Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to the Buying a House in Japan podcast. My name's Take. And I'm Joey. And we're two friends who just quit our corporate jobs and bought a cheap house in rural Japan. The goal of this podcast is to document the highs and lows of the process while informing you of every step you need to take in order for you to do it yourself too. We're by no means experts and we're doing this for the first time, but we hope this gives you a realistic expectation if you embark on this journey yourself and we hope you enjoy the show.
Speaker: All right. Welcome back to buying a house in Japan podcast. I'm your host Joey joined by co -host. Take Kurosawa. How's it going?
Speaker: Doing all right. I believe last time we left off, I was on my way to a Halloween party. We're going to continue this episode sort of along the lines of the Dear Diary series, sort of talking about our experience here, what's happened up, up till now. What are some things that have happened since that Halloween? I can talk about the Halloween party, but I'll switch into a question asker here as I'm curious how things have been going. It's been about a week since we last recorded.
Speaker: First off, congratulations. We've officially hit one month since getting keys for our place. So hell yeah. We still have a place. Congrats, Joey. Still still have it. Yep. Even though it's been neighborhood fire. We've.
Speaker: So one, is it really one month ago? We, we walked one month ago tonight. We walked in and had that really scary experience. One month ago from this date, 30 days ago that we walked into the haunted house and we're like, Oh shit. Did we make a mistake? Um, I think things have gone 180 since then. It feels honest, like dog years every day. Can't believe it's only been a month, but going back to the important news, how was your Halloween party, Joey?
Speaker: Halloween party was a blast. It was an Oita city. So rode the train for the first time there. Train's really nice. Train's really clean. Made a few friends. What's that? I took the train there, took a cab back. Yeah, it was a good party. I went to, I think I mentioned this before. I went to the, the none with the sunglasses from how high.
Speaker: Okay. How many people actually knew what your costume was? People love the costume. No one knew what I was talking about, but like a lot of people want to take pictures with me at least, at the very start. Oh, okay. Yeah. Costume kind of fell apart during the party, but whatever. How many English speakers? Oh, everybody. It was an APU. So excuse me. Yeah. It was APU party. So Ritsumeikan. So yeah, everybody there was kind of like an international student felt like.
Speaker: All right. So if you are, can't speak Japanese, just know a lot of places in Japan do speak English. So Bapu, it happens to be one of them. So good news for non -Japanese speakers. Yeah, you can definitely find, especially Tokyo. And I'm sure like any major city, there's going to be international community. Yep.
Speaker: Switching gears, I know we have other exciting news. I think last time we chatted, we had committed to Contractor A. His name is Sato -san. Since then, I think right after the Halloween party, he started construction. Joey, what's the update there?
Speaker: That's right. So we got the contractor in, he started doing some work. We sent him some money too, so things are moving along there. So the downstairs of our house is like a construction zone now, the floor. So just for the listeners out there, the downstairs of our house is basically a hallway, an old tatami room, kitchen, and then like a bathroom and another tatami room. But the main sort of part of the downstairs is this tatami room, kitchen, hallway.
Speaker: area and that's all ripped up. The only thing that's left is the hallway and the kitchen. It goes right down to the dirt and it's a tummy room. So all the boards are ripped up. And every time I walk down there, it kind of feels, he's got like strings stretched and measuring tapes and stuff kind of like, kind of laid out. It looks like an archaeological dig kind of every time I go down there. And kind of like with the, like the spotlight he's got set up on it too, just like feels like an archaeological dig. But yeah, I believe he's working on the, I believe he's working on the earthquake proofing stuff at the moment.
Speaker: Okay. I don't know if we covered in the last episode yet, but we kind of upped our contractor, a subtle sign. He came in with a pretty low bid. I think we added on quite a few things actually bringing up our bid closer to Jerry. What's the final bit amount like close to 5 million yet. I think off the top of my head and we can, we'll confirm another next episode. We just sent them 16 ,000 for the first of two installments. So 16 times to 32 K total.
Speaker: Okay. So 32K USD. This I would consider is a full renovation. Things we added as we, we're going to add seven air conditioning units. We're painting the house black. We're having him do a earthquake proofing. So I think for value 32K for every, like a full full remodel is, is pretty good. I know the exchange rate has actually also hit a new high. It's 152 yen to a dollar, which is crazy. Is it still that? Let me check.
