floor, he purchased a property, but he's thinking about just demolishing the whole structure now. He thought he could renovate it. I can't remember exactly the reason, but now he's leaning towards just demolishing it and cutting his losses. So you know buying these properties, you may find a fatal flaw in it where you're like, this can't be renovated. it has to be bulldozed.
Speaker: Why did do we buy this property, Joey? I think we bought it because of the location, right? and We were also excited. This is off-market deal too, so we were excited just for the off-market deal. We were excited by the price point. We were kind of just on a roll at the time as well. We had just purchased Tama Base Camp, and I think maybe we were purchasing the Kitakushu house at the same time. So we were on a roll, but we knew at the time that Miyoko was a little bit special.
Speaker: want to dive into a little bit of the additional costs. Joey has a spreadsheet. I think we didn't keep as good of track for Myoko, but high level, we bought this house for $3,500. There are a lot of costs associated with it.
Speaker: So just doing the transaction cost itself, I'd say The Shiho Shoshik, which is the legal scrivener that puts the title in your name, cost probably around $2,000. We then had agent fee, which is also another close to $2,000. So we're already looking at $4,000 and just straight fees to acquire the property.
Speaker: and There was like a lawyer's fee that we had to pay to, which is not normal for the transaction. But given that this was a distressed property, a legal firm had taken over the administration of it or something. So we had to pay them as well.
Speaker: Yeah, so I think we paid probably another $2,000 there. So we're looking at close to $6,000, which is already almost double the price of the property. Yep. Our trip up there to go check it out. There's no clearing fees.
Speaker: All in on this property, i'd say, to date, including like us going out there, booking a hotel there is probably close to... $12,000. Yeah, was going to say $13,000. Also, like not to mention the amount of headspace and time thinking about it and doing all this stuff. The short answer is like you really have to have time and energy for these $3,500 properties or else they're just going to sit there and rot.
Speaker: Yeah, just a quick note on the fees too. We give this advice in our webinars and consultations. Every property is different, but generally I would say tack on $10,000 to the purchase price of the house. so if you are looking at a $3,500 house, it's going to cost you an additional $10,000 to put it in your name, not counting renovations or anything like that, just the legal fees.
Speaker: We bought this house really, maybe recklessly, that we didn't have a clear plan. We knew Myoko was hot. We knew we could rent it out. We knew we could probably sell it again. We weren't sure, are we going to rebuild it? Are we going to furnish it or try to retrofit it?
Speaker: So for someone who needs that planning, don't buy a $3,500 Akio. I think there's just too many variables until you really are boots on ground. What's that Mike Tyson line where it's like, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. Like you can't really have a plan with these $3,500 houses because there's too many things that could throw a wrench in your plans. Like if you're like okay, yeah, well you know we'll renovate six months, get it up on Airbnb, et cetera. Like, I don't think that's feasible.
Speaker: Some things you won't even know until like you're in the house. You can get a building inspection done, usually quite good, but you know, taking them with a grain of salt. I think it really is like you buy it and then you form the plan. If you want to go down that route, it's hard to plan beforehand.
Speaker: Absolutely. Even if you do get a building inspection, it would cost like $1,000, which would already be a third of the cost. So there's a lot of trade-offs here. I would say if you're trying to be cheap, it just probably isn't the route, I think. If you're like, hey, I'm on a $3,500 property, up up that budget to $20,000, $30,000, I think, and you're a much better zone, but not a great zone still.
Speaker: Joey, any mistakes, anything you regret with this purchase thus far? And again, we haven't really done much to it. No, I don't think any regrets. The only thing that is slightly unfortunate is that it's not in line with our other properties in the sense that like we'll fly into Tokyo and then we'll do, you know, Batbu, we can do Fukuoka, you know, we can do our Kyushu properties, et cetera. But this one is really the opposite direction from our other properties. So, you know, we don't have a good flow yet to visit all our properties in one trip.
