Transcript
Speaker: Welcome, welcome back to the buying a house in Japan podcast. Joey, how are you doing? I'm doing good. It's actually really nice to hear that in our intro and then start the podcast. Often we speak to clients over Google Hangouts and we record a podcast when we're doing interviews with people, but we can't get the, the intro song to work when we're doing it over Google Hangouts. So I like hearing in the intro.
Speaker: and then getting into the podcast zone. Totally. We should maybe start using Zencaster more instead of Google meets, but I think it's worth it just for that hype moment of the who shot you saw. Yeah. ah There is benefits to doing the interviews over Google Hangouts. So you can kind of read body language over the video call is better than you can just over telephone call, but true, true, true. Well, all right. We got a dear diary series for everyone today, discussing with Joey, like what should we talk about? And I think.
Speaker: What most listeners have been reaching out to us about is our renovation experience. If you're new here, me and Joey, we've bought four Akias soon to be a fifth within the past year. With that, all these properties have needed some renovation of sorts. Going down the line, just kind of starting out, we had our Betboo property, which we call Betboo Hot Spring Short -Term Rental. That really got it kick -started. We had no idea and still have no idea what we've been doing.
Speaker: Joey, what are some tips that we have or what's been our experience thus far? Yeah, Bepu property has been our most contractor renovation intensive property to date, but we have spoken to some contractors with the other properties. We'll get into that later. But with Bepu, just to sum up our experience so far, we interviewed two different contractors. We went with one in the end, Satosan.
Speaker: who is just a ah one guy team carpenter guy. And for listeners that have listened to the rest of our podcast, you'll know we've definitely had some problems with Sato -san, a little bit of a dramatic story involving him. To sum up, the property is very close to being done though. We're recording this sometime in mid January. We're hoping mid February, the property is done.
Speaker: It's funny. I remember we were in Japan last and your brother texted you like her Sato son just got out of jail and wants cash or something like that. Sato son was in jail for a little bit. So, you know, that that's been our experience there. But when we do the webinars, when we do our consultation calls, a lot of people always ask about.
Speaker: contractors, how to get a property renovated. One of the things I i always do tell people is our experience with Satosan, he's again, he's just a one man team for this property. The other group of contractors that we interviewed, it was like a company. I think two guys showed up.
Speaker: And for the quote, and i they seemed a little bit more professional and their quote came in higher, maybe about 30 ,000, $20 ,000 higher. And the thing I want to talk about is the difference between what I believe the single person contractor experiences like versus the company.
Speaker: Right off the bat, the company was pushing us for more cookie cutter solutions so like the unit shower, unit kitchen. Takei, did you remember your experiences? How did you feel speaking with Sato -san versus the the other company? Totally. We came in this little bit bright eyed, bushy tailed, I'd say, where we were just like, oh man, we want to make this a dope Airbnb. We want to do X, Y, Z. and When talking between Sato and bigger company, the bigger company was much more like, no, no, no, no, you can't do that. No, no, that's going to be difficult. So it was a lot more pushback from the bigger company and maybe rightfully so. Looking back, Sato was much more agreeable. He was like, oh yeah, I can do this. Like, oh, I'll get this done faster. And he came in with a low price. Looking back,
Speaker: I think we got fooled. We talked to Kuhn who's deep into renovation. He's like, you got played a little bit. And I think looking back, we did to some degree, but we also would not have gotten the custom product we got. So hard to say hindsight's 2020 here. We might be, might have been done with the bigger company at this point, but we also wouldn't have the sweet custom stuff we have today.
Speaker: It's really interesting actually, we've been speaking with Sekisui Chemical recently about a new build. We're trying to explore that as well. you know Part of what we're trying to do here is explore so many different options and then speak about our experience so that you guys can learn from our successes and also our mistakes. But the conversation with Sekisui Chemical also went very similar to that the bigger company contractors in Bepu where We came out with all these ideas. We wanted a wood -fired stove with the Sekisuri build. We wanted a sauna. We wanted a specific exterior wood cladding on the outside of the new build, a yakisugi, that burnt cedar look. and
Speaker: you know we had some other ideas and everything that we said they were just like we can't do this no at first they werere saying it was legally not possible and we're like what what do you mean legally not possible a wood stove but anyways i think that the bigger companies they do things their way and that's the way rigid yeah Very, very rigid. And for people who don't and know Sekisui chemical, which we did not know, they're separate from Sekisui house or homes. They are like a prefab home builder that are actually here in California too. Now we're looking at exploring how do foreigners buy these new builds in Japan? But yeah, very similar. We asked a couple requests like, Hey, can we get a sauna here? You know, we wanted to dream big. I think all the things we asked for were a hard no, like can't do no, no, no kind of thing. But.