Speaker: It's interesting how, how we're pretty close. Like I remember when we, like before we bought this house, we're looking at the numbers and we're like, okay, so around 42 ,000 us. And we're like, probably have to put a hundred percent of that into the remodel or really pretty, pretty spot on with our estimates from way back when. Yeah. Also talking to Jerry, maybe the first day, I think something that really surprised me was like the contractors arrive on time and they are very clean about how they.
Speaker: I think they're very just more, more, more like calculated and, and maybe almost robotic, but they're also more dependable so far, at least for the first couple of days. Right. Joey. Yeah. He's got his like inside work boots and his outside work boots, which is like kind of interesting. Like CC contractor, like changing shoes all the time. But yeah, that's how he's working.
Speaker: That's so good. Mike have contractors doing work in California right now. And they, they're walking into my no shoes house with their workbooks all the time. And he's got like work, he's got like work boots for outside and then kind of like a lighter, like sneaker work, work boot for the inside. Another fun, fun thing. I've been telling Joey to kind of run the, what is it? Is it Pavlovian? Like where you, I've been telling Joey to get copies dog Pavlov. Yeah. He's doing that Pavlovian experience.
Speaker: I was like, Joey, every time, every morning, just make him coffee, hit him with that caffeine. How's that been working out? I mean, I do, it's, it's working out. I mean, I am a caffeine addict, so I'm always going to be making coffee. So I'm just like, you know, every day I'm like, you want a cup too? And he's of course kind of thing. He likes it. He likes the caffeine a lot. So yeah. Right.
Speaker: It's good. And then we like sit and chat for 20 minutes. The other day we like walked around the neighborhood. I showed them the house that burned down. Another day we went to go get Kaisen don after that. So yeah, like it's like a kind of good, almost like a bonding experience with your contractor, right? But yeah, it's good. Love it.
Speaker: I think one of our, one of our goals, and I probably mentioned this the past episode, you know, is to build a team wherever we go. So again, it's only been a month since we've gotten the keys, but I think we've successfully found one, a kind of property manager fixer for me. Shout out to you for listening. We found a cleaner. What's that guy's name? You eat or something. I don't remember. I got him online.
Speaker: You like them a lot. I thought they, I thought they're just, they did a normal job, but I mean, I guess that's, that's good. That's good enough. Yeah. I mean, I, they worked hard. That's that's for sure. They didn't slack in my opinion. And it wasn't cheap though. It wasn't cheap. Wasn't cheap. But anyways, we, we found at least a pretty good cleaner in my opinion. And then lastly, we have a contractor slash handyman with the subtle sound guy. So I think we got the trifecta, you know, to, to scalably do more of these if we want.
Speaker: Yup. Yup. Yeah, it's interesting. Yup. So how, how to scale, you know, is the question. How to scale, which kind of brings us, you know, I think I've been back in the US for about two weeks, both for context, Joe and I both jobless right now. We've been jobless for, I've been jobless for about five, four months. How about you, Joey? Yeah. Jobless since March, 2023. It's now November, 2023. We went into this project, honestly, kind of, I'd say.
Speaker: Kind of letting Jesus take the wheel. You know, we've been taking it a step at a time and we'd both known this is something we've wanted to do, but we're kind of coming to a point where we're now figuring out like, what are we going to do with the house when we're done with this? Like our, you know, now that we've assessed some options, I, for one, my funds are running dry. I'm getting a little worried. What about you, Joey?
Speaker: funds are running dry I guess I'm like I'm living with my parents right now in Nova Scotia so I can probably stretch it a little longer than you can stretch it but yeah yeah would like to start making some money somehow but I mean so the reason why I quit my job
Speaker: wasn't exactly to come, come to Japan and buy a house. It was more to figure out a way to start making some passive income. You know, I probably, I decided to probably take a year off work and then see some way to start making passive income. I guess like it would be nice to have something on the side, you know, wow, even if I have to get another job in the future. So really my, my focus kind of from now until I really run out of money is, okay, I gotta get something up and running.