Speaker: What did you learn from this property acquisition? I was excited about having a house with a bunch of stuff left in it, finding all the treasures. It's more work, honestly, than it's worth. But it it mostly is junk, I would say.
Speaker: Someone else's personal belongings. It's memories, but it was not my memories. So you do feel a little bit weird tossing this all the way, but got to move forward. Yeah, and trash disposal, we got a quote, is probably close to also another like 8 to 10K. So let's say you bought this house, you wanted everything out there.
Speaker: and You can definitely do things cheaper. If you wanted this house empty, 20K. Snow clearing costs $500 for the season. More like $600, $900. Yeah.
Speaker: So this property hasn't been cheap. I think the high-level reason we're buying because we're betting on Miyoko. We are, at this point, pretty certain we are going to demolish the house and do a new build. A lot more coming there.
Speaker: We are working with a Japanese company. We have secured a investor who's also a podcast listener, you know who you are. And yeah, I think this is actually going to be our best property of the $3,500 Aki as we've gotten, right?
Speaker: To sum it up, what's the catch with our Miyoko property? In my mind is we bought it without having the money to really renovate it or do anything else with. Cost to close are not just the $3,500 property price. We ended up in a situation where we don't have any money for renovation or anything like that so we've been sitting on it so that's the catch yeah you can buy these it's going to be more than you expect to close and then you're going to need deeper pockets to actually be able to live in this house if we were to do a full renovation or make this livable just like without doing the new build how much do you think it would cost 100k i agree and you'd probably want to do it hundred k because myoko is a nice area so
Speaker: Some of the additional costs or hidden costs for this were one, we still had to pay the real estate transaction stuff, but we also paid an additional finder's fee to this legal firm that I don't know why we paid it, but we did. And it's kind of just- Go with the flow. Part of the deal.
Speaker: And yeah, we just really didn't have a plan for this, but it's going to turn out well. Yeah, optimistic. I would give it a thumbs up. So that's our Myoko property. Kita Kyushu long-term rental. We call this KK20 because we initially pitched KK20.
Speaker: that we are going to be at least getting a 20% ROI on this. For the listeners of the podcast, Keaton-san has messaged us again, actually. I don't know how much we've given the details of it. He's returned. Not quite Sato-san level story here, but yeah, this person did kind of ghost us for medical reasons, but he's actually... He's back. He's back, yeah.
Speaker: So we bought this property in a city called Kitakushu for also $3,500. As Joey mentioned, this Keaton figure approached us and kind of brought this deal to our table. Same time, we were really just riding a wave. We're like, okay, let's just keep trying this. Even if we fail, it's like a good learning for us to pass on to customers.
Speaker: You're right about the experience thing. Like now we bought three like uber cheap properties and I feel like we kind of understand the deal much better. So maybe it is worth it. This is probably my least favorite property, Joey. I agree. Least favorite property in the sense that I just don't have much interest in Kitakyushu.
Speaker: There's nothing wrong with Kitakyushu, by the way. This is just my personal preference. We actually have many customers that are excited about Kitakyushu. So good city. Check it out. I think it's just a little too close to Fukuoka for me, and I prefer Fukuoka.
Speaker: The building structure itself is really good. It's built in the eighty s our best condition, Akia minus our Thomas spot when we got it. This house is in great condition.
Speaker: For the price point that we bought it at, it does go to show you there are diamonds in the rough out there. The Miyoko property, obviously, as we've learned, has some structural damage. I think nine times out of 10 at this price point, the house is going to have some structural issues, but there are diamonds in the rough.
Speaker: The big draw here was we were told it should be very easy to rent. We are following this guy's strategy, his course. So we did light renovations. How much did those light renovations cost? Quite cheap, like 2K. We re-wallpapered, we resurfaced tatamis.
Speaker: This was our first shot at trying to rent it. So we've been working with a Japanese real estate agent company. That's the real catch here, I would say, is trying to work with this Japanese rental company to rent it out. We're not really seeing eye to eye and it doesn't seem like they're hustling very hard.