Speaker: We'll find a way, Joey. I'm determined. Yeah. And just, we'll get into this conversation about installation when we talk about the Tokyo property. But just very briefly on the theme of rigidity, we spoke with an installation company and also very rigid and in one certain aspect. They said that they couldn't work on the house at all. If it had been built by Sekisui House and just the general impression that i've had with contracting companies so different from satas on the single guy carpenter but any sort of renovation company or builder company that is a little bit bigger and more established. It does just feel like very rigid way of working with them there's a lot of hard nose that they'll have.
Speaker: Yeah, but that being said too, the, the fine line between going custom and having it take a lot of time and be a pain in the ass versus just going a prefab, do what they feel comfortable is, is there's pros and cons of each, you know, I think moving on to our Tokyo property or Tokyo suburban mid -stay is our new name, what we're calling it. Everything in there was a pre -flip kind of prefab type thing. And it was pretty dang comfortable when we first walked in.
Speaker: Yeah, not bad at all. When I first thought of the prefabricated showers, the prefabricated kitchen, I thought of the, the type of things that you get in the business hotels in Japan, like Appa hotel. If anyone's ever been in an Appa hotel room is tiny. And then the bathroom is even tinier and you like step up into this plastic shed type cat coffin. Yeah. You step up and then you got the toilet, the bathtub, the shower, the mirror, everything right there. and I, for some reason, that was my impression. Even though i I knew that there were nicer versions and the stuff people put in their homes is rarely that type of thing. I think maybe in the condo market, you'll find those type of Appa hotel style, really cheap and gross prefabricated showers. But for houses like our, the Tokyo property, it's quite nice. It's a nice shower. i I don't use the bathtub. So kind of a little bit of a waste of space there, but the shower's really nice.
Speaker: Before we actually move on to the Tokyo property, Joey, if you were to look back, again, we're about a year into renovation for our Betboo Hot Spring short -term rental property, would you have gone back and done it differently? Hard to say, right? I'm glad you went back to Betboo because i I did have one more thought on that, exactly answering your question.
Speaker: Sometimes, I don't have any experience doing this myself, but I'm kind of like, can you get the best of both worlds? Could we have got the bigger company contractors to do the quick and lipstick on a pig? let you know Let them cook with the prefabricated shower, prefabricated kitchen. Just let them do what they want to do and and what they do well and effectively. And probably we would have had the house completed in under six months, let's say.
Speaker: And then if we wanted the Airbnb, we have this like three meter long table, Hoi Ko Tatsu, which is the sunken seating black tatami. And then after they're finished, say we still had some money left over, or maybe this is a year two project. That's when we get someone who is more down to do custom work. Sato -san, for example, targeted.
Speaker: to just do the Horikotatsu because that's the big problem with Sato -san is that the scope just grew so large with this house and he's one guy. Had we got him to just do the very custom things that we wanted him to do, he did a good job on the Horikotatsu. So yeah maybe that's the best of both worlds, more expensive. You're paying two companies instead of just one. But what do you think on that plan? Yeah, I agree. Going up from like an iterative steps like version zero, version one, version two.
Speaker: would have probably been better. I guess the one thing is we are moving so quickly that it's it's hard to keep that vision in mind. Had we gone with the big company, maybe we wouldn't have done the custom stuff and we would have to end up tearing stuff up. But I agree. If we had a sat down and planned a little bit better, knowing what we know now, I think we would have gone with the bigger company. You just thought it was a finished carpenter.