Speaker: Totally agree with you. I think we've both discussed like going back to the tech hamster wheel is I sure it's, it's comfortable, but it isn't, you know, we'd be running in that hamster wheel forever. That's the way that's what I'm saying. I'm like, I'm desperately trying not to go back into the tech hamster wheel if I can avoid it.
Speaker: It gives us more purpose now. Let's say we do get a job. We know that this is something that we both enjoy, renovating houses, finding these abandoned houses, and setting up dope spots.
Speaker: There's a little bit more of a North star, I think for both of us now. Yeah. Yep. Yep. All right. So I'm going to hit you, I'm going to hit us with, I'm going to hit you first. You have some hard questions here that I've been thinking about. I recently talked to a couple, I think real estate subject matter experts, people who've done stuff in Japan and are pretty familiar. Both of us are, I say quite green and we're just kind of going head first into this, but I got hit with the question of.
Speaker: You know, what's the exit plan here? You know, what are we, I think we've been talking about a game to our friends of like, Hey, you should buy in Japan or, you know, Hey, it's so cheap. Um, but yeah, that question of what's our exit plan is, is something that I've been thinking about or like, what do you want to do with the house when we're done?
Speaker: You know, we're green, but we got the enthusiasm. We got the enthusiasm. Oh yeah. Hell yeah. Definitely. Okay. All right. What do you want to do with that? So the question was, what do we want to do with the house when, when it's all fixed up and ready to go? What are our options and what do you think about we can discuss them? Yeah.
Speaker: Well, so, I mean, option one, which was kind of originally the reason why I got excited about even doing this in the first place was just to spend more time in Japan. You know, uh, I haven't been back to Japan 12 years. It is really great to be back and spend some extended time here. So to kind of have like the occasion home here, that's definitely an option. Just keeping it as a vacation home and just, you know, using it. We learned a lot from this experience. We wouldn't make any money off of this, but you know, in terms of like a lifestyle upgrade, we've at least.
Speaker: secure it a lifestyle upgrade if we choose to use it this way. Agreed. And the maintenance costs seem pretty manageable. I think, you know, assuming we left the house unoccupied, we'd have people to clean it. We'd have people to fix it if something went wrong and we'd have Fumi to property manage if we needed anything. So I think that is a viable option. So option number one, vacation home with minimal upkeep costs, right?
Speaker: Yeah. That being said, it's just since being here, I am getting more excited about, you know, trying to figure out a way to either make, you know, make money from this property in some regards. So I guess there's a lot of interest in Japan, you know.
Speaker: So there's, you know, I think we brainstormed a few different ways, you know, either renting it out somehow, short -term, mid -term rentals, flipping it. Honestly, I don't have an answer for which one's which. I would say that the flipping aspect seems like the most fun, you know, to come into like a house and kinda
Speaker: random, you know, apply your design sensibility, which is really the most fun part of all this. I feel, you know, kind of seeing it come together, being like always, you know, I'm just kind of like making executive calls. Like I want the bathroom concrete box, you know, I want the knock down these walls. I think that's the, you know, that makes it, that's all the fun right there. You know,
Speaker: Totally. I think the big difference with Japan and I guess a lot of other places is Japanese real estate is a depreciating asset except for areas like Tokyo and maybe some unique ski areas. So any renovation we would do, if we let that property sit, it wouldn't necessarily appreciate. But I hear you. I think the quick flips might be something that we look for. Again, this property is
Speaker: We're going for, I think the common theme is high impact. We're really trying to make it comfortable, nice, and also I think pretty design, a little design forward, right? And I agree with you. This is kind of the dream. If we could just keep on doing this, but also have it sustain and grow a business, that would be ideal, right?
Speaker: Yeah. I feel like me, we have good designs sent. Okay. Yeah. So Japan, the assets don't, you know, homes rarely, the home isn't going to appreciate. It's really the land price that is subject to market fluctuations. Maybe it goes up rarely, but maybe more likely it goes down.
Speaker: But I do think like me and you can kind of set our, the homes that we design apart from everything else on the market. I mean, I feel like we kind of have a little bit better. I mean, not that we haven't even done one house. We do have a better design taste than the average. Yeah. Better, not only better design, but you know, we're kind of thinking a little bit outside the box. Like how do we shove a sauna on this property or like, how do we.