Speaker: Yeah, this is actually yeah the big learning. If you are trying to get one of these cheap properties and long-term rent it, there's just a lot of weird different things in long-term rentals. There's like a key fee, there's first month deposit. There's a million fees that the renter needs to pay just to rent your apartment.
Speaker: It's crazy. And I think it is a blocker. And we've talked to this rental company a few times like, hey, we'll pay it. We just want the listing to say, you know, zero yen for all these fees to make it more exciting because it's a little bit ridiculous, the amount of fees.
Speaker: We've literally just approached them like, we will pocket the fees. We want you to get a renter in here. They don't seem super receptive. So we've actually sent our own photographer out to take better photos. We're going to be putting this up on Aki Mart.
Speaker: Again, this has been a thorn in our side, to be honest. We weren't excited about the property, which is a bad sign looking back. But we bought this one sight unseen. Keaton had actually gone there for us and videoed us. And so we were really following his lead. We hope things will turn around now that he's back in the picture.
Speaker: Maybe hindsight's 2020. When we look back, it'll be like we got into the long-term rental or understand that space better because of this property. So for this, also, we had to pay the Shiho Shoshi legal title transfer fee. We had to pay the agent fee.
Speaker: So let's say $4,000 for all those fees. We also did pay a finder's fee to Keaton. So kind of similar. We did, about $3,000. Yeah, $3,000. three thousand dollars So we're looking at a total of around $10,000. And then we got another $2,000 in renovations. We drove down there also our time. So let's say this came out to about $12,000. Yeah. Yep. agree on that. Not excited, but if we can find a renter, that's going to be huge. So if anyone wants to rent, we are renting this for around $200.
Speaker: Actually, I would say if you are looking to leave a high cost country, let's say the United States, and you have a remote job or something, and you just need somewhere to crash, not a bad option to buy this property and then just live there.
Speaker: Right. That's true. I actually also just threw this up on the website, Akiyamart2. I put up a price of $10,000. It's really just to get it out there. If anybody wants to buy it as well. We're loss on this one. We're taking a loss on this property, but I think we're sort of in the phase of generally trying to consolidate our properties. We have too many.
Speaker: Another small catch is like setting up utilities has been quite challenging here. We have a Japanese bank account, but yeah we've had a couple of hiccups with just making sure the lights and water on. Big catch, I would say, is trying to do it on your own and set up utilities. Thankfully, we have some great post-purchase partners now, and we're trying to move our utilities over to them. But you know beforehand, we were trying to do this with ourselves. Luckily, we did have a Japanese bank account, but man, frustrating to do so. I had to fill out a form like three times because I got it messed up on the form twice.
Speaker: So hidden fees, we paid about another 10 to 9K in just miscellaneous fees. The return could be quite good, but again, this has been a thorn in our side. We've just been doing so many things that when problems come up for this property, we're like, damn it. not enjoyable mental work to do.
Speaker: Joey's catch in a nutshell is not as easy to get a long-term renter. The Japanese company that's helping you find a renter, they're not thinking the same way that you're thinking Don't make the same mistake to find long-term renters. It is unfortunately harder than we initially thought.
Speaker: Good side for us. We're learning about the long-term rent space. All right, Aigawa. This one, I would say, similarly optimistic to Miyoko on this property. Really, it's just the Kitakushu property. But again, as I mentioned before, in general, these three are my least favorite. But Aigawa project I am excited about. we just were down there in February. we went down to Nagasaki, and we've got a video coming out on this property and some more podcast-y type material. So you'll learn more about this property soon.
Speaker: But we purchased one of the real estate agents we're working with, her grandmother's house. So our agent Mika, her aunt was selling her grandmother's house and we were interested. it was a beautiful coastal town, 25 minutes from downtown Nagasaki, similar price point, about $3,500.
Speaker: Additional fees on this one are also quite similar. I think the difference here is we put a lot of money into, honestly, money and effort into the marketing. So we have a video coming out soon. We have a podcast coming out soon. We're going really hard on trying to make this our Akimart seal of approval.