Speaker: just get things off the ground. Which was Kun's advice to like plan it because if you don't plan it, they're going to make their own decisions. Absolutely. So in retrospect, if if we were talking to ourselves, I would say one, we got to get better plan CAD drawing in place. Maybe we would have had our friend Gabby do like a mock -up of where everything was supposed to be. And then I think we would have gone with the larger, like prioritized on getting it to a livable standard and then focus on adding Finishing touches throughout the rest of the year or something like that. Yeah. For listeners, here's the reality of the Beppu house. We got the keys October, 2023. I've spent maybe three different trips living there for at least two two to four weeks at a time. It's been like living in a construction zone every time. And we're coming up on a year, a year and a half with this property. So.
Speaker: We bought this house and it's been a construction zone for a year and a half. You know, you got to make that call, whether you just want this to get to a livable state faster so you can enjoy this property that you bought. Yeah. I would say that it has been fun. It has been an adventure in the sense that we've learned a lot. Again, we're in the business of.
Speaker: just shameless plug here. We have a program called Akiemart Direct in which we are helping people purchase and go through the purchasing process. Joey and I, again, we've made like a bajillion mistakes amongst these four properties, but had we not had these mistakes, I'm sure other people would have gone down this route and at least we can speak to it and be like, Hey, this is how we did it. This is how we would have done it again. And I think there's a lot of value that we instill in clients when we work with them, right?
Speaker: Yeah, I really take pride in our Akiyama Direct program. Check out some of our other podcasts where we have done interviews with some successful clients that we've helped purchase as well. And then before we close the book on Bapu, I think the very current update is Sato -san is not picking up any of the phone calls from Fumi. So one of the best decisions we made is we found Fumi, the fixer, I think is what we call her. She's on the ground. She's a mutual friend that we met when we were in Bepu the first time. She has been like absolutely the MVP of this project. We absolutely could not have done it without her. She's bilingual. She's in the area. She's the one really micromanaging Sato for us. So very, very thankful for Fumi if you're listening to this. Yeah. If you can find someone local that can help while you're not there. say Say you're like us and you're trying to manage this project from, let's say America, find someone local in the town that you purchased in that hopefully speaks English or your language that can make calls on your behalf and maybe like get a quote, show a contractor the house, get a quote for you. That type of person, Fumi, for example, and we've recently found Linda in Tokyo.
Speaker: it Yeah, indispensable has been so valuable for all of these projects. It's funny. Fumi's the bad cop and you're the good cop, I would say, in all this. like I remember on one of our last interactions with Sato -san when he came over. Fumi's asking about deadlines and like, hey, can you do this? And then Sato's like, I haven't eaten in three days and you hand him a piece of cake kind of thing. or like We also like offer him to stay at that booth.
Speaker: Good, good contrast. And I don't mean to pin it on for me to be the bad guy, but super, super helpful. Just having another third party in there. It's an effective strategy. Good cop, bad cop. Yeah. Everybody go back. I'm sure we talked about the Sato son saga. If you're interested in all the drama, I'm not exactly sure which episode, but go back. We talked to him an over all of them, his his jail time ah in the past. Yeah. Overall though. Yeah. Again, fingers crossed. And we're almost done with that, but we're going back in February to check it out.
Speaker: I remember the first like promo video I put out of like, Hey, we bought this house. It said it was going to be done in January, 2024. What fools we were looking back on that to believe him. Yeah. All right. Let's move on. I guess a lot of learnings that are transferable to our next property. We're just going down the line, our Tokyo suburban mid -stay. We similarly found a fixer. Her name's Linda. Linda, if you're listening to this, awesome. How did you meet Linda, Joey? Linda.
Speaker: There was a barbecue, there was like a community barbecue and Harasan, our neighbor invited me, but I had ah a few other things I was doing that morning. I think our friend Josh was coming over to take a look at our garden. And so I was, oh, and I was waiting for a couch to get delivered from Nitori. So i I had to stay at the house and also, like i just I don't know, I just felt like staying home. So I told Harasan, thank you, but I won't be able to make it.
Speaker: Hadasan comes over later with Linda and her family. And I think in Hadasan's mind, he was thinking, oh, there's a Gaijin family moving in. and Linda's family had just moved into the neighborhood and they had gone to the barbecue. And in Hadasan's mind, he put Gaijin and Gaijin together. Makes a lot of sense. So he brought over Linda and Tim, I believe is her husband's name.