Speaker: we're thinking like a little bit more, like one step more luxurious than everything else that's on the market. So it is a differentiator there. So definitely an option to flipping the house. Some things we've looked into with that is capital gains costs. So we are, again, we bought the house around, let's say 40K. We're putting another 40 in renovation. Let's just say round it, like our total costs are a hundred. And if we were to sell it for,
Speaker: I don't know, 150 to 200. The capital gains alone is quite high Joey. I think it's 30%. So that's, that is something to consider. I don't know. I talked to my accountant a little bit about this and we would have to, you know, we might have to pay some US taxes, but.
Speaker: Let's say best case scenario, we spend a hundred, we sold it for 200, we have to pay capital gains on a hundred K. So we'd be pocketing. I don't know. This is real back in napkin. I, anyone listening who knows better, please correct us. I would assume we could be pocketing like 50 K U S or something. Maybe, I don't know what other costs are there, but.
Speaker: I guess one month of work for 50K? I don't know. We need to really think about this math, but that is something that would be ideal if we could sell this. I don't even know what real estate fees. There's probably a lot of other incurred costs we're not thinking about.
Speaker: But even, you know, okay, say it's only, only 50 K I have zero income right now. So, okay. But let's say, let's say it is just 50 K does kind of seem, Oh, that's, that's all we get. But, you know, again, kind of like why we did this in the first place. And we were kind of just, let's just make it happen is like for the experience to, to know, understand the system a bit better. And I feel so much.
Speaker: better prepared to judge an Akia or another Japanese property after this experience. You know, we kind of know, we learned so much just from buying this one.
Speaker: It goes back to the scalability thing. Let's say we sell this house and we have Sato San and we're like Sato San, let's run it back. This time let's do this. We're going to come into this next renovation with at least a better price gauge, better material gauge. So all, all good points, Joey. I think it's a great, great point. Another curve ball. I know we talked a little bit about the burned down property. I think we've talked a little bit about, Hey, what if we get that burned down property we have considered?
Speaker: Do we buy it? We make it parking lot. Do we put a cold plunge and a sauna and a private onsen hot spring there? Thoughts there, Joey. Yeah. I am going to approach another realtor this week. Maybe the same one, maybe another one. I already approached one realtor inquiring about the property, but that was like the day after two people died. So they were kind of just like, whoa, whoa, whoa, bro, slow down a little bit. They're like, wait till after the funeral. And so I'm pretty sure the funeral is over now.
Speaker: So I'm going to go back and inquire again. Yeah. I feel like if it's cheap enough, kind of like, I know, I know we're spending a lot of money. I was about to say, if it's under 10 K, we just, we just go for it. If it's under five K a hundred percent under 10 K, we at least have a conversation. Yeah. Yeah. I think it was under five K, even just from a parking spot perspective. Side note, we've been struggling to rent this parking spot near our house where a contractor park and park and it's costing us like.
Speaker: Not too much, like 40, 50 bucks a month, but I don't know, over time that adds up, right? So if we can snag a piece of land near us for four or 5K, I think that would be a no brainer, Joey. The question is like, if we bought that, do we, what is the ROI of us building a cool man cave and on a second property, right?
Speaker: Yeah. I mean, if we, you know, again, this is something we brainstormed the other day, but like, you know, selling it as a package deal because the house we're in right now is like just, uh, you know, a few doors down, sell it as a package deal. And then on that property, you know, we have the onsen, the coal plunge, the sauna or whatever we want to put there, you know, just increasing the luxe, I feel like. So I looked at what's the most expensive property in Bepu right now. It was a little over half a million dollars, has a swimming pool, but honestly, like.
Speaker: It's that kind of like fake, I don't know, French, I love too ornate kind of design kind of thing. And I was like, I just feel like the design, okay, fine. It has a pool, but like design wise kind of whack.
Speaker: So yeah, that's something we'll have to think about. Can we, we, I don't think we can combine parcels. We might have to sell it. I'm not sure how to sell something in a bundle deal. That might be a question. Yeah. If we talked to a real estate agent, be like, Hey, if we, if we bought that burn down property, could we sell it together with GsoGlux? I think that would be a great one, two deal. One, two punch. If we could somehow gain more value out of that, I could see myself wanting to buy the two together. If I was like a loaded.