Speaker: We spent about another $1,000 on a building inspection just to make sure the guts are good. We have a car price included here. All in all, it's coming out to what, like 19,000 our plan is to repackage and sell this and kind of make it an easy mode for someone who wants to live and have this Aki experience without going through the shit that we had to Yeah, we're trying to flip this essentially. And since we're the sellers, we figure we can do a lot more to make this an easy mode button than when we don't have control over the seller side as well. So we're doing all those plus alpha things for this property, hooking it up with a car, hooking it up with a boots on the ground person to help you with random things while you're not in the country. We've put in a lot of effort to
Speaker: make this property what we think is a real easy entry to property ownership in Japan. The purchase price was, you know, $3,500 in line with our other properties. Just to get it in our name, again, usually costs around $10,000. And then additionally, we're thrown in a car and a few other things. So yeah, right now we're about $18,000 in.
Speaker: What's the catch with Aikawa Yute? This is the same catch that Kitakushu has, that Miyoko has, that we didn't actually mention, is that the neighborhood is a lot of elderly people. This is a small seaside town, so your neighbors are not going to be young people. Maybe you can be friends with elderly people, but if you're looking for a more vibrant, younger community, this is a shrinking town on a beautiful Nagasaki coastline. And usually that's going to be the catch with many of these cheaper properties is that they're cheaper,
Speaker: For a reason, population is aging in Japan and that's where all these Akiyas are. It's in a town where there's not much work or or et cetera, but you're 20 minutes from Nagasaki. Like you're actually very close to a real city.
Speaker: The building quality of this one was really good though. So probably taking care of prior to literally like, I think the day before something we got there and shot all this stuff, the on was living there. So it wasn't an Akiya until we really got it.
Speaker: Newest property, 1988, but felt very similar to most things. Let's go 1988. 1988. Post earthquake standard, a big deal. So it still had squishy floors here, there. Sure, we can come in and renovate, but I think there's someone who wants to renovate how they want to do it. So we are setting up a property manager here to help manage that renovation too.
Speaker: This house of the three $3,500 properties, I'd say is the top one I would want to live in, especially during the summer. I think the summer could be really cool here. Seaside town. I mean, you can't go wrong. I agree on that.
Speaker: No real catch other than I think the location is not desirable for someone that needs a job, you know, coming from the area. Yeah, this is this is a knockout of the park.
Speaker: I think if you want that isolation, you want to be by the coastline, then you kind of want to redo the place how you want to do it. This is kind of what we're trying to replicate at this point.
Speaker: Let's think. Some more catches. There is parking, but you have to pay for it. So there's no like driveway. So cheap though. It was like 200 bucks for the year yeah for parking. And we've prepaid that as well. So whoever going to buy this house is already prepaid for the year.
Speaker: additionally like all these homes in japan no insulation but know if you're buying 3500 house or like you know a hundred thousand dollar house then neither of them are going insulation remember that huge boar we saw next to our house there's like a huge you know shishi or like a wild boar is like princess mononoke style the jungle is coming back yeah this area nature will reclaim you're already seeing it if you want an isolation vibe this one i think is really such a cool spot yeah walkability is high in the sense that, you know, you can walk to the beach, 30 second walk to the beach. The coastline is really cool looking, lots of cliffs and caves and that kind of stuff.
Speaker: But in terms of walkability, there's stores, zero. There's like a vending machine, I think is the only thing you've walked in. At least it's got the vending machine. If you were to live there. Like how much would you think Renault would cost? Again, everyone's got different standards, but. $50,000, $60,000 US.
Speaker: I think you could do it cheaper, but yeah, I'd say with 50K into this $3,500 property, you can make it like great. Yeah, it depends if you want to open up the walls, put insulation in. True, true, true. Okay, so those are our three properties. Aigawa is probably the best of the three for livability.