Speaker: to come over and meet. And so we're just chatting. And I think that was the day before I actually flew back to, I left Japan. So I just got their number and and said, we'll be in touch and let's grab a beer when I'm back in February. And then we reached out, we were thinking about it recently. And I think just right before Christmas and I just reached out to see if she'd be interested in handling a few tasks for us while we're not around.
Speaker: It was actually interesting. I think the reason we first reached out is cause like our car battery was dead. Josh, he was helping us do the garden. I think there was some issue with the car where maybe he left it on. We're like, that's right. Linda, can you do us a huge solid and check out the car and see if you can open it and Josh car on and yeah, kill, kill the battery. No, no, no, no. Josh doesn't have his driver's license. So, okay. Understandable a little bit. It can't be complicated.
Speaker: But it's anyways, we had Linda go over and Linda was like super, super helpful. And it was just like really refreshing, honestly, to work with maybe a foreigner versus a Japanese person. She was like very proactive. And me and Joey were like, should we just like ask Linda to help us with some things? And one thing led to the next. And now Linda has really solidified her position as our Fumi. So Linda, the fixer of Tokyo is what we're calling her now. She has single -handedly organized a Paint two quotes on paint we're thinking about repainting the house She is organized a insulation company or done that's a company to come Take a look at what the insulation process is gonna be like and and give us a quote and also she's organizing someone to take a look at some concrete cracks we have in our in garage so incredibly comforted to know that we're still making progress while we're here stateside Joey and Linda is absolutely handling it and
Speaker: Everybody find yourself a Fumi and a Linda. This is yeah the best way to project manage these things from abroad. Totally. a Number one piece of advice. If you're not going to be here in Japan, find someone who is in the neighborhood who you can pay a decent amount just to get progress while you're stateside. It's really inefficient to leave Japan and have all progress and stop at that moment. Linda and Fumi have been yeah instrumental here.
Speaker: Joey, let's double click on some of the quotes we got. We got one quote back for paint. We're thinking about painting our house like a rust color, but we got like a lot more in that quote, which was actually interesting.
Speaker: I didn't read through all the details. The quotes were quite verbose. Maybe it's comprehensive. Yeah, quite dense Japanese documents, unfortunately. And I just haven't had the head space or time to go through them, but higher level. I think the first company gave us two quotes or the difference of quotes of the first company was the places that they were going to paint. So I think.
Speaker: one quote was for the roof and the exterior walls and then the second quote was for like just the exterior walls the second company was interesting it seems to be all based on paint quality different types of paints that they will use so they give us i think they give us six different quotes mostly based on different paint quality but all of them are in the same ballpark i would say it seems to be about This is a two bedroom. It's actually, I think maybe technically a three bedroom, but we opened up the living room downstairs. So maybe at like a 2 .5 bedroom house in Thomas city, Tokyo. And the quote to paint the outside came in to be between 1 .5 to 1 .7 million yen, which is around $10 ,000.
Speaker: And just to give viewer or I guess listeners an idea, our house is about 1000 square feet, 1200 square feet. So it's a pretty big house. I'd say a paint job of this sort in California would be extremely more expensive than the quote we got. and Actually, going back to contractors, I really do trust specialists. I think these painters are going to do a really good job because that's all they do. And What's interesting about the quote is they were very comprehensive, but also maybe downside is like, Hey, we need to hire three other people to direct traffic on your very low traffic street. And we need to hire security artists. Like what, what is this for? I don't know. Japan has a lot of like, as as you go visit, you'll see a lot of excessive
Speaker: labor people in my opinion ever driven on the highway and there's like construction going on usually let's say in america they've got one guy with the stop sign that they stop slow on either end japan's got maybe three or three to five guys doing that job all waving batons and and that type of thing so I do agree with Take on the excessive laborers for the peripheral positions on a construction job. So if you're looking at paint your house, just know again, we're about a thousand thousand two hundred square feet building, looking at around 10 ,000 US dollars for everything.
Speaker: I think they mentioned they're booked out for a couple months, but it should only take a couple of days. Just know if you want to give your new Akia a new fresh coat of paint, that's roughly what we're thinking and we'll report back when we do go through it with it and if we go through it or any learnings.