Speaker: for an investor, right? Yeah. Come here every day. I cold plunge every day. The cold plunge has to be facing the sunrise, obviously. Boom. On this, on the, on the roof, man. Yeah. Ocean roof, unlimited potential. Okay. So that's enough about option two. We've definitely thought about flipping option three. And actually I think the initial, what we thought was Airbnb actually just listened to Ziv's podcast on, I think Tracy talked a lot about
Speaker: short -term rentals, mid -term rentals, long -term rentals. We've looked at AirDNA data. It said we should be able to make $1 ,000 to $2 ,000 a month. The more I dig into MIMPaku, the Airbnb laws, I think it seems quite complicated, Joey.
Speaker: But I would say if we, I say we, we still go for it just because of that learning aspect. Yup. And if, if anything from the people I talked to at the, I went to the J rep conference in Tokyo, shout out to Ziv and Emil and Anton for putting that together. It was a great time. Some of the people that I met there that were like heavy Airbnbers here.
Speaker: They all kind of made it sound like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. So I mean, Parker, it is a lot of stuff, but it's not as crazy as you think. And you can cut a lot of corn corners is the thing I learned. Like everybody's cutting corners on these rules. Okay. For example, the trash and you have to pay to have your trash taken away because it's a business trash now. And everyone's like, I don't do that. I just put it out with everything else. So it's like those, those kind of soft corners people are cutting. Okay. Yeah.
Speaker: I say, you know, we should definitely still think about that because you and I are both not going to be there year round. The other option is renting out to friends. I know there's been quite a bit of interest from a couple of my friends as well, as well as yours, Joey, that doing monthly rentals might be good. That would give us some passive income. I don't know how taxes would work there and that's something we'll need to figure out. But, you know, would you prefer short -term rentals or renting to friends if we had
Speaker: Yeah. If we had both options, maybe renting to friends first, I don't know. It depends, depends how hands off mean Paco Airbnb could be. If it's, if it's still quite hands off, then maybe that. Yeah. Yeah. I think mean Paco is 180 days. So ideal case would be like a mean Paco 180 days a year. From there we have friend rentals and the rest is like our personal vacation home or something. Best case scenario.
Speaker: Yeah. Another sort of exit strategy that someone that I met at the J -Rep conference told me about is, is, is kind of the negotiate hard when you buy an Akia, renovate it for super cheap. So buy for super cheap, renovate for super cheap.
Speaker: And then get a long -term tenant in, and apparently you can make like returns of like 20%, 25%. Again, we're talking low numbers here, so you're going to have to do more than one. But that does seem like an exit strategy that is working for a few people right now. Yeah.
Speaker: I think that's a pretty, that's a pretty smart, savvy, like investor strategy. I think we are, we both discussed it. Like we're a little bougie or at least we want to do something more edgy. It's not exciting. It's not exciting. Another super curve ball in here is do we sell and do we relocate to a different area? You know, this one person I talked to who's familiar with Japanese real estate just kind of kept hammering like Tokyo, Tokyo, Tokyo.
Speaker: And you can't, you really can't deny it that Tokyo is still going to be the center of Japan and it's probably going to hold real estate prices. It's going to get more tourism. So curve balls. Do we relocate Joey? Like I, I love that poop, but if we're talking business ROI, you know, what are your, what are your feelings towards that? Yeah. I mean.
Speaker: I mean, I used to love Tokyo. I don't know how much I love Tokyo anymore after, but okay. I just, I just spent three days in Times Square. It felt like I spent three days in Shibuya. So I got a little tired of it. I'm definitely bullish on Fukuoka made, but Tokyo is probably investment wise. You know, Tokyo is probably a better idea, but number, just numbers are higher there. You know, contractors are going to be higher. Prices are going to be higher for everything. So it's a, it's a little bit of a different game from Kyushu.