Speaker: Kitakushu has the highest potential for maybe just like straight our ROI if things work out. And i think Miyoko is the long-term land bet that I think it's going to be the most valuable or best. Are all three immediately livable in your mind, Take? Yes, except for Miyoko. I was going to say the same thing, not Miyoko. Kitakyushu and Aigawa. And again, all three of these deals we didn't find on Akiyamart, to be very transparent. These were all through connections. So we talk about this lot. Your first deal you're going to get is probably going to be a B. Once you are on the ground, things change. would say our Miyoko property is an A, Kitakyushu is a C, and Aigawa is an A-.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah. I want to rank Kitagishi lower, but it's okay. So I'll go see. Joey, what would you say for someone who sees these $3,500 properties and has never been to Japan?
Speaker: I think it's a bad idea off the bat, unless you're super DIY, you can renovated your own home and... If you feel super comfortable renovating houses, I think it could work even if you don't have Japanese experience.
Speaker: But I would still, you know, especially in these rural, like none of these properties are downtown Tokyo, like walkability is low for all these properties. So understanding that rural side of Japan. And if you feel comfortable there that you can live that life and have a good time, even if it's just a vacation home, I think that's more important than being able to DIY things.
Speaker: I will say we will not help you buy a $3,500 house if you've not been to Japan. i think it's irresponsible to bring someone to a community that does not know what they're getting themselves into. They're going to buy the place and leave it as a dump. So go to Japan, check out these areas, find a community. And I agree with Joey. You really have to want to put in a lot of effort.
Speaker: You want to get your hands dirty. I think it's a great experience though. If you are... burnt out from your job and just want something very different and want a cultural immersion experience. This is kind of a perfect solution.
Speaker: Yeah. And like, it's not the price point. That's not the reason that we don't want to help you. Like we've helped people purchase these cheaper homes, but they all had a reason why this specific area, someone we helped purchase early on, there's a Fuji rock festival in this one area. And they were like, we want to live here and then go to this festival every year. So like with the specific reason to be in this one town, yeah, we can help you buy the house.
Speaker: There's like so many opinions online. Like I think all the Facebook groups, they're like, how can I get a free house? And like people just flame up those people right away. a lot of these people are coming with, I think, good intent sometimes.
Speaker: You know, it's doable. I think that's what we want to say. For someone who hasn't been dissuaded yet by our warnings, Joey, what tips would you give them to continue buying a $3,500 house? Or like what strategies with the real estate agents?
Speaker: We're talking about someone that's not been to Japan. They are very DIY. This is me. like I'm down to get my hands dirty. One, you have to have $15,000. Yeah. yeah If you're cash strapped, it's not a good idea to buy property, especially in a different country.
Speaker: There are lots of additional fees. Like Taka and I said, generally I'll say, you know tack on $10,000 just in case. But then you know you need to get to the country, rent a car because you're going need to go to the hardware store or wherever, Ikea, and buy stuff and bring it back to the house. So I would say, you know, honestly, my true feelings on it are that if you think that that type of lifestyle is something you would love to do, like you really enjoy being in Japan, you really enjoy being outside of Tokyo, you enjoy putting together a new house, like that's, in my mind, that's what matters. Because there are going to be hiccups. And like I said, you can't really put a real plan together ahead of time. It's going to be that enthusiasm deep within you that is really going to be your biggest asset here.
Speaker: I'd also follow up with, if you're buying this strictly because it's cheap and it's a deal, that attitude will follow through the transaction process and will scare the seller. We've gotten in so many of these deals because we kind of have a reputation of just being like, all right, F it, we'll buy it. We won't cause problems.
Speaker: If you're looking at a $3,500 property, you're scrutinizing every small thing. I think there's a very high chance the seller just backs off like, okay, working with this foreigner is not worth it. This might be a liability. They might cause more problems. And this is why agents don't want to deal with these properties as well. There's just not a lot of reward.
Speaker: So if they sense any problems, any headache, they're out. so yeah This is very true. This has happened to clients of ours, both the seller side agents and the sellers themselves. They're worried that if you're being difficult during the buying process, you're going to be difficult post-purchase as well. you're going to continue to cause problems for them.