Speaker: The first painting company was also like, Hey, some of your roof tiles are chip. We work with this metal roofer. Would you like us to make an introduction to him as well? So potentially you can grow your contractor Rolodex just by working with one contractor. And then they might recommend more contractors if they see an issue that you were also thinking about as well.
Speaker: Yeah. Are we being upsold here, Joey? They've just been like, your roof looks like it needs to be painted. Metal roof is, i' I honestly don't think the roof needs to be painted, but it doesn't add that much to the total cost. So why not? But I don't know. I think the metal roof is great, but probably not a priority. I think they put, they added in a whisper of painting the roof, not like for adding a metal roof, which I see a lot more. That's correct. I think the metal roof would probably be at least another 10 ,000, maybe closer to 20 ,000.
Speaker: Okay. So this house we got again, kind of rolling, rolling back the clock. We bought as a pre -flip property. We were not able to do a home inspection on it. So it's not perfect. We're actually going to do a home inspection more thoroughly post -mortem and figure out what we need to fix. Our goal here is to probably make it a midterm rental. We're not quite sure. Maybe we might consider selling it in the future, but with it all, we we do intend to gain this experience and tell the audience what's happening. Joey stayed the summer.
Speaker: It is hot as hell during the summer, right? Really, really bad. I was shocked just how bad it was. I felt like I was just like complaining about all the time. I was like. It's on the podcast a couple of times for sure. In in shock at how hot it was inside the house during the summers. I do think absolutely a necessity insulation and kind of crazy. I'm like looking around the neighborhood during the day and like, I see your neighbor's hot as sun. He's got his windows open and it's so humid. It's so hot. I can't imagine what it's like inside how to son's house. They're built different.
Speaker: They were definitely built different. But this summer was, I think, one of the record hottest summers, I believe, in Tokyo. So either way, before putting any money into paint, we've decided we definitely need to go down the route of insulation. So we found, actually, Linda found a Donnitsa company that specializes in just doing it from A to Z.
Speaker: When we started trying to get a quote, where we had a lot of friction. they They were like, Hey, is your house built by this company? And we're like, what does that matter at all? Like we're the ones paying money here. They can't work with us if our house was built by Sekisui. And actually they're not the only company that approached us saying, Hey, we think your house is built by Sekisui. We might not be able to work with you.
Speaker: We'll figure out more about this, but there seems to be some like territorialism. If a certain housing company built the house, they're the ones that get the first dibs on repairing it. Maybe it's a business thing or like. It could be carefulflow it sounded like if you get a house built by, say so let's say we get a house built by Sekisui in the documents we signed, we might sign a contract saying like,
Speaker: This house can only be renovated or painted, whatever you want to do, by Sekisui themselves. And it also seems like that contract goes forward with anyone else that buys the house from us in the future. Again, I have no idea if this is true or not. This is just what it sounds like talking with this installation company, but that's kind of crazy. You know, we bought this house. I didn't sign any documents with Sekisui.
Speaker: Like that was the previous homeowner. Why should I be held to that contract is way I would think about this problem. But obviously in Japan, this is a real situation and this installation company, they were very serious. They probably wanted to work with us and and have more business, but they're like, we really can't if this house was built by Sekisui. We're navigating that. We have Yoshi on trying to help us find who built our house or if there's even some record, but I think we're in a brute force or try to.
Speaker: brute force Skygene smash our way through here and get some damn insulation in our house. Cause it's, you know, we really need it, but the site is actually very reasonable. There's different plans. So you can either get the ground floor or certain rooms insulated, but but we went for the all installation and their general quote is somewhere around the 2 to 3 million yen, which translates to about say 20 ,000 us dollars. We're getting an in -person quote, but online quote looks like it Should cost around $20 ,000 for them to replace, double paint all the windows, do insulation. They have some method that's probably different than traditional. I think they go in the basement and shoot insulation up or something like that. Joey, did you look at that? I am more like a crawl space. I just watched videos online of American companies doing this. It's not exactly the same, but it's the same product that they use. American companies, they'll drill in through the exterior wall into the wall cavities and then spray some sort of expanding foam.