Speaker: Yeah, I think at that point, it's like we would, I think there's capital out there. I think there's enough hype with people we've talked to that if we are determined and be like, hey, let's get some foreign investment or let's get capital from friends and family or let's like do a fundraising round to do something in Tokyo that
Speaker: I think we could do it. It'd definitely be more risk. Well, what I learned, I don't even think we need to raise, I mean, maybe, but what I learned is that, so even though if you check at home or myhome .nifty .co .jp or like even my website, Akiyemart, if you're looking in Tokyo for
Speaker: Or actually we've renamed to jillo .com. But if you're looking in Tokyo for, you know, kind of sub 50 K U S prices, there's not a lot. But what I learned at the J rep conference is for some reason they're not listed. It could be a whole bunch of different factors. Why they're not listed. I think probably real estate agents don't find them very profitable to sell.
Speaker: But you can find Akiya like kind of in the sub 50K in Tokyo. You have to go to an actual office, brick and mortar and start asking around and talking to people, but they're out there is what I learned. So I don't even need to raise too much capital from friends and family to get started in Tokyo. And for anyone else thinking this, go on a trip to Tokyo and just like go to a Fudosan and start asking.
Speaker: True. I think that's, yeah, that's actually a pretty big pro tip and it's similar to, I guess to anywhere. Like I was talking to this real estate agent too, and she was just like, Hey, most of the real good deals don't even hit the range database, which is equivalent to MLS. They're all kind of like done before they even go to market. And I think we see that honestly, just being in, being in a Beppu, right? There are, I'm pretty sure we can solicit a couple of abandoned houses and probably get them for a fire sale.
Speaker: Yeah, that might be what we need to do, I guess. Right. Yeah. So one tip I learned at the conference was that, so one of the reasons why, okay, a few reasons why a realtor might not want to list this property, even though, you know, let's say they might sell it for 20 K or something in the end, they might not list it one.
Speaker: It's not worth their time and effort they're not gonna make a whole lot of money off of it and to the property might have a lot of problems and i don't know in japan or even in the west if the realtor the agent has any kind of like lingering responsibility to the property after it's been sold i'm not exactly how that works but this is what this person was telling me at the conference is that
Speaker: It sounds like in Japan, maybe they do, or there's a chance they might get sued or something like that. So they don't even want to really sell these things because it's just too much of a headache for them. And that headache might continue into the future. So it's not quite a clean break. So one of the things that this person told me to do is you need to make it clear to the realtor that you're just, you're here to buy it, fix it up. And like, they have no, they don't have any lingering responsibility to the property. Like.
Speaker: You just have to kind of like make that clear that you're looking for cheap price. You're, you're looking for cheap prices and in return, you're not going to be a burden on this Realtor. And that's kind of the deal you're looking to establish that you can get the cheap prices and get access to all these like achias that they know about.
Speaker: Yeah, I 100 % agree. And I think now we have a little bit more credibility that we've got our hands dirty, right? I think we can just show, even though, I don't know, I don't know what we're going to see, but Jisouji was not in the greatest shape. And we can just be like, Hey, we've, we've done it. You know, we're okay with Boro Boro conditions for sure. And can handle, right? Yeah, exactly. And all we need them to do is facilitate the, you know, the sale and then.
Speaker: Yeah, I didn't realize this, but maybe we need to stress that they don't have any obligations to the property afterwards.
Speaker: Yeah. A lot to think about, you know, so it's kind of going, going over. It's like, one, we can, what was our first option? We would sell it. No. Vacation home. Vacation home. Vacation home. Vacation home. Option two, we flip it. Option three, we set up as an Airbnb or a long -term rental. Option four, we, we sell it and we relocate to a different location. I guess that's kind of option two as well, but.
Speaker: Lot to think about, Jerry. What would be your top pick? Let's say we're looking back on this. I'm interested in recording and hearing this five years from now. What would you want?
Speaker: As I mentioned before, okay. Perfect. If I could push a button and then have my perfect plan, I'd say, okay, we've, we fix up G so G Lux, our, our property here in that boo. You know, we at least experience it for a season. You know, we, we put some designs, you know, at least enjoy it for a little bit, right? But then flip it. I think we can do, it's fun, you know, it's fun. And I think I, I don't love how close we are to our neighbors, to be honest.
Speaker: Yeah, that's, that's the biggest thing here. I wish we had a little bit more barrier. So I think the next. What I'd be on the lookout for next for, for a place like where I would want to stay is yeah, someplace with more privacy.