Speaker: Maybe even litigate and try to sue the seller because he found whatever crack in the wall or foundation or something like that. That's their worry here. Because there's very little economic incentive for these agents to help someone sell these cheaper homes, there's just no commission in it.
Speaker: the first sign of trouble, they will just say, sorry, house is no longer for sale, or they'll say something and they will no longer want to work with you. Yeah. so our advice there is if you are really going for this, compliment the property, don't put it down.
Speaker: Don't show signs of problems if you can avoid it. You will have to be quite flexible. For example, sometimes the boundaries of the property are not known. These houses haven't had a property assessment since World War II and no one knows. The city doesn't even know where the property lines are. So there's things like that you're going to have to go into not knowing and take a risk on the property that the property lines are sensible.
Speaker: And just a plug for our Akiyamart Direct program, you know, most real estate agents who are bilingual will not help you with this. If you are interested in these $3,500 properties, we have set up this program to compensate our agents for this work and they're used to it. But Okay.
Speaker: So you need to have $15,000, I'd say. You need to have like a not cheap mentality. You need to get your hands dirty. You need to love Japan. Good attitude. Yep. You want to contribute to the community. I think that's actually huge one. You're going to need help from your neighbors. Definitely. Inavidably. So anything else?
Speaker: No, I think that sums it up. I think you can take on these types of projects. For anyone who's looking at Akiyamart, again, it's going to be tough to find these. My real recommendation is just save up to 20 to 30K and get to a more legitimate price point. Unless you get someone who's offering these deals on a side like we've received ourselves, I wouldn't hyper focus on this low price point. I would rather just go 20 to 30K US.
Speaker: That's true. Thinking back, these deals were off market for us. Had they been on our market, like just given the location, they would have been priced higher. And there are people, again, who have bought one of our one of our buddies, Jay, for example, he bought a place.
Speaker: It was quite cheap, but he had to abandon. You know, he just found too many problems. And when you add up the costs and the time spent, I think he's got a great attitude and he's going to bounce back and learn a lot. But there's a non-negligible chance that this deal is a dud.
Speaker: of But also $3,500. What does that buy you in the U.S. at this point? Would you recommend $3,500 as your first property? I would not. I would say set your sights higher. The $3,500 property is more like a project car that you have, right? You need your daily driver, but then you know you can get a project car. Once you have that safer base, I would not recommend this as your first house in Japan because you're going to need to live in a hotel while fixing it up.
Speaker: Maybe or camp. Absolutely. Yeah. I'm going to stick with realistically 30,000, but you need to have budget of 40,000 for the fees as like a bare minimum. Yeah. So I think overall biggest advice is just think it through cheap price is attractive. going like, I'll figure this out later.
Speaker: It ends up becoming a thorn in the side of your butt. Like we're feeling with our Q2Q ship property. Yeah, the cheap prices make sense. I think once you're more established in Japan, like then explore these cheaper properties because you can scoop them up for great prices.
Speaker: Absolutely. We will be interviewing a couple of the folks we've helped purchase. so We'll ask them the same questions and I think they'll feel the same. ah We do have a series called Akiyamart Direct Buyers Club, which we will see soon with a couple more folks we've helped across the finish line. Overall, though, I'm very, very happy we've done these three purchases. We've learned a lot, but we're in maybe a different position than most people.
Speaker: I remember Brett was saying, like, you guys just go on hard mode. We really are going on hard, maybe stupid mode to learn these lessons the hard way. We have learned, though. What's the catch? We've outlined it here for you. So if you have any questions about these properties, let us know.
Speaker: We have our Akimart Direct Buyers Club. We have our purchase process. Sign up for webinar or consultation. It is doable, but it just raise your budget is my real opinion. Raise your budget and set your expectations lower, I think, if you want these properties.
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. If you've got questions or feedback, drop us a line, email contact at akiyamart.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.