Speaker: into the wall categories. The Japanese companies, apparently they go into the crawl space underneath the floor. There's usually a way to access the the crawl space in a Japanese home, and then they'll go up into the wall cavities that way through that crawl space.
Speaker: yeah so This is our top priority. We talked about a priority one insulation. You've heard a scream of this over and over and over in every probably podcast about renovation we've talked about. Next step, we're probably gonna do a fresh coat of paint and then maybe look at a roof. But also we do need to think, Joey, what is the ah ROI of this? Are we sinking money into something that we're not going to use forever? So definitely food for thought as we decide and get these quotes.
Speaker: Yeah, we do need to think about that. Depends what the business model is. I do think that for anybody else going down this path and you're, let's say you you're on a vacation home, but also Airbnb it, I would have complained as an Airbnb guest staying in this house in the summer. It it was pretty bad. Um, the heat.
Speaker: Okay. This is a problem. I think 95 % of you who are listening, who want to buy an Acia are probably going to encounter as you go through the purchase process. Hopefully with us, we will try to get a home inspection. But the assumption is if you're looking at anything like pre 1990, you in 2000, installation is probably not there. It's just Japanese people deal with it. It's just shocking. Shocking. One last thought on installation with our Beppu property, it didn't seem like such a big deal. So Sato -san had opened up all the walls. Again, this was a bigger renovation. Sato -san had opened up all the walls. He wasn't going to put insulation in and we're like, oh, do we ask him to? Do we not? Kind of like thinking it was going to be a big deal. And then we asked him to and he's like, yep, no big deal. I'll just put it in. And then so now our Beppu house has been insulated and we also got him to put insulation in the ceiling as well. So really glad we did that.
Speaker: Maybe we should do the double pane windows too. Something to think about, but okay. Let's take our own advice. Like version zero, one, two, let's just get everything to version one. I think our maybe version two, I'm not sure where where we stand. Okay. Joey, that was Tokyo. I think we're just going to go down the line at this point. F it key to cue shoot bars, key to cue shoot, long -term rental for renovation. We went with the larger company and we'll say I'm pretty happy. We did an out. Yeah. They were in and out probably over the course of.
Speaker: max a week, again, the renovation wasn't very, uh, extensive, but yeah, in and out in a week. In and out. They replaced the wallpaper or they did some stuff to the Tommy resurfacing. They trimmed stuff. That was a smooth. We still haven't found a renter. I think a lot of opportunity to hopefully upgrade the pictures and do the advertisement a little bit better might be worth it. But renovation wise, this was a low renovation. So quite, quite easy on our side.
Speaker: Yeah. So one thing listeners will know, we had someone named Keaton helping us initially with this project. And again, Keaton's in that sort of space of buy cheap, renovate cheap, and then get a renter. And so in that renovate cheap.
Speaker: sort of category, he was telling us how to do this very, very cheaply. And you get, again, targeted businesses that do one thing or maybe one or two things. Like, for example, yeah, specialists, they just resurfaced tatami and you pay for it by the square meter of tatami that you want resurfaced. You're not replacing the tatami mask, which are quite cheap to begin with, but you just resurface the outside then you get a company that can come in and fix wallpaper by the square meter and they'll just come in and and fix the wallpaper etc he seemed really bullish on these type of businesses you have to google for it in japanese like wallpaper
Speaker: renovation square meter, like just a chat chippy tee to tell you how to do that and write that in Japanese, Google for it. And you'll see these companies in whatever local town or city you bought in. And those are the companies that Keaton recommended we go with. They are going to be all Japanese speaking. It is going to be more companies that you need to keep in your head, but maybe you found a Linda or a Fumi by this point, and they can help you do the renovation for quite cheap.
Speaker: That's really interesting to think about Japanese culture is very well known for like highly specialized. Like some people dedicate their life to flipping. Yeah. I remember Jiro dreams of sushi. Like the guy who just flips eggs for six years. It makes the tamago. Yucky. Like that kind of stuff. Like is washes the rice. Yeah. If we can assemble the right team of specialists, that's always going to be better than a generalist if I were to get, but we just don't have the network.