Speaker: Yup. I'm pretty fine with you. I would say to get even more specific and try to manifest this goal here, I would love to get that parking lot, make it put some kind of like industrial building, concrete building with a cold plunge, sauna, maybe if we can get the onsen water there and a parking spot with a pizza oven on top, on the top roof so we can throw some parties.
Speaker: and then we sell that
Speaker: to a friend of ours that would be ideal. If we could sell it to a friend of ours who can get a Japanese loan, just if anyone's listening to this who's Japanese and can get a loan, I think interest rates are still sub 1%. So let's say we sold that whole thing for 200K at a sub, let's say, I think right now I've heard of 0 .87 being a common loan amount. That's about 600 US dollars of loan payment over a 35 year loan. So,
Speaker: I don't know. I think we have some people in our network, Joey, in Japan that could get alone and could have this sweet house, vacation house for themselves. So after we do that, Joey, I would love for us to
Speaker: Buy some more Bota Bota properties, maybe get two even and do this, do it at the same time or kind of start scaling would be the dream. Yeah. All right, man. Why don't I, after this is done, I'll just walk to the, whatever I'll look on Google maps, what are the nearest Fudosan is real, realtor. And I'll just, I'll just go ask, you know.
Speaker: They'll probably, yeah. Just ask him about flipping even. I know that's a tough conversation to have in Japanese, but just be like, hey, we're working on this house. We're not sure if Beppu is the right spot for us, even though I think, honestly, our location is so sick. If we could work remotely, I'm still pumped to live there for the next year or two or a couple of years even.
Speaker: You know what I like? I like walked out, went for a little walk this morning. It's so quiet in this neighborhood. Like it's, it's like pretty nice. Like the, how quiet it is sometimes. Yeah. Thing is we're, we're probably the loudest ones. So we need like some sound installation.
Speaker: And actually just for heat and cooling purposes, insulation too. Yeah. Last night I came back from Fukuoka last night and I was like playing in like the chill living room space upstairs. I thought the windows were closed. I was playing my low five reggaeton playlist, but then I had the curtains closed, but yeah, it was curtains were, sorry, window was open. So I hope I wasn't too loud. I wasn't playing music too loud. Yeah.
Speaker: Okay, man. Well, I think that was, it's good. I think if, if no one listens to this and we're the only listeners a couple of years from now, I think this is a cool documentation episode. You know, I think it's, we're at a crossroads right here and I'm curious where we go. Could be a combination of everything, right?
Speaker: But ultimately, man, I hope we can make a business and not have to go back to the tech hamster wheel. Best case scenario. I also too. I mean, yeah. Yeah. Everybody who, if you're looking for a discover, to discover cheap properties in Japan, even more expensive properties in Japan, check out jillo .com. That's our website we're building together and eventually trying to monetize it right now. It's completely free though. So get it, get it while you can.
Speaker: Hey, next episode, Joey, let's, let's actually take a deep dive into Akiemara Jillo, kind of walk through why things are how it is and who it's for. I think there's a lot there. We are to Joey's point. I think this is such a great tool. If you're listening to this and you're looking for properties, jillo .com is going to be a huge resource, but yeah, let's talk about that next. I think there's an opportunity to talk about our business model of what we're trying to do and any kind of brainstorm. So.
Speaker: Wow. We've been talking for 35 minutes. So I'm going to cut this one short, Jerry, but any last words? No, but excited about all the different exit strategies and about jillo .com. And, you know, hopefully in five years, when you look back in this, we'll be like, oh man, I don't know. It's a man thing, but just like interesting to hear and like, kind of like.
Speaker: It's definitely going to be interesting to hear. So naive or like whatever, whatever emotions we're going to have at that time, it'll be good. I think, yeah, we're definitely a little, maybe not reckless. I think we're pretty.
Speaker: I think we're, we're taking risks here. We're risk takers right now. This is a, what did Matt Dayton say on that crypto .com commercial fortune favors the bold or something like that. Right before the FDX. It's got 110, 110 years in prison or something like that. So, but all right, buddy. Well, good, good episode. And I, yeah, excited to see you in Betboo and T minus two weeks, actually. Oh boy. Yeah, buddy.