Speaker: Yeah, we don't have the network yet. But again, budget specialist contractors, they seem to be everywhere. Like everywhere that I've Googled for, Beppu, Kitakyushu, I might've looked around Nagasaki as well. I can't remember if I did Tokyo. They do seem to be every town or you'll find them. So it does seem that there's a real market for these budget specialist contractors in Japan. They're out there. So Kitakyushu, long -term rental, still looking for a tenant, but it's only been about a month and a half. So I'm not too worried, but.
Speaker: We definitely want to get that tenanted soon because it's ready to go. If anyone listening wants to cheap rental in Kitakushu, holler at us. Now onto our, I'd say, I'm personally most excited project, our Myoko Snow cabin. We have received a couple folks, couple listeners, thanks for reaching out. We probably are not selling this quite yet. We are exploring potentially demolishing and as Joey mentioned before, working with a home builder company, Sekisui Chemical. They make the Sekisui Haim to see if we can get a new house here.
Speaker: Very different type of renovation, but we've gotten quotes already for demolishing. Just demolishing and taking everything out of the house and getting rid of it, it's going to cost around 10 to 15K USD. I think we mentioned before, we're exploring the option for a loan here. So we'll see if the loan can cover that as well.
Speaker: Yeah, we'll do a whole podcast as we struggle a little bit with some of these ideas and being like, Hey, they require work. If you have the cash buying a piece of land and just buying a new house might be the move. And we are exploring a loan possibility. It seems like we are going to be the guinea pigs for this startup in the States. That's going to use us to see if we can get a loan. So we'll report back. It sounds like it's going to be a hell of a lot lower interest than if we were to take the money out of the U S and bring it over.
Speaker: I think generally, I think it's the range of 200 to 300 K for a new build, but there might be a chance we can get like a 40 or 50 year loan repayment, which is absolutely insane. I would say honestly, working the meetings we've had with Sekisui Chemical have been, ri we mentioned this earlier at the start of this call, but they're very rigid with what they are willing to build.
Speaker: Yeah, Joey, we're on watch that chat. I'm like, Joey, keep an open mind, man. You're like, I'm out on it. I'm out on them. But yeah, I think that's the cultural thing that everyone's going to have to to deal with. his Japan is probably a less.
Speaker: of a Western customizable type process. Even though I live in a mobile home right now in Santa Cruz, like Joey, they were very, very rigid on what I could do, like where I could put walls. Like I couldn't turn my washer dryer like 90 degrees. It had to be this way for fire code or XYZ reason. So i I felt a similar rigidness when I was working with my home builder here. So keep an open mind is what I'm going to tell you.
Speaker: We'll see how it goes. I guess this is a most expensive property. If we do get a loan for it, it's a lot of money. So I just can't help but feel that the money would go a lot further spent with, let's say a non gigantic home builder, or even like maybe can't get the loan for a renovation. Probably can't maybe can. I'm not sure, but let's say we were able to take out a loan for $200 ,000 that would go so far for a renovation.
Speaker: pros and cons. and so that These home builders are like prefab units. they're They are specialists, I would say. As we look at a whole local home builder, I'm assuming the costs go up because it's like less prefab type stuff and it just is going to require a lot more work. so Let's see, I think Myoko is such a hot area. I just joined Myoko Facebook group. and People are going buck wild in there. And it seems like the snow is pounding Myoko. Do we need to get our snow cleared soon? Let's see how how it goes. When we just had the Beppu property, I wasn't so bullish on the
Speaker: and Hoping that my mind will change just Google also the snowfall six point six seven meters of snow in Myoko thus far. What is that in feet? 20 feet of snow in the season thus far and is that a lot Joey? I've definitely come around there where now I give them a thumbs up from me so let's say that I'm starting out with low expectations for a new build through That's a ton. That's a ton. Okay. Cool. I'm excited. Next. Our goal here is hopefully to have this place ready by next winter. I've been telling my fiance like, Hey, you want to go spend a winter in myoko and go skiing and stuff? So that's the, that's the goal. All right. jerry Very, very last one. Let's talk about Nagasaki. So we have successfully secured a property down in Nagasaki. We're actually going to be going to Japan next month to go check it out. We're going to withhold some information on price and stuff, but the condition looks pretty dang good. We're going to get a home inspection. I believe we might do a key to Kyushu long -term rental type remodel. I don't think it actually needs anything, but also depending on potential, we might do a little bit more.
Speaker: The quality looks quite good, very similar, probably better than the Kitakushu property, I would reckon to say, and out of all the houses we bought, not including Tokyo since that was a flip, this ah the Kitakushu property was in the best condition and it was $3 ,500. So if this Nagasaki house looks even better than that, I think that this is a pretty good buy.
Speaker: As we are going to head down there, we're actually planning to meet maybe a candidate or two to be our fixers or a project manager. So we are learning at least from each property consecutively that before we even acquire this property, we're making sure that we do have someone on the ground who speaks English that will be able to pay and help us do things while we're not there.
Speaker: Kind of critical, like almost to the point where we've had some conversations where we're like, all right, we can't buy unless we know somebody in that area. It's just like Fumi and Linda have been that valuable in this process. Yep. So number one advice, if you're looking at an Akia, but buy somewhere where you have some kind of network or maybe before you even buy, go there and and find some people on the ground, as you may have listened to with our previous podcast with Kurt Bell.
Speaker: he had an entire neighborhood looking out for properties. So the more kind of seeds you can plant in neighborhoods to be like, Hey, I'm looking for a property or Hey, I need help here. Or the more people you have on your side, obviously the better it's going to turn out. So if you're like throwing a dart at the map here, I would say check your network, see if you know anyone in certain areas. Maybe it's even us, you know, like if you want to invest in Beppu, we were happy to try to help you guys connect with certain people. So,
Speaker: Look at your network. And I would say that's really my best advice on where you should buy in Japan, at least for that first property. Yeah. go pepu I totally agree with everything you just said. Yep. And then second tip, we already said it. You got to have, you got to have someone on the ground that you can pay very candidly. I think we're paying.
Speaker: a pretty good wage in Japan hourly for these folks. I think it's like 10 hours. We pay kind of hourly how how it comes, maybe like 10 hours a month, but especially with exchange rate being so solid, it feels definitely worth it versus me and Joey being in the weeds, like talking to contractors, like how's it feel to be delegating Joey?
Speaker: It feels really good. It does feel like stuff is moving forward while we're not there. One thing about the Kita Kyushu property, there is some difficulty in getting the utilities turned on and then having those get deducted from our business bank account. And they send these paper bills to the property that you need to take to the combini and you can only pay them in cash at the combini. Quite frustrating there, but you know, it's nice having someone on the ground that can handle these paper bills that need to be paid in person, for example.
Speaker: There's just so many things that happen to a property while you're not there. It is really valuable to have someone on the ground. I listen to a couple pocket ah bigger pockets podcast. They're like a real estate podcast. And their biggest tip tip is like you need to focus on building a team. And I think I can't agree more in that eve is it is even more important in Japan, especially if you can't speak the language to be building that team. We're thinking about it before you buy a property. Like we can help you buy a property, no problem, but who's going to take care of it? How are you going to do renovations?
Speaker: Sometimes our agents might be able to help with that, but I would also just really recommend you if if you're coming to buy in Japan, you need to be scrappy. You need to be able to talk to your neighbors or at least figure out how you can find help. We were talking to Eric Burrow. We chatted with him a couple of times on the podcast. He's doing a great job of just like networking and finding friends. He's telling us about all these people he's met. So yeah you got to be social, a little bit extroverted when you go to Japan and buy a house.
Speaker: He is. he's made He's making a lot of friends. The yaki niku restaurant owner, he's expanding his network. I think he is doing it the right way. Yup. Cool, Joey. Well, Hey, we have now planned a trip to Japan. So if you're listening to this, we will be in Japan for the, I think the last two weeks of February, we're figuring out our itinerary. If you are in the area, shoot us an email, we'll try our best to organize a meetup or something. But.
Speaker: We are going to be blitzing it. We're going from Tokyo to maybe Miyoko, Nagasaki, Beppu. We're doing a Japan tour again. I think this is our third Japan tour, fourth lightning tour.
Speaker: Get ready. I got work. So we got to balance that Joey, but how you had it is this this is a two weaker for you. Two, two weaker for me. And then after that, I am flying straight to Serbia. Actually Novi side. If we have any listeners up in Novi side, give me a holler.
